them; and the guides of the people are never so well qualified
for leading by any virtue of their own, as by that of the
government.
The government of Oceana (as it stood at the time whereof we
discourse, consisting of one single Council of the people,
exclusively of the King and the Lords) was called a Parliament:
nevertheless the parliaments of the Teutons and of the Neustrians
consisted, as has been shown, of the King, lords, and commons;
wherefore this, under an old name, was a new thing a parliament
consisting of a single assembly elected by the people, and
invested with the whole power of the government, without any
covenants, conditions, or orders whatsoever. So new a thing, that
neither ancient nor modern prudence can show any avowed example
of the like. And there is scarce anything that seems to me so
strange as that (whereas there was nothing more familiar with
these councillors than to bring the Scripture to the house) there
should not be a man of them that so much as offered to bring the
house to the Scripture, wherein, as has been shown, is contained
that original, whereof all the rest of the commonwealths seem to
be copies. Certainly if Leviathan (who is surer of nothing than
that a popular commonwealth consists but of one council)
transcribed his doctrine out of this assembly, for him to except
against Aristotle and Cicero for writing out of their own
commonwealths was not so fair play; or if the Parliament
transcribed out of him, it had been an honor better due to Moses.
But where one of them should have an example but from the other,
I cannot imagine, there being nothing of this kind that I can
find in story, but the oligarchy of Athens, the Thirty Tyrants of
the same, and the Roman Decemvirs.
For the oligarchy, Thucydides tells us, that it was a Senate
or council of 400, pretending to a balancing council of the
people consisting of 5,000, but not producing them; wherein you
have the definition of an oligarchy, which is a single council
both debating and resolving, dividing and choosing, and what that
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