the late monarchy -- by counties. But this being the only
institution in Oceana, except that of the agrarian, which
required any charge or included any difficulty, engages me to a
more particular description of the manner how it was performed,
as follows:
A thousand surveyors, commissioned and instructed by the Lord
Archon and the Council, being divided into two equal numbers,
each under the inspection of two surveyors-general, were
distributed into the northern and southern parts of the
territory, divided by the river Hemisua, the whole whereof
contains about 10,000 parishes, some ten of those being assigned
to each surveyor; for as to this matter there needed no great
exactness, it tending only by showing whither everyone was to,
begin, to the more orderly carrying repair and whereabout to on
of the work; the nature of their instructions otherwise regarding
rather the number of the inhabitants than of the parishes. The
surveyors, therefore, being every one furnished with a convenient
proportion of urns, balls, and balloting-boxes -- in the use
whereof they had been formerly exercised -- and now arriving each
at his respective parish, being with the people by teaching them
their first lesson, which was the ballot; and though they found
them in the beginning somewhat froward, as at toys, with which,
while they were in expectation of greater matters from a Council
of legislators, they conceived themselves to be abused, they came
within a little while to think them pretty sport, and at length
such as might very soberly be used in good earnest; whereupon the
surveyors began the institution included in --
The first order, requiring "That upon the first Monday next
ensuing the last of December the bigger bell in every parish
throughout the nation be rung at eight of the clock in the
morning, and continue ringing for the space of one hour; and that
all the elders of the parish respectively repair to the church
before the bell has done ringing, where, dividing themselves into
two equal numbers, or as near equal as may be, they shall take
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