nate being not for life) whereof, with the safety of the commonwealth,
they are capable in nature, and such a government, for that cause, to
be democracy; though I do not deny but in Lacedaemon, the paucity of
the senators considered, it might be called oligarchy, in comparison of
Athens; or, if we look on their continuance for life, though they had
been more, aristocracy.

"The Senate of Rome (whose fame has been heard to thunder in the
eloquence of my Lord Dolabella d'Enyo) consisting of 300, was, in regard
of the number, less oligarchical than that of Lacedaemon; but more in
regard of the patricians, who, having an hereditary capacity of
the same, were not elected to that honor by the people; but, being
conscribed by the censors, enjoyed it for life. Wherefore these, if they
had their wills, would have resolved as well as debated; which set the
people at such variance with them as dissolved the commonwealth; whereas
if the people had enjoyed the result, that about the agrarian, as well
as all other strife, must of necessity have ceased.

"The Senates of Switzerland and Holland (as I have learnt of my Lords
Alpester and Glaucus), being bound up (like the sheaf of arrows which
the latter gives) by leagues, lie like those in their quivers; but
arrows, when they come to be drawn, fly from this way and from that; and
I am contented that these concerned us not.

"That of Venice (by the faithful testimony of my most excellent Lord
Linceus de Stella) has obliged a world, sufficiently punished by its
own blindness and ingratitude, to repent and be wiser: for whereas
a commonwealth in which there is no senate, or where the senate is
corrupt, cannot stand, the great Council of Venice, like the statue of
Nilus, leans upon an urn or waterpot, which pours forth the Senate in
so pure and perpetual a stream, as being unable to stagnate, is forever
incapable of corruption. The fuller description of this Senate is
contained in that of Oceana; and that of Oceana in the foregoing orders.
To every one of which, because something has been already said, I shall
not speak in particular. But in general, your Senate, and the other
assembly, or the prerogative, as I shall show in due place, are
perpetual, not as lakes or puddles, but as the rivers of Eden; and are
beds made, as you have seen, to receive the whole people, by a due and
faithful vicissitude, into their current. They are not, as in the late
way, alternate. Alternate life in gove