"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.
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