eniences
of them all.

"In the beginning of the first part I must take notice, that among
the popular errors of our days it is no small one that men imagine the
ancient governments of this kind to have consisted for the most part
of one city that is, of one town; whereas by what we have learned of my
'lords that owned them, it appears that there was not any considerable
one of such a Constitution but Carthage, till this in our days of
Venice.

"For to begin with Israel, it consisted of the twelve tribes, locally
spread or quartered throughout the whole territory, and these being
called together by trumpets, constituted the Church or assembly of
the people. The vastness of this weight, as also the slowness thence
unavoidable, became a great cause (as has been shown at large by my Lord
Phosphorus) of the breaking that commonwealth; notwithstanding that
the Temple, and those religious ceremonies for which the people were at
least annually obliged to repair thither, were no small ligament of the
tribes, otherwise but slightly tacked together.

"Athens consisted of four tribes, taking in the whole people, both of
the city and of the territory; not so gathered by Theseus into one
town, as to exclude the country, but to the end that there might be some
capital of the commonwealth: though true it be, that the congregation,
consisting of the inhabitants within the walls, was sufficient to all
intents and purposes, without those of the country. These also being
exceeding numerous, became burdensome to themselves and dangerous to
the commonwealth; the more for their ill-education, as is observed by
Xenophon and Polybius, who compare them to mariners that in a calm are
perpetually disputing and swaggering one with another, and never lay
their hands to the common tackling or safety till they be all endangered
by some storm. Which caused Thucydides, when he saw this people through
the purchase of their misery become so much wiser as to reduce their
Comitia or assemblies to 5,000, to say in his eighth book: 'And now, at
least in my time, the Athenians seem to have ordered their State aright,
consisting of a moderate tempor both of the few (by which he means the
Senate of the Bean) and of the many,' or the 5,000. And he does not only
give you his judgment, but the best proof of it; for 'this,' says he,
'was the first thing that, after so many misfortunes past, made the city
again to raise her head.' The place I would desire your lor