"To crave pardon for a word or two in further explanation of what was read, I shall briefly show how the constitution of this tribe or assembly answers to their function; and how their function, which is of two parts, the former in the result or legislative power, the latter in the supreme judicature of the commonwealth, answers to their constitution. Machiavel has a discourse, where he puts the question, 'Whether the guard of liberty may with more security be committed to the nobility or to the people?' Which doubt of his arises through the want of explaining his terms; for the guard of liberty can signify nothing else but the result of the commonwealth; so that to say that the guard of liberty may be committed to the nobility, is to say that the result may be committed to the Senate, in which case the people signify nothing.
"Now to show it was a mistake to affirm it to have been thus in Lacedaemon, sufficient has been spoken; and whereas he will have it to be so in Venice also: 'They,' says Contarini, 'in whom resides the supreme power of the whole commonwealth, and of the laws, and upon whose orders depends the authority as well of the Senate as of all the other magistrates, is the Great Council.' It is institutively in the Great Council, by the judgment of all that know that commonwealth; though, for the reasons shown, it be sometimes exercised by the Senate. Nor need I run over the commonwealths in this place for the proof of a thing so doubtless, and such as has been already made so apparent, as that the result of each was in the popular part of it. The popular part of yours, or the prerogative tribe, consists of seven deputies (whereof three are of the horse) annually elected out of every tribe of Oceana; which being fifty, amounts to 150 horse and 200 foot. And the prerogative consisting of three of these lists, consists of 450 horse and 600 foot, besides those of the provinces to be hereafter mentioned; by which means the overbalance in the suffrage remaining to the foot by 150 votes, you have to the support of a true and natural aristocracy the deepest root of a democracy that has been ever planted.
"Wherefore there is nothing in art or nature better qualified for the result than this assembly. it is noted out of Cicero by Machiavel, 'That the people, though they are not so prone to find out truth of themselves as to follow custom or run into error yet if they be shown truth, they not only acknowledge and embrace it very suddenly, but are the most constant and faithful guardians and conservators of it.' it is your duty and office, whereto you are also qualified by the orders of this commonwealth, to have the people as you have your hawks and greyhounds, in leashes and slips, to range the fields and beat the bushes for them, for they are of a nature that is never good at this sport, but when you spring or start their proper quarry. Think not that they will stand to ask you what it is, or less know it than your hawks and greyhounds do theirs; but presently make such a flight or course, that a huntsman may as well undertake to run with his dogs, or a falconer to fly with his hawk, as an aristocracy at this game to compare with the people. The people of Rome were possessed of no less a prey than the empire of the world, when the nobility turned tails, and perched among daws upon the tower of monarchy.
For though they did not all of them intend the thing, they would none of them endure the remedy, which was the agrarian.
"But the prerogative tribe has not only the result, but is the supreme judicature, and the ultimate appeal in this commonwealth. For the popular government that makes account to be of any standing, must make sure in the first place of the appeal to the people. As an estate in trust becomes a man's own if he be not answerable for it, so the power of a magistracy not accountable to the people, from whom it was received, becoming of private use, the commonwealth loses her liberty Wherefore the right of supreme judicature in the people (Without which there can be no such thing as popular government) is confirmed by the constant practice of all commonwealths; as that of Israel in the cases of Achan, and of the tribe of Benjamin, adjudged by the congregation.
