be to election of the new tribunes,
being four annual magistrates, whereof two are to be elected out of the
cavalry at the horse urn, and two out of the infantry at the foot
urn, according to the common ballot of the tribes. And they may be
promiscuously chosen out of any classes, provided that the same person
shall not be capable of bearing the tribunitian honor twice in the term
of one galaxy. The tribunes thus chosen shall receive the tribe (in
reference to the power of mustering and disciplining the same) as
commanders-in-chief, and for the rest as magistrates, whose proper
function is prescribed by the next order. The tribunes may give leave
to any number of the prerogative, not exceeding 100 at a time, to be
absent, so they be not magistrates nor officers, and return within three
months. If a magistrate or officer has a necessary occasion, he may also
be absent for the space of one month, provided that there be not above
three cornets or ensigns, two captains, or one tribune so absent at one
time."

To this the Archon spoke at the institution after this manner:

"MY LORDS:

"It is affirmed by Cicero, in his oration for Flaccus, that the
commonwealths of Greece were all shaken or ruined by the intemperance of
their Comitia, or assemblies of the people. The truth is, if good heed
in this point be not taken, a commonwealth will have bad legs. But all
the world knows he should have excepted Lacedaemon, where the people, as
has been shown by the oracle, had no power at all of debate, nor (till
after Lysander, whose avarice opened a gulf that was not long ere it
swallowed up his country) came it ever to be exercised by them. Whence
that commonwealth stood longest and firmest of any other but this,
in our days, of Venice; which, having underlaid herself with the like
institution, owes a great, if not the greater, part of her steadiness to
the same principle; the great Council, which is with her the people, by
the authority of my Lord Epimonus, never speaking a word. Nor shall any
commonwealth, where the people in their political capacity is talkative,
ever see half the days of one of these, but, being carried away by
vainglorious men (that, as Overbury says, void more than they drink),
swim down the stream, as did Athens, the most prating of these dames,
when that same ranting fellow Alcibiades fell a-demagoguing for the
Silician War.

"But whereas debate, by the authority and experience of Lacedaemon
and Venice, is