Of the
whole body of these, being gathered, consisted the great Church
or assembly, which had the legislative power; the little church,
gathered sometimes for matters of concern within the city,
consisted of the Spartans only. These happened, like that of
Venice, to be good constitutions of a congregation, but from an
ill-cause the infirmity of a commonwealth, which through her
paucity was oligarchical.
'Wherefore, go which way you will, it should seem that
without a representative of the people, your commonwealth,
consisting of a whole nation, can never avoid falling either into
oligarchy or confusion.
"This was seen by the Romans, whose rustic tribes, extending
themselves from the river Arno to the Vulturnus, that is, from
Fesulae or Florence to Capua, invented a way of representative by
lots: the tribe upon which the first fell being the prerogative,
and some two or three more that had the rest, the jure vocatoe.
These gave the suffrage of the commonwealth in two meetings; the
prerogative at the first assembly, and the jure vocatoe at a
second.
"Now to make the parallel: all the inconveniences that you
have observed in these assemblies are shut out, and all the
conveniences taken into your prerogative. For first, it is that
for which Athens, shaking off the blame of Xenophon and Polybius,
came to deserve the praise of Thucydides, a representative.
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