taken upon the proof of like experience, and neither jostling nor
showing which way they can possibly come to jostle one another,
they make a perfect and (for aught that in human prudence can be
foreseen) an immortal commonwealth.
And such was the art whereby my Lord Archon (taking council
of the Commonwealth of Israel, as of Moses; and of the rest of
the commonwealths, as of Jethro) framed the model of the
Commonwealth of Oceana.
PART III
THE MODEL OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF OCEANA
WHEREAS my Lord Archon, being from Moses and Lycurgus the first
legislator that hitherto is found in history to have introduced
or erected an entire commonwealth at once, happened, like them
also, to be more intent upon putting the same into execution or
action, than into writing; by which means the model came to be
promulgated or published with more brevity and less illustration
than are necessary for their understanding who have not been
acquainted with the whole proceedings of the Council of
legislators, and of the prytans, where it was asserted and
cleared from all objections and doubts: to the end that I may
supply what was wanting in the promulgated epitome to a more full
and perfect narrative of the whole, I shall rather take the
commonwealth practically; and as it has now given an account of
itself in some years' revolutions (as Dicearchus is said to have
done that of Lacedaemon, first transcribed by his hand some three
or four hundred years after the institution), yet not omitting to
add for proof to every order such debates and speeches of the
legislators in their Council, or at least such parts of them as
may best discover the reason of the government; nor such ways and
means as were used in the institution or rise of the building,
not to be so well conceived, without some knowledge given of the
engines wherewithal the mighty weight was moved. But through the
entire omission of the Council of legislators or workmen that
squared every stone to this structure in the quarries of ancient
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