there be returned to
the lord high sheriff four competitors to every magistracy in the list;
that is to say, one competitor elected to every office in every one of
the four orders, which competitors the lord high sheriff shall cause
to be pronounced or read by a crier to the congregation, and the
congregation having heard the whole lists repeated, the names shall be
put by the lord high sheriff to the tribe, one by one, beginning with
the first competitor in the first order, thence proceeding to the first
competitor in the second order, and so to the first in the third and
fourth orders. And the suffrages being taken in boxes by boys (as has
been already shown) shall be poured into the bowls standing before the
censors, who shall be seated at each end of the table in the pavilion,
the one numbering the affirmatives and the other the negatives, and he
of the four competitors to the first magistracy that has most above half
the suffrages of the tribe in the affirmative, is the first magistrate.
The like is to be done successively by the rest of the competitors in
their order. But because soon after the boxes are sent out for the first
name, there be others sent out for the second, and so for the third,
etc., by which means divers names are successively at one and the same
time in balloting; the boy that carries a box shall sing or repeat
continually the name of the competitor for whom that box is carrying,
with that also of the magistracy to which he is proposed. A magistrate
of the tribe happening to be an elector, may substitute any one of his
own order to execute his other function. The magistrates of the prime
magnitude being thus elected, shall receive the present charge of the
tribe."

If it be objected against this order that the magistrates to be elected
by it will be men of more inferior rank than those of the hundreds, in
regard that those are chosen first, it may be remembered that so were
the burgesses in the former government, nevertheless the knights of the
shire were men of greater quality; and the election at the hundred is
made by a council of electors, of whom less cannot be expected than the
discretion of naming persons fittest for those capacities, with an eye
upon these to be elected at the tribe. As for what may be objected in
point of difficulty, it is demonstrable by the foregoing orders, that a
man might bring 10,000 men, if there were occasion, with as much ease,
and as suddenly to perform the ba