ng the materials,
never die; and the form, which is motion, must, without opposition, be
endless. The bowl which is thrown from your hand, if there be no rub, no
impediment, shall never cease: for which cause the glorious luminaries
that are the bowls of God, were once thrown forever; and next these,
those of Venice. But certainly, my lords, whatever these great examples
may have shown us, we are the first that have shown to the world a
commonwealth established in her rise upon fifty such towers, and so
garrisoned as are the tribes of Oceana, containing 100,000 elders upon
the annual list, and yet but an outguard; besides her marching armies to
be equal in the discipline, and in the number of her youth.

"And forasmuch as sovereign power is a necessary but a formidable
creature, not unlike the powder which (as you are soldiers) is at once
your safety and your danger, being subject to take fire against you
as well as for you, how well and securely is she, by your galaxies so
collected as to be in full force and vigor and yet so distributed that
it is impossible you should be blown up by your own magazine? Let them
who will have it, that power if it be confined cannot be sovereign, tell
us, whether our rivers do not enjoy a more secure and fruitful reign
within their proper banks, than if it were lawful for them, in ravaging
our harvests, to spill themselves? whether souls, not confined to their
peculiar bodies, do govern them any more than those of witches in their
trances? whether power, not confined to the bounds of reason and virtue,
has any other bounds than those of vice and passion? or if vice and
passion be boundless, and reason and virtue have certain limits, on
which of these thrones holy men should anoint their sovereign? But to
blow away this dust, the sovereign power of a commonwealth is no more
bounded, that is to say straitened, than that of a monarch; but is
balanced. The eagle mounts not to her proper pitch, if she be bounded,
nor is free if she be not balanced. And lest a monarch should think he
can reach further with his sceptre, the Roman eagle upon such a balance
spread her wings from the ocean to Euphrates. Receive the sovereign
power; you have received it, hold it fast, embrace it forever in your
shining arms. The virtue of the loadstone is not impaired or limited,
but receives strength and nourishment, by being bound in iron. And so
giving your lordships much joy, I take my leave of this tribe."