tablishing and preserving the
balance of dominion by such a distribution, that no one man or number of
men, within the compass of the few or aristocracy, can come to overpower
the whole people by their possessions in lands.

As the agrarian answers to the foundation, so does rotation to the
superstructures.

Equal rotation is equal vicissitude in government, or succession
to magistracy conferred for such convenient terms, enjoying equal
vacations, as take in the whole body by parts, succeeding others,
through the free election or suffrage of the people.

The contrary, whereunto is prolongation of magistracy, which, trashing
the wheel of rotation, destroys the life or natural motion of a
commonwealth.

The election or suffrage of the people is most free, where it is made or
given in such a manner that it can neither oblige nor disoblige another,
nor through fear of an enemy, or bashfulness toward a friend, impair a
man's liberty.

Wherefore, says Cicero, the tablet or ballot of the people of Rome (who
gave their votes by throwing tablets or little pieces of wood secretly
into urns marked for the negative or affirmative) was a welcome
constitution to the people, as that which, not impairing the assurance
of their brows, increased the freedom of their judgment. I have not
stood upon a more particular description of this ballot, because that of
Venice exemplified in the model is of all others the most perfect.

An equal commonwealth (by that which has been said) is a government
established upon an equal agrarian, arising into the superstructures or
three orders, the Senate debating and proposing, the people resolving,
and the magistracy executing, by an equal rotation through the suffrage
of the people given by the ballot. For though rotation may be without
the ballot, and the ballot without rotation, yet the ballot not only as
to the ensuing model includes both, but is by far the most equal
way; for which cause under the name of the ballot I shall hereafter
understand both that and rotation too.

Now having reasoned the principles of an equal commonwealth, I should
come to give an instance of such a one in experience, if I could find
it; but if this work be of any value, it lies in that it is the first
example of a commonwealth that is perfectly equal. For Venice, though
it comes the nearest, yet is a commonwealth for preservation; and such
a one, considering the paucity of citizens taken in, and the number
not ta