hich all the kingdoms this day in Christendom
were at first erected; for which cause, if I had time, I should open in
this place the Empire of Germany, and the Kingdoms of France, Spain, and
Poland; but so much as has been said being sufficient for the discovery
of the principles of modern prudence in general, I shall divide the
remainder of my discourse, which is more particular, into three parts:

The first, showing the constitution of the late monarchy of Oceana;

The second, the dissolution of the same; and

The third, the generation of the present commonwealth.

The constitution of the late monarchy of Oceana is to be considered
in relation to the different nations by whom it has been successively
subdued and governed. The first of these were the Romans, the second the
Teutons, the third the Scandians, and the fourth the Neustrians.

The government of the Romans, who held it as a province, I shall omit,
because I am to speak of their provincial government in another place,
only it is to be remembered here, that if we have given over running up
and down naked, and with dappled hides, learned to write and read, and
to be instructed with good arts, for all these we are beholden to the
Romans, either immediately or mediately by the Teutons; for that
the Teutons had the arts from no other hand is plain enough by their
language, which has yet no word to signify either writing or reading,
but what is derived from the Latin. Furthermore, by the help of these
arts so learned, we have been capable of that religion which we have
long since received; wherefore it seems to me that we ought not to
detract from the memory of the Romans, by whose means we are, as it
were, of beasts become men, and by whose means we might yet of obscure
and ignorant men (if we thought not too well of ourselves) become a wise
and a great people.

The Romans having governed Oceana provincially, the Teutons were the
first that introduced the form of the late monarchy. To these succeeded
the Scandians, of whom (because their reign was short, as also because
they made little alteration in the government as to the form) I shall
take no notice. But the Teutons going to work upon the Gothic balance,
divided the whole nation into three sorts of feuds, that of ealdorman,
that of king's thane, and that of middle thane.

When the kingdom was first divided into precincts will be as hard to
show as when it began first to be governed. It being impossible th