e or some part of it, discourse thereof to the
people. An oration or discourse of this nature, being afterward
perused by the Council of State, may as they see cause be printed and
published."

The Archon's comment upon the order I find to have been of this sense:

"MY LORDS:

"To crave pardon for a word or two in further explanation of what
was read, I shall briefly show how the constitution of this tribe or
assembly answers to their function; and how their function, which is of
two parts, the former in the result or legislative power, the latter
in the supreme judicature of the commonwealth, answers to their
constitution. Machiavel has a discourse, where he puts the question,
'Whether the guard of liberty may with more security be committed to the
nobility or to the people?' Which doubt of his arises through the want
of explaining his terms; for the guard of liberty can signify nothing
else but the result of the commonwealth; so that to say that the guard
of liberty may be committed to the nobility, is to say that the result
may be committed to the Senate, in which case the people signify
nothing.

"Now to show it was a mistake to affirm it to have been thus in
Lacedaemon, sufficient has been spoken; and whereas he will have it
to be so in Venice also: 'They,' says Contarini, 'in whom resides the
supreme power of the whole commonwealth, and of the laws, and upon whose
orders depends the authority as well of the Senate as of all the other
magistrates, is the Great Council.' It is institutively in the Great
Council, by the judgment of all that know that commonwealth; though, for
the reasons shown, it be sometimes exercised by the Senate. Nor need
I run over the commonwealths in this place for the proof of a thing so
doubtless, and such as has been already made so apparent, as that the
result of each was in the popular part of it. The popular part of yours,
or the prerogative tribe, consists of seven deputies (whereof three are
of the horse) annually elected out of every tribe of Oceana; which being
fifty, amounts to 150 horse and 200 foot. And the prerogative consisting
of three of these lists, consists of 450 horse and 600 foot, besides
those of the provinces to be hereafter mentioned; by which means the
overbalance in the suffrage remaining to the foot by 150 votes, you have
to the support of a true and natural aristocracy the deepest root of a
democracy that has been ever planted.

"Wherefore there is nothing i