ort were polled only for their heads (which
was all they had) and kept in garrison at home in time of war; for these
might betray the armies for bread, by reason of their poverty, which is
the reason that Marius, to whom the care of the government ought not to
have been committed, was the first that led them into the field;" and
his success was accordingly. There is a mean in things; as exorbitant
riches overthrow the balance of a commonwealth, so extreme poverty
cannot hold it, nor is by any means to be trusted with it. The clause in
the order concerning the prodigal is Athenian, and a very laudable one;
for he that could not live upon his patrimony, if he comes to touch the
public money, makes a commonwealth bankrupt.

The fourth order "distributes the people according to the places of
their habitation, into parishes, hundreds, and tribes."

For except the people be methodically distributed, they cannot be
methodically collected; but the being of a commonwealth consists in the
methodical collection of the people: wherefore you have the Israelitish
divisions into rulers of thousands, of hundreds, of fifties, and of
tens; and of the whole commonwealth into tribes: the Laconic into oboe,
moras, and tribes; the Roman into tribes, centuries, and classes; and
something there must of necessity be in every government of the like
nature, as that in the late monarchy--by counties. But this being the
only institution in Oceana, except that of the agrarian, which required
any charge or included any difficulty, engages me to a more particular
description of the manner how it was performed, as follows:

A thousand surveyors, commissioned and instructed by the Lord Archon
and the Council, being divided into two equal numbers, each under the
inspection of two surveyors-general, were distributed into the northern
and southern parts of the territory, divided by the river Hemisua, the
whole whereof contains about 10,000 parishes, some ten of those being
assigned to each surveyor; for as to this matter there needed no great
exactness, it tending only by showing whither everyone was to, begin, to
the more orderly carrying repair and whereabout to on of the work; the
nature of their instructions otherwise regarding rather the number of
the inhabitants than of the parishes. The surveyors, therefore, being
every one furnished with a convenient proportion of urns, balls,
and balloting-boxes--in the use whereof they had been formerly
exercis