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CHAP. VII.: Of Form in the Military Part. - James Harrington, The Oceana and Other Works [1656]

Edition used:

The Oceana and Other Works of James Harrington, with an Account of His Life by John Toland (London: Becket and Cadell, 1771).

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CHAP. VII.

Of Form in the Military Part.

1. A MAN may perish by the sword; yet no man draws the sword to perish, but to live by it.

2. So many ways as there are of living by the sword, so many ways there are of a militia.

3. If a prince be lord of the whole, or of two parts in three of the whole territory, and divides it into military farms at will and without rent, upon condition of service at their own charge in arms whenever he commands them, it is the sword of an absolute monarchy.

4. If the nobility, being lords of the whole or of two parts in three of the whole territory, let their lands by good pennyworths to tenants at will, or by their leases bound at their commands by whom they live to serve in arms upon pay, it is the sword of a regulated monarchy.

5. In countrys that have no infantry, or militia of free commoners, as in France and Poland, the nobility themselves are a vast body of horse, and the sword of that monarchy.

6. If a people, where there neither is lord nor lords of the whole, nor of two parts in three of the whole territory, for the common defence of their liberty and of their livelihood, take their turns upon the guard or in arms, it is the sword of democracy.

7. There is a fourth kind of militia, or of men living more immediatly by the sword, which are soldiers of fortune, or a mercenary army.

Chap. VIII.8. Absolute monarchy must be very well provided with court guards, or a mercenary army; otherwise its military farmers having no bar from becoming proprietors, the monarchy it self has no bar from changing into democracy.

FORM of government (as to the military part) being thus completed, is sum’d up in the three following aphorisms:

9. In a regulated monarchy where there is an infantry, there needs not any mercenary army; and there the people live tolerably well.

10. In a regulated monarchy where there is no infantry, but the nobility themselves are a vast body of horse, there must also be a mercenary infantry, and there the people are peasants or slaves.

11. There is no such thing in nature as any monarchy (whether absolute or regulated) subsisting merely by a mercenary army, and without an infantry or cavalry planted upon the lands of the monarch, or of his whole nobility.