he land through which the
river Nilus wanders in one stream, is barren; but where it parts into
seven, it multiplies its fertile shores by distributing, yet keeping and
improving, such a propriety and nutrition, as is a prudent agrarian to a
well-ordered commonwealth.

"Nor (to come to the fifth assertion) is a political body rendered any
fitter for industry by having one gouty and another withered leg, than
a natural. It tends not to the improvement of merchandise that there be
some who have no need of their trading, and others that are not able to
follow it. If confinement discourages industry, an estate in money is
not confined, and lest industry should want whereupon to work, land is
not engrossed or entailed upon any man, but remains at its devotion.
I wonder whence the computation can arise, that this should discourage
industry. Two thousand pounds a year a man may enjoy in Oceana, as
much in Panopea, L500 in Marpesia; there be other plantations, and the
commonwealth will have more. Who knows how far the arms of our agrarian
may extend themselves? and whether he that might have left a pillar, may
not leave a temple of many pillars to his more pious memory? Where there
is some measure in riches, a man may be rich, but if you will have them
to be infinite, there will be no end of starving himself, and wanting
what he has: and what pains does such a one take to be poor Furthermore,
if a man shall think that there may be an industry less greasy or more
noble, and so cast his thoughts upon the commonwealth, he will have
leisure for her and she riches and honors for him; his sweat shall smell
like Alexander's. My Lord Philautus is a young man who, enjoying his
L10,000 a year, may keep a noble house in the old way, and have homely
guests; and having but two, by the means proposed, may take the upper
hand of his great ancestors; with reverence to whom, I may say, there
has not been one of them would have disputed his place with a Roman
consul.

"My lord, do not break my heart; the nobility shall go to no other
ploughs than those which we call our consuls. But, says he, it having
been so with Lacedaemon, that neither the city nor the citizens were
capable of increase, a blow was given by that agrarian, which ruined
both. And what are we concerned with that agrarian, or that blow while
our citizens and our city (and that by our agrarian) are both capable
of increase? The Spartan, if he made a conquest, had no citizens to h