ich parish at the present election contains twenty
elders, whereof one is of the horse or equestrian order.

"The first and second in the list are overseers by consequence; the
third is the constable, and the fourth and fifth are churchwardens; the
persons so chosen are deputies of the parish for the space of one year
from their election, and no longer, nor may they be elected two years
together. This list, being the primum mobile, or first mover of
the commonwealth, is to be registered in a book diligently kept and
preserved by the overseers, who are responsible in their places, for
these and other duties to be hereafter mentioned, to the censors of the
tribe; and the congregation is to observe the present order, as they
will answer the contrary to the phylarch, or prerogative troop of the
tribe, which, in case of failure in the whole or any part of it, have
power to fine them or any of them at discretion, but under an appeal to
the Parliament."

For proof of this order, first, in reason, it is with all politicians
past dispute that paternal power is in the right of nature; and this is
no other than the derivation of power from fathers of families as the
natural root of a commonwealth. And for experience, if it be otherwise
in that of Holland, I know no other example of the like kind. In Israel,
the sovereign power came clearly from the natural root, the elders of
the whole people; and Rome was born, Comitiis curiatis, in her parochial
congregations, out of which Romulus first raised her Senate, then all
the rest of the orders of that commonwealth, which rose so high: for the
depth of a commonwealth is the just height of it--

"She raises up her head unto the skies,
Near as her root unto the centre lies."

And if the Commonwealth of Rome was born of thirty parishes, this of
Oceana was born of 10,000. But whereas mention in the birth of this
is made of an equestrian order, it may startle such as know that the
division of the people of Rome, at the institution of that commonwealth
into orders, was the occasion of its ruin. The distinction of the
patrician as a hereditary order from the very institution, engrossing
all the magistracies, was indeed the destruction of Rome; but to a
knight or one of the equestrian order, says Horace,

"Si quadringentis sex septem millia desunt,
Plebs eris."

By which it should seem that this order was not otherwise hereditary
than a man's estate, nor did it g