ns; but the
case being necessary, and not admitting delay, the Senate immediately
electing the juncta shall create the Dictator. 'And let the Dictator,'
as the Roman saying is, 'take care that the commonwealth receives no
harm.'"

This in case the debate concludes not in a decree. But if a decree be
passed, it is either in matter of state or government according to law
enacted already, and then it is good without going any further, or it
is in matter of law to be enacted, repealed, or amended; and then the
decree of the Senate, especially if it be for a war, or for a levy of
men or money, is invalid, without the result of the commonwealth, which
is in the prerogative tribe, or representative of the people.

"The Senate having prepared a decree to be proposed to the people, shall
appoint their proposers; and no other may propose for the Senate to
the people but the magistrates of the house; that is to say, the
three commissioners of the seal, or any two of them; the three of the
Treasury, or any two of them; or the two censors.

"The Senate having appointed their proposers, shall require of the
tribunes a muster of the people at a set time and place: and the
tribunes or any two of them having mustered the people accordingly, the
proposers shall propose the sense or decree of the Senate by clauses to
the people. And that which is proposed by the authority of the Senate,
and resolved by the command of the people, is the law of Oceana." To
this order, implicitly containing the sum very near of the whole civil
part of the commonwealth, my Lord Archon spoke thus in council:

"MY DEAR LORDS:

"There is a saying, that a man must cut his coat according to his cloth.
When I consider what God has allowed or furnished to our present work, I
am amazed. You would have a popular government; he has weighed it to you
in the present balance, as I may say, to a drachm; you have no more
to do but to fix it. For the superstructures of such a government they
require a good aristocracy: and you have, or have had a nobility or
gentry the best studied, and the best writers, at least next that
of Italy, in the whole world; nor have they been inferior, when so
exercised, in the leading of armies. But the people are the main body
of a commonwealth; show me from the treasuries of the snow (as it is in
Job) to the burning zone a people whose shoulder so universally and so
exactly fits the corselet. Nevertheless, it were convenient to be well