Politics: A Treatise on Government

BOOK IV

CHAP­TER I

In ev­ery art and sci­ence which is not con­ver­sant in parts but in some one genus in which it is com­plete, it is the busi­ness of that art alone to de­ter­mine what is fit­ted to its par­tic­ular genus; as what par­tic­ular ex­er­cise is fit­ted to a cer­tain par­tic­ular body, and suits it best: for that body which is formed by na­ture the most per­fect and su­pe­ri­or to oth­ers nec­es­sar­ily re­quires the best ex­er­cise-​and al­so of what one kind that must be which will suit the gen­er­al­ity; and this is the busi­ness of the gym­nas­tic arts: and al­though any one should not de­sire to ac­quire an ex­act knowl­edge and skill in these ex­er­cis­es, yet it is not, on that ac­count, the less nec­es­sary that he who pro­fess­es to be a mas­ter and in­struct the youth in them should be per­fect there­in: and we see that this is what equal­ly be­falls the heal­ing, ship­build­ing, cloth-​mak­ing, and in­deed all oth­er arts; so that it ev­ident­ly be­longs to the same art to find out what kind of gov­ern­ment is best, and would of all oth­ers be most cor­re­spon­dent to our wish, while it re­ceived no mo­lesta­tion from with­out: and what par­tic­ular species of it is adapt­ed to par­tic­ular per­sons; for there are many who prob­ably are in­ca­pable of en­joy­ing the best form: so that the leg­is­la­tor, and he who is tru­ly a politi­cian, ought to be ac­quaint­ed not on­ly with that which is most per­fect imag­in­able, but al­so that which is the best suit­ed to any giv­en cir­cum­stances. There is, more­over, a third sort, an imag­inary one, and he ought, if such a one should be pre­sent­ed to his con­sid­er­ation, to be able to dis­cern what sort of one it would be at the be­gin­ning; and, when once es­tab­lished, what would be the prop­er means to pre­serve it a long time. I mean, for in­stance, if a state should hap­pen not to have the best form of gov­ern­ment, or be de­fi­cient in what was nec­es­sary, or not re­ceive ev­ery ad­van­tage pos­si­ble, but some­thing less. And, be­sides all this, it is nec­es­sary to know what sort of gov­ern­ment is best fit­ting for all cities: for most of those writ­ers who have treat­ed this sub­ject, how­ev­er specious­ly they may han­dle oth­er parts of it, have failed in de­scrib­ing the prac­ti­cal parts: for it is not enough to be able to per­ceive what is best with­out it is what can be put in prac­tice. It should al­so be sim­ple, and easy for all to at­tain to. But some seek on­ly the most sub­tile forms of gov­ern­ment. Oth­ers again, choos­ing [1289a] rather to treat of what is com­mon, cen­sure those un­der which they live, and ex­tol the ex­cel­lence of a par­tic­ular state, as the Lacedae­mo­ni­an, or some oth­er: but ev­ery leg­is­la­tor ought to es­tab­lish such a form of gov­ern­ment as from the present state and dis­po­si­tion of the peo­ple who are to re­ceive it they will most read­ily sub­mit to and per­suade the com­mu­ni­ty to par­take of: for it is not a busi­ness of less trou­ble to cor­rect the mis­takes of an es­tab­lished gov­ern­ment than to form a new one; as it is as dif­fi­cult to re­cov­er what we have for­got as to learn any­thing afresh. He, there­fore, who as­pires to the char­ac­ter of a leg­is­la­tor, ought, be­sides all we have al­ready said, to be able to cor­rect the mis­takes of a gov­ern­ment al­ready es­tab­lished, as we have be­fore men­tioned. But this is im­pos­si­ble to be done by him who does not know how many dif­fer­ent forms of gov­ern­ment there are: some per­sons think that there is on­ly one species both of democ­ra­cy and oli­garchy; but this is not true: so that ev­ery one should be ac­quaint­ed with the dif­fer­ence of these gov­ern­ments, how great they are, and whence they arise; and should have equal knowl­edge to per­ceive what laws are best, and what are most suit­able to each par­tic­ular gov­ern­ment: for all laws are, and ought to be, framed agree­able to the state that is to be gov­erned by them, and not the state to the laws: for gov­ern­ment is a cer­tain or­der­ing in a state which par­tic­ular­ly re­spects the mag­is­trates in what man­ner they shall be reg­ulat­ed, and where the supreme pow­er shall be placed; and what shall be the fi­nal ob­ject which each com­mu­ni­ty shall have in view; but the laws are some­thing dif­fer­ent from what reg­ulates and ex­press­es the form of the con­sti­tu­tion-​it is their of­fice to di­rect the con­duct of the mag­is­trate in the ex­ecu­tion of his of­fice and the pun­ish­ment of of­fend­ers. From whence it is ev­ident, that the founders of laws should at­tend both to the num­ber and the dif­fer­ent sorts of gov­ern­ment; for it is im­pos­si­ble that the same laws should be cal­cu­lat­ed for all sorts of oli­garchies and all sorts of democ­ra­cies, for of both these gov­ern­ments there are many species, not one on­ly.

CHAP­TER II

Since, then, ac­cord­ing to our first method in treat­ing of the dif­fer­ent forms of gov­ern­ment, we have di­vid­ed those which are reg­ular in­to three sorts, the king­ly, the aris­to­crat­ical, the free states, and shown the three ex­cess­es which these are li­able to: the king­ly, of be­com­ing tyran­ni­cal; the aris­to­crat­ical, oli­garchi­cal; and the free state, demo­crat­ical: and as we have al­ready treat­ed of the aris­to­crat­ical and king­ly; for to en­ter in­to an in­quiry what sort of gov­ern­ment is best is the same thing as to treat of these two ex­press­ly; for each of them de­sires to be es­tab­lished up­on the prin­ci­ples of virtue: and as, more­over, we have al­ready de­ter­mined where­in a king­ly pow­er and an aris­toc­ra­cy dif­fer from each oth­er, and when a state may be said to be gov­erned by a king, it now re­mains that we ex­am­ine in­to a free state, and al­so these oth­er gov­ern­ments, an oli­garchy, a democ­ra­cy, and a [1289b] tyran­ny; and it is ev­ident of these three ex­cess­es which must be the worst of all, and which next to it; for, of course, the ex­cess­es of the best and most holy must be the worst; for it must nec­es­sar­ily hap­pen ei­ther that the name of king on­ly will re­main, or else that the king will as­sume more pow­er than be­longs to him, from whence tyran­ny will arise, the worst ex­cess imag­in­able, a gov­ern­ment the most con­trary pos­si­ble to a free state. The ex­cess next hurt­ful is an oli­garchy; for an aris­toc­ra­cy dif­fers much from this sort of gov­ern­ment: that which is least so is a democ­ra­cy. This sub­ject has been al­ready treat­ed of by one of those writ­ers who have gone be­fore me, though his sen­ti­ments are not the same as mine: for he thought, that of all ex­cel­lent con­sti­tu­tions, as a good oli­garchy or the like, a democ­ra­cy was the worst, but of all bad ones, the best.

Now I af­firm, that all these states have, with­out ex­cep­tion, fall­en in­to ex­cess; and al­so that he should not have said that one oli­garchy was bet­ter than an­oth­er, but that it was not quite so bad. But this ques­tion we shall not en­ter in­to at present. We shall first in­quire how many dif­fer­ent sorts of free states there are; since there are many species of democ­ra­cies and oli­garchies; and which of them is the most com­pre­hen­sive, and most de­sir­able af­ter the best form of gov­ern­ment; or if there is any oth­er like an aris­toc­ra­cy, well es­tab­lished; and al­so which of these is best adapt­ed to most cities, and which of them is prefer­able for par­tic­ular per­sons: for, prob­ably, some may suit bet­ter with an oli­garchy than a democ­ra­cy, and oth­ers bet­ter with a democ­ra­cy than an oli­garchy; and af­ter­wards in what man­ner any one ought to pro­ceed who de­sires to es­tab­lish ei­ther of these states, I mean ev­ery species of democ­ra­cy, and al­so of oli­garchy. And to con­clude, when we shall have briefly gone through ev­ery­thing that is nec­es­sary, we will en­deav­our to point out the sources of cor­rup­tion, and sta­bil­ity, in gov­ern­ment, as well those which are com­mon to all as those which are pe­cu­liar to each state, and from what caus­es they chiefly arise.

CHAP­TER III

The rea­son for there be­ing many dif­fer­ent sorts of gov­ern­ments is this, that each state con­sists of a great num­ber of parts; for, in the first place, we see that all cities are made up of fam­ilies: and again, of the mul­ti­tude of these some must be rich, some poor, and oth­ers in the mid­dle sta­tion; and that, both of the rich and poor, some will be used to arms, oth­ers not. We see al­so, that some of the com­mon peo­ple are hus­band­men, oth­ers at­tend the mar­ket, and oth­ers are ar­ti­fi­cers. There is al­so a dif­fer­ence be­tween the no­bles in their wealth, and the dig­ni­ty in which they live: for in­stance, in the num­ber of hors­es they breed; for this can­not be sup­port­ed with­out a large for­tune: for which rea­son, in for­mer times, those cities whose strength con­sist­ed in horse be­came by that means oli­garchies; and they used horse in their ex­pe­di­tions against the neigh­bour­ing cities; as the Ere­tri­ans the Chal­cid­ians, the Mag­ne­tians, who lived near the riv­er Me­an­der, and many oth­ers in Asia. More­over, be­sides the dif­fer­ence of for­tune, there is that which aris­es from fam­ily and mer­it; or, if there are any oth­er dis­tinc­tions [1290a] which make part of the city, they have been al­ready men­tioned in treat­ing of an aris­toc­ra­cy, for there we con­sid­ered how many parts each city must nec­es­sar­ily be com­posed of; and some­times each of these have a share in the gov­ern­ment, some­times a few, some­times more.

It is ev­ident then, that there must be many forms of gov­ern­ment, dif­fer­ing from each oth­er in their par­tic­ular con­sti­tu­tion: for the parts of which they are com­posed each dif­fer from the oth­er. For gov­ern­ment is the or­der­ing of the mag­is­tra­cies of the state; and these the com­mu­ni­ty share be­tween them­selves, ei­ther as they can at­tain them by force, or ac­cord­ing to some com­mon equal­ity which there is amongst them, as pover­ty, wealth, or some­thing which they both par­take of. There must there­fore nec­es­sar­ily be as many dif­fer­ent forms of gov­ern­ments as there are dif­fer­ent ranks in the so­ci­ety, aris­ing from the su­pe­ri­or­ity of some over oth­ers, and their dif­fer­ent sit­ua­tions. And these seem chiefly to be two, as they say, of the winds: name­ly, the north and the south; and all the oth­ers are de­cli­na­tions from these. And thus in pol­itics, there is the gov­ern­ment of the many and the gov­ern­ment of the few; or a democ­ra­cy and an oli­garchy: for an aris­toc­ra­cy may be con­sid­ered as a species of oli­garchy, as be­ing al­so a gov­ern­ment of the few; and what we call a free state may be con­sid­ered as a democ­ra­cy: as in the winds they con­sid­er the west as part of the north, and the east as part of the south: and thus it is in mu­sic, ac­cord­ing to some, who say there are on­ly two species of it, the Doric and the Phry­gian, and all oth­er species of com­po­si­tion they call af­ter one of these names; and many peo­ple are ac­cus­tomed to con­sid­er the na­ture of gov­ern­ment in the same light; but it is both more con­ve­nient and more cor­re­spon­dent to truth to dis­tin­guish gov­ern­ments as I have done, in­to two species: one, of those which are es­tab­lished up­on prop­er prin­ci­ples; of which there may be one or two sorts: the oth­er, which in­cludes all the dif­fer­ent ex­cess­es of these; so that we may com­pare the best form of gov­ern­ment to the most har­mo­nious piece of mu­sic; the oli­garchic and despot­ic to the more vi­olent tunes; and the demo­crat­ic to the soft and gen­tle airs.

CHAP­TER IV

We ought not to de­fine a democ­ra­cy as some do, who say sim­ply, that it is a gov­ern­ment where the supreme pow­er is lodged in the peo­ple; for even in oli­garchies the supreme pow­er is in the ma­jor­ity. Nor should they de­fine an oli­garchy a gov­ern­ment where the supreme pow­er is in the hands of a few: for let us sup­pose the num­ber of a peo­ple to be thir­teen hun­dred, and that of these one thou­sand were rich, who would not per­mit the three hun­dred poor to have any share in the gov­ern­ment, al­though they were free, and their equal in ev­ery­thing else; no one would say, that this gov­ern­ment was a democ­ra­cy. In like man­ner, if the poor, when few in num­ber, should ac­quire the pow­er over the rich, though more than them­selves, no one would say, that this was an oli­garchy; nor this, when the rest who are rich have no share in the ad­min­is­tra­tion. We should rather say, that a democ­ra­cy is when the supreme pow­er is in the [1290b] hands of the freemen; an oli­garchy, when it is in the hands of the rich: it hap­pens in­deed that in the one case the many will pos­sess it, in the oth­er the few; be­cause there are many poor and few rich. And if the pow­er of the state was to be dis­tribut­ed ac­cord­ing to the size of the cit­izens, as they say it is in Ethiopia, or ac­cord­ing to their beau­ty, it would be an oli­garchy: for the num­ber of those who are large and beau­ti­ful is small.

Nor are those things which we have al­ready men­tioned alone suf­fi­cient to de­scribe these states; for since there are many species both of a democ­ra­cy and an oli­garchy, the mat­ter re­quires fur­ther con­sid­er­ation; as we can­not ad­mit, that if a few per­sons who are free pos­sess the supreme pow­er over the many who are not free, that this gov­ern­ment is a democ­ra­cy: as in Apol­lo­nia, in Io­nia, and in Thera: for in each of these cities the hon­ours of the state be­long to some few par­tic­ular fam­ilies, who first found­ed the colonies. Nor would the rich, be­cause they are su­pe­ri­or in num­bers, form a democ­ra­cy, as for­mer­ly at Colophon; for there the ma­jor­ity had large pos­ses­sions be­fore the Ly­di­an war: but a democ­ra­cy is a state where the freemen and the poor, be­ing the ma­jor­ity, are in­vest­ed with the pow­er of the state. An oli­garchy is a state where the rich and those of no­ble fam­ilies, be­ing few, pos­sess it.

We have now proved that there are var­ious forms of gov­ern­ment and have as­signed a rea­son for it; and shall pro­ceed to show that there are even more than these, and what they are, and why; set­ting out with the prin­ci­ple we have al­ready laid down. We ad­mit that ev­ery city con­sists not of one, but many parts: thus, if we should en­deav­our to com­pre­hend the dif­fer­ent species of an­imals we should first of all note those parts which ev­ery an­imal must have, as a cer­tain sen­so­ri­um, and al­so what is nec­es­sary to ac­quire and re­tain food, as a mouth and a bel­ly; be­sides cer­tain parts to en­able it to move from place to place. If, then, these are the on­ly parts of an an­imal and there are dif­fer­ences be­tween them; name­ly, in their var­ious sorts of stom­achs, bel­lies, and sen­so­ri­ums: to which we must add their mo­tive pow­ers; the num­ber of the com­bi­na­tions of all these must nec­es­sar­ily make up the dif­fer­ent species of an­imals. For it is not pos­si­ble that the same kind of an­imal should have any very great dif­fer­ence in its mouth or ears; so that when all these are col­lect­ed, who hap­pen to have these things sim­ilar in all, they make up a species of an­imals of which there are as many as there are of these gen­er­al com­bi­na­tions of nec­es­sary parts.

The same thing is true of what are called states; for a city is not made of one but many parts, as has al­ready been of­ten said; one of which is those who sup­ply it with pro­vi­sions, called hus­band­men, an­oth­er called me­chan­ics, [1291a] whose em­ploy­ment is in the man­ual arts, with­out which the city could not be in­hab­it­ed; of these some are bus­ied about what is ab­so­lute­ly nec­es­sary, oth­ers in what con­tribute to the el­egan­cies and plea­sures of life; the third sort are your ex­change-​men, I mean by these your buy­ers, sell­ers, mer­chants, and vict­uallers; the fourth are your hired labour­ers or work­men; the fifth are the men-​at-​arms, a rank not less use­ful than the oth­er, with­out you would have the com­mu­ni­ty slaves to ev­ery in­vad­er; but what can­not de­fend it­self is un­wor­thy of the name of a city; for a city is self-​suf­fi­cient, a slave not. So that when Socrates, in Pla­to’s Re­pub­lic, says that a city is nec­es­sar­ily com­posed of four sorts of peo­ple, he speaks el­egant­ly but not cor­rect­ly, and these are, ac­cord­ing to him, weavers, hus­band­men, shoe-​mak­ers, and builders; he then adds, as if these were not suf­fi­cient, smiths, herds­men for what cat­tle are nec­es­sary, and al­so mer­chants and vict­uallers, and these are by way of ap­pendix to his first list; as if a city was es­tab­lished for ne­ces­si­ty, and not hap­pi­ness, or as if a shoe-​mak­er and a hus­band­man were equal­ly use­ful. He reck­ons not the mil­itary a part be­fore the in­crease of ter­ri­to­ry and join­ing to the bor­ders of the neigh­bour­ing pow­ers will make war nec­es­sary: and even amongst them who com­pose his four di­vi­sions, or who­ev­er have any con­nec­tion with each oth­er, it will be nec­es­sary to have some one to dis­tribute jus­tice, and de­ter­mine be­tween man and man. If, then, the mind is a more valu­able part of man than the body, ev­ery one would wish to have those things more re­gard­ed in his city which tend to the ad­van­tage of these than com­mon mat­ters, such are war and jus­tice; to which may be added coun­cil, which is the busi­ness of civ­il wis­dom (nor is it of any con­se­quence whether these dif­fer­ent em­ploy­ments are filled by dif­fer­ent per­sons or one, as the same man is of­ten­times both a sol­dier and a hus­band­man): so that if both the judge and the sen­ator are parts of the city, it nec­es­sar­ily fol­lows that the sol­dier must be so al­so. The sev­enth sort are those who serve the pub­lic in ex­pen­sive em­ploy­ments at their own charge: these are called the rich. The eighth are those who ex­ecute the dif­fer­ent of­fices of the state, and with­out these it could not pos­si­bly sub­sist: it is there­fore nec­es­sary that there should be some per­sons ca­pa­ble of gov­ern­ing and fill­ing the places in the city; and this ei­ther for life or in ro­ta­tion: the of­fice of sen­ator, and judge, of which we have al­ready suf­fi­cient­ly treat­ed, are the on­ly ones re­main­ing. If, then, these things are nec­es­sary for a state, that it may be hap­py and just, it fol­lows that the cit­izens who en­gage in pub­lic af­fairs should be men of abil­ities there­in. [1291b] Sev­er­al per­sons think, that dif­fer­ent em­ploy­ments may be al­lot­ted to the same per­son; as a sol­dier’s, a hus­band­man’s, and an ar­ti­fi­cer’s; as al­so that oth­ers may be both sen­ators and judges.

Be­sides, ev­ery one sup­pos­es him­self a man of po­lit­ical abil­ities, and that he is qual­ified for al­most ev­ery de­part­ment in the state. But the same per­son can­not at once be poor and rich: for which rea­son the most ob­vi­ous di­vi­sion of the city is in­to two parts, the poor and rich; more­over, since for the gen­er­al­ity the one are few, the oth­er many, they seem of all the parts of a city most con­trary to each oth­er; so that as the one or the oth­er pre­vail they form dif­fer­ent states; and these are the democ­ra­cy and the oli­garchy.

But that there are many dif­fer­ent states, and from what caus­es they arise, has been al­ready men­tioned: and that there are al­so dif­fer­ent species both of democ­ra­cies and oli­garchies we will now show. Though this in­deed is ev­ident from what we have al­ready said: there are al­so many dif­fer­ent sorts of com­mon peo­ple, and al­so of those who are called gen­tle­men. Of the dif­fer­ent sorts of the first are hus­band­men, ar­ti­fi­cers, ex­change-​men, who are em­ployed in buy­ing and sell­ing, sea­men, of which some are en­gaged in war, some in traf­fic, some in car­ry­ing goods and pas­sen­gers from place to place, oth­ers in fish­ing, and of each of these there are of­ten many, as fish­er­men at Tar­en­tum and Byzan­tium, mas­ters of gal­leys at Athens, mer­chants at AEgi­na and Chios, those who let ships on freight at Tene­dos; we may add to these those who live by their man­ual labour and have but lit­tle prop­er­ty; so that they can­not live with­out some em­ploy: and al­so those who are not free-​born on both sides, and what­ev­er oth­er sort of com­mon peo­ple there may be. As for gen­tle­men, they are such as are dis­tin­guished ei­ther by their for­tune, their birth, their abil­ities, or their ed­uca­tion, or any such-​like ex­cel­lence which is at­tribut­ed to them.

The most pure democ­ra­cy is that which is so called prin­ci­pal­ly from that equal­ity which pre­vails in it: for this is what the law in that state di­rects; that the poor shall be in no greater sub­jec­tion than the rich; nor that the supreme pow­er shall be lodged with ei­ther of these, but that both shall share it. For if lib­er­ty and equal­ity, as some per­sons sup­pose, are chiefly to be found in a democ­ra­cy, it must be most so by ev­ery de­part­ment of gov­ern­ment be­ing alike open to all; but as the peo­ple are the ma­jor­ity, and what they vote is law, it fol­lows that such a state must be a democ­ra­cy. This, then, is one species there­of. An­oth­er is, when the mag­is­trates are elect­ed by a cer­tain cen­sus; but this should be but small, and ev­ery one who was in­clud­ed in it should be el­igi­ble, but as soon as he was be­low it should lose that right. [1292a] An­oth­er sort is, in which ev­ery cit­izen who is not in­fa­mous has a share in the gov­ern­ment, but where the gov­ern­ment is in the laws. An­oth­er, where ev­ery cit­izen with­out ex­cep­tion has this right. An­oth­er is like these in oth­er par­tic­ulars, but there the peo­ple gov­ern, and not the law: and this takes place when ev­ery­thing is de­ter­mined by a ma­jor­ity of votes, and not by a law; which hap­pens when the peo­ple are in­flu­enced by the dem­agogues: for where a democ­ra­cy is gov­erned by stat­ed laws there is no room for them, but men of worth fill the first of­fices in the state: but where the pow­er is not vest­ed in the laws, there dem­agogues abound: for there the peo­ple rule with king­ly pow­er: the whole com­pos­ing one body; for they are supreme, not as in­di­vid­uals but in their col­lec­tive ca­pac­ity.

Homer al­so dis­com­mends the gov­ern­ment of many; but whether he means this we are speak­ing of, or where each per­son ex­er­cis­es his pow­er sep­arate­ly, is un­cer­tain. When the peo­ple pos­sess this pow­er they de­sire to be al­to­geth­er ab­so­lute, that they may not be un­der the con­trol of the law, and this is the time when flat­ter­ers are held in re­pute. Nor is there any dif­fer­ence be­tween such a peo­ple and monar­chs in a tyran­ny: for their man­ners are the same, and they both hold a despot­ic pow­er over bet­ter per­sons than them­selves. For their de­crees are like the oth­ers’ edicts; their dem­agogues like the oth­ers’ flat­ter­ers: but their great­est re­sem­blance con­sists in the mu­tu­al sup­port they give to each oth­er, the flat­ter­er to the tyrant, the dem­agogue to the peo­ple: and to them it is ow­ing that the supreme pow­er is lodged in the votes of the peo­ple, and not in the laws; for they bring ev­ery­thing be­fore them, as their in­flu­ence is ow­ing to their be­ing supreme whose opin­ions they en­tire­ly di­rect; for these are they whom the mul­ti­tude obey. Be­sides, those who ac­cuse the mag­is­trates in­sist up­on it, that the right of de­ter­min­ing on their con­duct lies in the peo­ple, who glad­ly re­ceive their com­plaints as the means of de­stroy­ing all their of­fices.

Any one, there­fore, may with great jus­tice blame such a gov­ern­ment as be­ing a democ­ra­cy, and not a free state; for where the gov­ern­ment is not in the laws, then there is no free state, for the law ought to be supreme over all things; and par­tic­ular in­ci­dents which arise should be de­ter­mined by the mag­is­trates or the state. If, there­fore, a democ­ra­cy is to be reck­oned a free state, it is ev­ident that any such es­tab­lish­ment which cen­tres all pow­er in the votes of the peo­ple can­not, prop­er­ly speak­ing, be a democ­ra­cy: for their de­crees can­not be gen­er­al in their ex­tent. Thus, then, we may de­scribe the sev­er­al species of democ­ra­cies.

CHAP­TER V

Of the dif­fer­ent species of oli­garchies one is, when the right to the of­fices is reg­ulat­ed by a cer­tain cen­sus; so that the poor, al­though the ma­jor­ity, have no share in it; while all those who are in­clud­ed there­in take part in the man­age­ment of pub­lic af­fairs. An­oth­er sort is, when [1292b] the mag­is­trates are men of very small for­tune, who up­on any va­can­cy do them­selves fill it up: and if they do this out of the com­mu­ni­ty at large, the state ap­proach­es to an aris­toc­ra­cy; if out of any par­tic­ular class of peo­ple, it will be an oli­garchy. An­oth­er sort of oli­garchy is, when the pow­er is an hered­itary no­bil­ity. The fourth is, when the pow­er is in the same hands as the oth­er, but not un­der the con­trol of law; and this sort of oli­garchy ex­act­ly cor­re­sponds to a tyran­ny in monar­chies, and to that par­tic­ular species of democ­ra­cies which I last men­tioned in treat­ing of that state: this has the par­tic­ular name of a dy­nasty. These are the dif­fer­ent sorts of oli­garchies and democ­ra­cies.

It should al­so be known, that it of­ten hap­pens that a free state, where the supreme pow­er is in the laws, may not be demo­crat­ic, and yet in con­se­quence of the es­tab­lished man­ners and cus­toms of the peo­ple, may be gov­erned as if it was; so, on the oth­er hand, where the laws may coun­te­nance a more demo­crat­ic form of gov­ern­ment, these may make the state in­clin­ing to an oli­garchy; and this chiefly hap­pens when there has been any al­ter­ation in the gov­ern­ment; for the peo­ple do not eas­ily change, but love their own an­cient cus­toms; and it is by small de­grees on­ly that one thing takes place of an­oth­er; so that the an­cient laws will re­main, while the pow­er will be in the hands of those who have brought about a rev­olu­tion in the state.

CHAP­TER VI

It is ev­ident from what has been said, that there are as many dif­fer­ent sorts of democ­ra­cies and oli­garchies as I have reck­oned up: for, of ne­ces­si­ty, ei­ther all ranks of the peo­ple which I have enu­mer­at­ed must have a share in the gov­ern­ment, or some on­ly, and oth­ers not; for when the hus­band­men, and those on­ly who pos­sess mod­er­ate for­tunes, have the supreme pow­er, they will gov­ern ac­cord­ing to law; for as they must get their liv­ings by their em­ploys, they have but lit­tle leisure for pub­lic busi­ness: they will there­fore es­tab­lish prop­er laws, and nev­er call pub­lic as­sem­blies but when there is a ne­ces­si­ty for them; and they will read­ily let ev­ery one par­take with them in the ad­min­is­tra­tion of pub­lic af­fairs as soon as they pos­sess that for­tune which the law re­quires for their qual­ifi­ca­tion: ev­ery one, there­fore, who is qual­ified will have his share in the gov­ern­ment: for to ex­clude any would be to make the gov­ern­ment an oli­garchy, and for all to have leisure to at­tend with­out they had a sub­sis­tence would be im­pos­si­ble: for these rea­sons, there­fore, this gov­ern­ment is a species of democ­ra­cy. An­oth­er species is dis­tin­guished by the mode of elect­ing their mag­is­trates, in which ev­ery one is el­igi­ble, to whose birth there are no ob­jec­tions, pro­vid­ed he is sup­posed to have leisure to at­tend: for which rea­son in such a democ­ra­cy the supreme pow­er will be vest­ed in the laws, as there will be noth­ing paid to those who go to the pub­lic as­sem­blies. A third species is where ev­ery free­man has a right to a share in the gov­ern­ment, which he will not ac­cept for the cause al­ready as­signed; for which rea­son here al­so the supreme pow­er will be in the law. The fourth species [1293a] of democ­ra­cy, the last which was es­tab­lished in or­der of time, arose when cities were great­ly en­larged to what they were at first, and when the pub­lic rev­enue be­came some­thing con­sid­er­able; for then the pop­ulace, on ac­count of their num­bers, were ad­mit­ted to share in the man­age­ment of pub­lic af­fairs, for then even the poor­est peo­ple were at leisure to at­tend to them, as they re­ceived wages for so do­ing; nay, they were more so than oth­ers, as they were not hin­dered by hav­ing any­thing of their own to mind, as the rich had; for which rea­son these last very of­ten did not fre­quent the pub­lic as­sem­blies and the courts of jus­tice: thus the supreme pow­er was lodged in the poor, and not in the laws. These are the dif­fer­ent sorts of democ­ra­cies, and such are the caus­es which nec­es­sar­ily gave birth to them.

The first species of oli­garchy is, when the gen­er­al­ity of the state are men of mod­er­ate and not too large prop­er­ty; for this gives them leisure for the man­age­ment of pub­lic af­fairs: and, as they are a nu­mer­ous body, it nec­es­sar­ily fol­lows that the supreme pow­er must be in the laws, and not in men; for as they are far re­moved from a monar­chi­cal gov­ern­ment, and have not suf­fi­cient for­tune to ne­glect their pri­vate af­fairs, while they are too many to be sup­port­ed by the pub­lic, they will of course de­ter­mine to be gov­erned by the laws, and not by each oth­er. But if the men of prop­er­ty in the state are but few, and their prop­er­ty is large, then an oli­garchy of the sec­ond sort will take place; for those who have most pow­er will think that they have a right to lord it over the oth­ers; and, to ac­com­plish this, they will as­so­ciate to them­selves some who have an in­cli­na­tion for pub­lic af­fairs, and as they are not pow­er­ful enough to gov­ern with­out law, they will make a law for that pur­pose. And if those few who have large for­tunes should ac­quire still greater pow­er, the oli­garchy will then al­ter in­to one of the third sort; for they will get all the of­fices of the state in­to their own hands by a law which di­rects the son to suc­ceed up­on the death of his fa­ther; and, af­ter that, when, by means of their in­creas­ing wealth and pow­er­ful con­nec­tions, they ex­tend still fur­ther their op­pres­sion, a monar­chi­cal dy­nasty will di­rect­ly suc­ceed where­in men will be supreme, and not the law; and this is the fourth species of an oli­garchy cor­re­spon­dent to the last-​men­tioned class of democ­ra­cies.

CHAP­TER VII

There are be­sides two oth­er states, a democ­ra­cy and an oli­garchy, one of which all speak of, and it is al­ways es­teemed a species of the four sorts; and thus they reck­on them up; a monar­chy, an oli­garchy, a democ­ra­cy, and this fourth which they call an aris­toc­ra­cy. There is al­so a fifth, which bears a name that is al­so com­mon to the oth­er four, name­ly, a state: but as this is sel­dom to be met with, it has es­caped those who have en­deav­oured to enu­mer­ate the dif­fer­ent sorts of gov­ern­ments, which [1293b] they fix at four on­ly, as does Pla­to in his Re­pub­lic.

An aris­toc­ra­cy, of which I have al­ready treat­ed in the first book, is right­ly called so; for a state gov­erned by the best men, up­on the most vir­tu­ous prin­ci­ples, and not up­on any hy­poth­esis, which even good men may pro­pose, has alone a right to be called an aris­toc­ra­cy, for it is there on­ly that a man is at once a good man and a good cit­izen; while in oth­er states men are good on­ly rel­ative to those states. More­over, there are some oth­er states which are called by the same name, that dif­fer both from oli­garchies and free states, where­in not on­ly the rich but al­so the vir­tu­ous have a share in the ad­min­is­tra­tion; and have there­fore ac­quired the name of aris­toc­ra­cies; for in those gov­ern­ments where­in virtue is not their com­mon care, there are still men of worth and ap­proved good­ness. What­ev­er state, then, like the Carthagini­ans, favours the rich, the vir­tu­ous, and the cit­izens at large, is a sort of aris­toc­ra­cy: when on­ly the two lat­ter are held in es­teem, as at Lacedae­mon, and the state is joint­ly com­posed of these, it is a vir­tu­ous democ­ra­cy. These are the two species of aris­toc­ra­cies af­ter the first, which is the best of all gov­ern­ments. There is al­so a third, which is, when­ev­er a free state in­clines to the do­min­ion of a few.

CHAP­TER VI­II

It now re­mains for us to treat of that gov­ern­ment which is par­tic­ular­ly called a free state, and al­so of a tyran­ny; and the rea­son for my choos­ing to place that free state here is, be­cause this, as well as those aris­toc­ra­cies al­ready men­tioned, al­though they do not seem ex­cess­es, yet, to speak true, they have all de­part­ed from what a per­fect gov­ern­ment is. Nay, they are de­vi­ations both of them equal­ly from oth­er forms, as I said at the be­gin­ning. It is prop­er to men­tion a tyran­ny the last of all gov­ern­ments, for it is of all oth­ers the least like one: but as my in­ten­tion is to treat of all gov­ern­ments in gen­er­al, for this rea­son that al­so, as I have said, will be tak­en in­to con­sid­er­ation in its prop­er place.

I shall now in­quire in­to a free state and show what it is; and we shall the bet­ter un­der­stand its pos­itive na­ture as we have al­ready de­scribed an oli­garchy and a democ­ra­cy; for a free state is in­deed noth­ing more than a mix­ture of them, and it has been usu­al to call those which in­cline most to a democ­ra­cy, a free state; those which in­cline most to an oli­garchy, an aris­toc­ra­cy, be­cause those who are rich are gen­er­al­ly men of fam­ily and ed­uca­tion; be­sides, they en­joy those things which oth­ers are of­ten guilty of crimes to pro­cure: for which rea­son they are re­gard­ed as men of worth and hon­our and note.

Since, then, it is the ge­nius of an aris­toc­ra­cy to al­lot the larg­er part of the gov­ern­ment to the best cit­izens, they there­fore say, that an oli­garchy is chiefly com­posed of those men who are wor­thy and hon­ourable: now it [1294a] seems im­pos­si­ble that where the gov­ern­ment is in the hands of the good, there the laws should not be good, but bad; or, on the con­trary, that where the gov­ern­ment is in the hands of the bad, there the laws should be good; nor is a gov­ern­ment well con­sti­tut­ed be­cause the laws are, with­out at the same time care is tak­en that they are ob­served; for to en­force obe­di­ence to the laws which it makes is one proof of a good con­sti­tu­tion in the state-​an­oth­er is, to have laws well cal­cu­lat­ed for those who are to abide by them; for if they are im­prop­er they must be obeyed: and this may be done two ways, ei­ther by their be­ing the best rel­ative to the par­tic­ular state, or the best ab­so­lute­ly. An aris­toc­ra­cy seems most like­ly to con­fer the hon­ours of the state on the vir­tu­ous; for virtue is the ob­ject of an aris­toc­ra­cy, rich­es of an oli­garchy, and lib­er­ty of a democ­ra­cy; for what is ap­proved of by the ma­jor­ity will pre­vail in all or in each of these three dif­fer­ent states; and that which seems good to most of those who com­pose the com­mu­ni­ty will pre­vail: for what is called a state pre­vails in many com­mu­ni­ties, which aim at a mix­ture of rich and poor, rich­es and lib­er­ty: as for the rich, they are usu­al­ly sup­posed to take the place of the wor­thy and hon­ourable. As there are three things which claim an equal rank in the state, free­dom, rich­es, and virtue (for as for the fourth, rank, it is an at­ten­dant on two of the oth­ers, for virtue and rich­es are the ori­gin of fam­ily), it is ev­ident, that the con­junc­ture of the rich and the poor make up a free state; but that all three tend to an aris­toc­ra­cy more than any oth­er, ex­cept that which is tru­ly so, which holds the first rank.

We have al­ready seen that there are gov­ern­ments dif­fer­ent from a monar­chy, a democ­ra­cy, and an oli­garchy; and what they are, and where­in they dif­fer from each oth­er; and al­so aris­toc­ra­cies and states prop­er­ly so called, which are de­rived from them; and it is ev­ident that these are not much un­like each oth­er.

CHAP­TER IX

We shall next pro­ceed to show how that gov­ern­ment which is pe­cu­liar­ly called a state aris­es along­side of democ­ra­cy and oli­garchy, and how it ought to be es­tab­lished; and this will at the same time show what are the prop­er bound­aries of both these gov­ern­ments, for we must mark out where­in they dif­fer from one an­oth­er, and then from both these com­pose a state of such parts of each of them as will show from whence they were tak­en.

There are three dif­fer­ent ways in which two states may be blend­ed and joined to­geth­er; for, in the first place, all those rules may be adopt­ed which the laws of each of them have or­dered; as for in­stance in the ju­di­cial de­part­ment, for in an oli­garchy the rich are fined if they do not come to the court as ju­ry­men, but the poor are not paid for their at­ten­dance; but in democ­ra­cies they are, while the rich are not fined for their ne­glect. Now these things, as be­ing com­mon to both, are fit to be ob­served in a free [1294b] state which is com­posed of both. This, then, is one way in which they may be joined to­geth­er. In the sec­ond place, a medi­um may be tak­en be­tween the dif­fer­ent meth­ods which each state ob­serves; for in­stance, in a democ­ra­cy the right to vote in the pub­lic as­sem­bly is ei­ther con­fined by no cen­sus at all, or lim­it­ed by a very small one; in an oli­garchy none en­joy it but those whose cen­sus is high: there­fore, as these two prac­tices are con­trary to each oth­er, a cen­sus be­tween each may be es­tab­lished in such a state. In the third place, dif­fer­ent laws of each com­mu­ni­ty may be adopt­ed; as, for in­stance, as it seems cor­re­spon­dent to the na­ture of a democ­ra­cy, that the mag­is­trates should be cho­sen by lot, but an aris­toc­ra­cy by vote, and in the one state ac­cord­ing to a cen­sus, but not in the oth­er: let, then, an aris­toc­ra­cy and a free state copy some­thing from each of them; let them fol­low an oli­garchy in choos­ing their mag­is­trates by vote, but a democ­ra­cy in not ad­mit­ting of any cen­sus, and thus blend to­geth­er the dif­fer­ent cus­toms of the two gov­ern­ments. But the best proof of a hap­py mix­ture of a democ­ra­cy and an oli­garchy is this, when a per­son may prop­er­ly call the same state a democ­ra­cy and an oli­garchy. It is ev­ident that those who speak of it in this man­ner are in­duced to it be­cause both these gov­ern­ments are there well blend­ed to­geth­er: and in­deed this is com­mon to all medi­ums, that the ex­tremes of each side should be dis­cerned there­in, as at Lacedae­mon; for many af­firm that it is a democ­ra­cy from the many par­tic­ulars in which it fol­lows that form of gov­ern­ment; as for in­stance, in the first place, in the bring­ing up of their chil­dren, for the rich and poor are brought up in the same man­ner; and their ed­uca­tion is such that the chil­dren of the poor may par­take of it; and the same rules are ob­served when they are youths and men, there is no dis­tinc­tion be­tween a rich per­son and a poor one; and in their pub­lic ta­bles the same pro­vi­sion is served to all. The rich al­so wear on­ly such clothes as the poor­est man is able to pur­chase. More­over, with re­spect to two mag­is­tra­cies of the high­est rank, one they have a right to elect to, the oth­er to fill; name­ly, the sen­ate and the ephori. Oth­ers con­sid­er it as an oli­garchy, the prin­ci­ples of which it fol­lows in many things, as in choos­ing all their of­fi­cers by vote, and not by lot; in there be­ing but a few who have a right to sit in judg­ment on cap­ital caus­es and the like. In­deed, a state which is well com­posed of two oth­ers ought to re­sem­ble them both, and nei­ther, Such a state ought to have its means of preser­va­tion in it­self, and not with­out; and when I say in it­self, I do not mean that it should owe this to the for­bear­ance of their neigh­bours, for this may hap­pen to a bad gov­ern­ment, but to ev­ery mem­ber of the com­mu­ni­ty’s not be­ing will­ing that there should be the least al­ter­ation in their con­sti­tu­tion. Such is the method in which a free state or aris­toc­ra­cy ought to be es­tab­lished.

CHAP­TER X

It now re­mains to treat of a tyran­ny; not that there is [1295a] much to be said on that sub­ject, but as it makes part of our plan, since we enu­mer­at­ed it amongst our dif­fer­ent sorts of gov­ern­ments. In the be­gin­ning of this work we in­quired in­to the na­ture of king­ly gov­ern­ment, and en­tered in­to a par­tic­ular ex­am­ina­tion of what was most prop­er­ly called so, and whether it was ad­van­ta­geous to a state or not, and what it should be, and how es­tab­lished; and we di­vid­ed a tyran­ny in­to two pieces when we were up­on this sub­ject, be­cause there is some­thing anal­ogous be­tween this and a king­ly gov­ern­ment, for they are both of them es­tab­lished by law; for among some of the bar­bar­ians they elect a monarch with ab­so­lute pow­er, and for­mer­ly among the Greeks there were some such, whom they called sesum­netes. Now these dif­fer from each oth­er; for some pos­sess on­ly king­ly pow­er reg­ulat­ed by law, and rule those who vol­un­tar­ily sub­mit to their gov­ern­ment; oth­ers rule despot­ical­ly ac­cord­ing to their own will. There is a third species of tyran­ny, most prop­er­ly so called, which is the very op­po­site to king­ly pow­er; for this is the gov­ern­ment of one who rules over his equals and su­pe­ri­ors with­out be­ing ac­count­able for his con­duct, and whose ob­ject is his own ad­van­tage, and not the ad­van­tage of those he gov­erns; for which rea­son he rules by com­pul­sion, for no freemen will ev­er will­ing­ly sub­mit to such a gov­ern­ment. These are the dif­fer­ent species of tyran­nies, their prin­ci­ples, and their caus­es.

CHAP­TER XI

We pro­ceed now to in­quire what form of gov­ern­ment and what man­ner of life is best for com­mu­ni­ties in gen­er­al, not adapt­ing it to that su­pe­ri­or virtue which is above the reach of the vul­gar, or that ed­uca­tion which ev­ery ad­van­tage of na­ture and for­tune on­ly can fur­nish, nor to those imag­inary plans which may be formed at plea­sure; but to that mode of life which the greater part of mankind can at­tain to, and that gov­ern­ment which most cities may es­tab­lish: for as to those aris­toc­ra­cies which we have now men­tioned, they are ei­ther too per­fect for a state to sup­port, or one so near­ly alike to that state we now go­ing to in­quire in­to, that we shall treat of them both as one.

The opin­ions which we form up­on these sub­jects must de­pend up­on one com­mon prin­ci­ple: for if what I have said in my trea­tise on Morals is true, a hap­py life must arise from an un­in­ter­rupt­ed course of virtue; and if virtue con­sists in a cer­tain medi­um, the mid­dle life must cer­tain­ly be the hap­pi­est; which medi­um is at­tain­able [1295b] by ev­ery one. The bound­aries of virtue and vice in the state must al­so nec­es­sar­ily be the same as in a pri­vate per­son; for the form of gov­ern­ment is the life of the city. In ev­ery city the peo­ple are di­vid­ed in­to three sorts; the very rich, the very poor, and those who are be­tween them. If this is uni­ver­sal­ly ad­mit­ted, that the mean is best, it is ev­ident that even in point of for­tune medi­ocrity is to be pre­ferred; for that state is most sub­mis­sive to rea­son; for those who are very hand­some, or very strong, or very no­ble, or very rich; or, on the con­trary; those who are very poor, or very weak, or very mean, with dif­fi­cul­ty obey it; for the one are capri­cious and great­ly flagi­tious, the oth­er ras­cal­ly and mean, the crimes of each aris­ing from their dif­fer­ent ex­cess­es: nor will they go through the dif­fer­ent of­fices of the state; which is detri­men­tal to it: be­sides, those who ex­cel in strength, in rich­es, or friends, or the like, nei­ther know how nor are will­ing to sub­mit to com­mand: and this be­gins at home when they are boys; for there they are brought up too del­icate­ly to be ac­cus­tomed to obey their pre­cep­tors: as for the very poor, their gen­er­al and ex­ces­sive want of what the rich en­joy re­duces them to a state too mean: so that the one know not how to com­mand, but to be com­mand­ed as slaves, the oth­ers know not how to sub­mit to any com­mand, nor to com­mand them­selves but with despot­ic pow­er.

A city com­posed of such men must there­fore con­sist of slaves and mas­ters, not freemen; where one par­ty must hate, and the oth­er de­spise, where there could be no pos­si­bil­ity of friend­ship or po­lit­ical com­mu­ni­ty: for com­mu­ni­ty sup­pos­es af­fec­tion; for we do not even on the road as­so­ciate with our en­emies. It is al­so the ge­nius of a city to be com­posed as much as pos­si­ble of equals; which will be most so when the in­hab­itants are in the mid­dle state: from whence it fol­lows, that that city must be best framed which is com­posed of those whom we say are nat­ural­ly its prop­er mem­bers. It is men of this sta­tion al­so who will be best as­sured of safe­ty and pro­tec­tion; for they will nei­ther cov­et what be­longs to oth­ers, as the poor do; nor will oth­ers cov­et what is theirs, as the poor do what be­longs to the rich; and thus, with­out plot­ting against any one, or hav­ing any one plot against them, they will live free from dan­ger: for which rea­son Pho­cylides wise­ly wish­es for the mid­dle state, as be­ing most pro­duc­tive of hap­pi­ness. It is plain, then, that the most per­fect po­lit­ical com­mu­ni­ty must be amongst those who are in the mid­dle rank, and those states are best in­sti­tut­ed where­in these are a larg­er and more re­spectable part, if pos­si­ble, than both the oth­er; or, if that can­not be, at least than ei­ther of them sep­arate; so that be­ing thrown in­to the bal­ance it may pre­vent ei­ther scale from pre­pon­der­at­ing.

It is there­fore the great­est hap­pi­ness which the cit­izens can en­joy to pos­sess a mod­er­ate and con­ve­nient for­tune; for when some pos­sess too much, and oth­ers noth­ing at [1296a] all, the gov­ern­ment must ei­ther be in the hands of the mean­est rab­ble or else a pure oli­garchy; or, from the ex­cess­es of both, a tyran­ny; for this aris­es from a head­strong democ­ra­cy or an oli­garchy, but very sel­dom when the mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty are near­ly on an equal­ity with each oth­er. We will as­sign a rea­son for this when we come to treat of the al­ter­ations which dif­fer­ent states are like­ly to un­der­go. The mid­dle state is there­fore best, as be­ing least li­able to those sedi­tions and in­sur­rec­tions which dis­turb the com­mu­ni­ty; and for the same rea­son ex­ten­sive gov­ern­ments are least li­able to these in­con­ve­niences; for there those in a mid­dle state are very nu­mer­ous, where­as in small ones it is easy to pass to the two ex­tremes, so as hard­ly to have any in a medi­um re­main­ing, but the one half rich, the oth­er poor: and from the same prin­ci­ple it is that democ­ra­cies are more firm­ly es­tab­lished and of longer con­tin­uance than oli­garchies; but even in those when there is a want of a prop­er num­ber of men of mid­dling for­tune, the poor ex­tend their pow­er too far, abus­es arise, and the gov­ern­ment is soon at an end.

We ought to con­sid­er as a proof of what I now ad­vance, that the best law­givers them­selves were those in the mid­dle rank of life, amongst whom was Solon, as is ev­ident from his po­ems, and Ly­cur­gus, for he was not a king, and Charon­das, and in­deed most oth­ers. What has been said will show us why of so many free states some have changed to democ­ra­cies, oth­ers to oli­garchies: for when­ev­er the num­ber of those in the mid­dle state has been too small, those who were the more nu­mer­ous, whether the rich or the poor, al­ways over­pow­ered them and as­sumed to them­selves the ad­min­is­tra­tion of pub­lic af­fairs; from hence arose ei­ther a democ­ra­cy or an oli­garchy. More­over, when in con­se­quence of their dis­putes and quar­rels with each oth­er, ei­ther the rich get the bet­ter of the poor, or the poor of the rich, nei­ther of them will es­tab­lish a free state; but, as the record of their vic­to­ry, one which in­clines to their own prin­ci­ples, and form ei­ther a democ­ra­cy or an oli­garchy.

Those who made con­quests in Greece, hav­ing all of them an eye to the re­spec­tive forms of gov­ern­ment in their own cities, es­tab­lished ei­ther democ­ra­cies or oli­garchies, not con­sid­er­ing what was ser­vice­able to the state, but what was sim­ilar to their own; for which rea­son a gov­ern­ment has nev­er been es­tab­lished where the supreme pow­er has been placed amongst those of the mid­dling rank, or very sel­dom; and, amongst a few, one man on­ly of those who have yet been con­querors has been per­suad­ed to give the pref­er­ence to this or­der of [1296b] men: it is in­deed an es­tab­lished cus­tom with the in­hab­itants of most cities not to de­sire an equal­ity, but ei­ther to as­pire to gov­ern, or when they are con­quered, to sub­mit.

Thus we have shown what the best state is, and why. It will not be dif­fi­cult to per­ceive of the many states which there are, for we have seen that there are var­ious forms both of democ­ra­cies and oli­garchies, to which we should give the first place, to which the sec­ond, and in the same man­ner the next al­so; and to ob­serve what are the par­tic­ular ex­cel­lences and de­fects of each, af­ter we have first de­scribed the best pos­si­ble; for that must be the best which is near­est to this, that worst which is most dis­tant from the medi­um, with­out any one has a par­tic­ular plan of his own which he judges by. I mean by this, that it may hap­pen, that al­though one form of gov­ern­ment may be bet­ter than an­oth­er, yet there is no rea­son to pre­vent an­oth­er from be­ing prefer­able there­un­to in par­tic­ular cir­cum­stances and for par­tic­ular pur­pos­es.

CHAP­TER XII

Af­ter what has been said, it fol­lows that we should now show what par­tic­ular form of gov­ern­ment is most suit­able for par­tic­ular per­sons; first lay­ing this down as a gen­er­al max­im, that that par­ty which de­sires to sup­port the ac­tu­al ad­min­is­tra­tion of the state ought al­ways to be su­pe­ri­or to that which would al­ter it. Ev­ery city is made up of qual­ity and quan­ti­ty: by qual­ity I mean lib­er­ty, rich­es, ed­uca­tion, and fam­ily, and by quan­ti­ty its rel­ative pop­ulous­ness: now it may hap­pen that qual­ity may ex­ist in one of those parts of which the city is com­posed, and quan­ti­ty in an­oth­er; thus the num­ber of the ig­no­ble may be greater than the num­ber of those of fam­ily, the num­ber of the poor than that of the rich; but not so that the quan­ti­ty of the one shall over­bal­ance the qual­ity of the oth­er; those must be prop­er­ly ad­just­ed to each oth­er; for where the num­ber of the poor ex­ceeds the pro­por­tion we have men­tioned, there a democ­ra­cy will rise up, and if the hus­bandry should have more pow­er than oth­ers, it will be a democ­ra­cy of hus­band­men; and the democ­ra­cy will be a par­tic­ular species ac­cord­ing to that class of men which may hap­pen to be most nu­mer­ous: thus, should these be the hus­band­men, it will be of these, and the best; if of me­chan­ics and those who hire them­selves out, the worst pos­si­ble: in the same man­ner it may be of any oth­er set be­tween these two. But when the rich and the no­ble pre­vail more by their qual­ity than they are de­fi­cient in quan­ti­ty, there an oli­garchy en­sues; and this oli­garchy may be of dif­fer­ent species, ac­cord­ing to the na­ture of the pre­vail­ing par­ty. Ev­ery leg­is­la­tor in fram­ing his con­sti­tu­tion ought to have a par­tic­ular re­gard to those in the mid­dle rank of life; and if he in­tends an oli­garchy, these should be the ob­ject of his laws; if a democ­ra­cy, to these they should be en­trust­ed; and when­ev­er their num­ber ex­ceeds that of the two oth­ers, or at least one of them, they give [1297a] sta­bil­ity to the con­sti­tu­tion; for there is no fear that the rich and the poor should agree to con­spire to­geth­er against them, for nei­ther of these will choose to serve the oth­er. If any one would choose to fix the ad­min­is­tra­tion on the widest ba­sis, he will find none prefer­able to this; for to rule by turns is what the rich and the poor will not sub­mit to, on ac­count of their ha­tred to each oth­er. It is, more­over, al­lowed that an ar­bi­tra­tor is the most prop­er per­son for both par­ties to trust to; now this ar­bi­tra­tor is the mid­dle rank.

Those who would es­tab­lish aris­to­crat­ical gov­ern­ments are mis­tak­en not on­ly in giv­ing too much pow­er to the rich, but al­so in de­ceiv­ing the com­mon peo­ple; for at last, in­stead of an imag­inary good, they must feel a re­al evil, for the en­croach­ments of the rich are more de­struc­tive to the state than those of the poor.

CHAP­TER XI­II

There are five par­tic­ulars in which, un­der fair pre­tences, the rich crafti­ly en­deav­our to un­der­mine the rights of the peo­ple, these are their pub­lic as­sem­blies, their of­fices of state, their courts of jus­tice, their mil­itary pow­er, and their gym­nas­tic ex­er­cis­es. With re­spect to their pub­lic as­sem­blies, in hav­ing them open to all, but in fin­ing the rich on­ly, or oth­ers very lit­tle, for not at­tend­ing; with re­spect to of­fices, in per­mit­ting the poor to swear off, but not grant­ing this in­dul­gence to those who are with­in the cen­sus; with re­spect to their courts of jus­tice, in fin­ing the rich for non-​at­ten­dance, but the poor not at all, or those a great deal, and these very lit­tle, as was done by the laws of Charon­das. In some places ev­ery cit­izen who was en­rolled had a right to at­tend the pub­lic as­sem­blies and to try caus­es; which if they did not do, a very heavy fine was laid up­on them; that through fear of the fine they might avoid be­ing en­rolled, as they were then obliged to do nei­ther the one nor the oth­er. The same spir­it of leg­is­la­tion pre­vailed with re­spect to their bear­ing arms and their gym­nas­tic ex­er­cis­es; for the poor are ex­cused if they have no arms, but the rich are fined; the same method takes place if they do not at­tend their gym­nas­tic ex­er­cis­es, there is no penal­ty on one, but there is on the oth­er: the con­se­quence of which is, that the fear of this penal­ty in­duces the rich to keep the one and at­tend the oth­er, while the poor do nei­ther. These are the de­ceit­ful con­trivances of oli­garchi­cal leg­is­la­tors.

The con­trary pre­vails in a democ­ra­cy; for there they make the poor a prop­er al­lowance for at­tend­ing the as­sem­blies and the courts, but give the rich noth­ing for do­ing it: whence it is ev­ident, that if any one would prop­er­ly blend these cus­toms to­geth­er, they must ex­tend both the pay and the fine to ev­ery mem­ber of the com­mu­ni­ty, and then ev­ery one would share in it, where­as part on­ly now do. The cit­izens of a free state ought to [1297b] con­sist of those on­ly who bear arms: with re­spect to their cen­sus it is not easy to de­ter­mine ex­act­ly what it ought to be, but the rule that should di­rect up­on this sub­ject should be to make it as ex­ten­sive as pos­si­ble, so that those who are en­rolled in it make up a greater part of the peo­ple than those who are not; for those who are poor, al­though they par­take not of the of­fices of the state, are will­ing to live qui­et, pro­vid­ed that no one dis­turbs them in their prop­er­ty: but this is not an easy mat­ter; for it may not al­ways hap­pen, that those who are at the head of pub­lic af­fairs are of a hu­mane be­haviour. In time of war the poor are ac­cus­tomed to show no alacrity with­out they have pro­vi­sions found them; when they have, then in­deed they are will­ing to fight.

In some gov­ern­ments the pow­er is vest­ed not on­ly in those who bear arms, but al­so in those who have borne them. Among the Maliens­es the state was com­posed of these lat­ter on­ly, for all the of­fi­cers were sol­diers who had served their time. And the first states in Greece which suc­ceed­ed those where king­ly pow­er was es­tab­lished, were gov­erned by the mil­itary. First of all the horse, for at that time the strength and ex­cel­lence of the army de­pend­ed on the horse, for as to the heavy-​armed foot they were use­less with­out prop­er dis­ci­pline; but the art of tac­tics was not known to the an­cients, for which rea­son their strength lay in their horse: but when cities grew larg­er, and they de­pend­ed more on their foot, greater num­bers par­took of the free­dom of the city; for which rea­son what we call re­publics were for­mer­ly called democ­ra­cies. The an­cient gov­ern­ments were prop­er­ly oli­garchies or king­doms; for on ac­count of the few per­sons in each state, it would have been im­pos­si­ble to have found a suf­fi­cient num­ber of the mid­dle rank; so these be­ing but few, and those used to sub­or­di­na­tion, they more eas­ily sub­mit­ted to be gov­erned.

We have now shown why there are many sorts of gov­ern­ments, and oth­ers dif­fer­ent from those we have treat­ed of: for there are more species of democ­ra­cies than one, and the like is true of oth­er forms, and what are their dif­fer­ences, and whence they arise; and al­so of all oth­ers which is the best, at least in gen­er­al; and which is best suit­ed for par­tic­ular peo­ple.

CHAP­TER XIV

We will now pro­ceed to make some gen­er­al re­flec­tions up­on the gov­ern­ments next in or­der, and al­so to con­sid­er each of them in par­tic­ular; be­gin­ning with those prin­ci­ples which ap­per­tain to each: now there are three things in all states which a care­ful leg­is­la­tor ought well to con­sid­er, which are of great con­se­quence to all, and which prop­er­ly at­tend­ed to the state must nec­es­sar­ily be hap­py; and ac­cord­ing to the vari­ation of which the one will dif­fer from the oth­er. The first of these is the [1298a] pub­lic as­sem­bly; the sec­ond the of­fi­cers of the state, that is, who they ought to be, and with what pow­er they should be en­trust­ed, and in what man­ner they should be ap­point­ed; the third, the ju­di­cial de­part­ment.

Now it is the prop­er busi­ness of the pub­lic as­sem­bly to de­ter­mine con­cern­ing war and peace, mak­ing or break­ing off al­liances, to en­act laws, to sen­tence to death, ban­ish­ment, or con­fis­ca­tion of goods, and to call the mag­is­trates to ac­count for their be­haviour when in of­fice. Now these pow­ers must nec­es­sar­ily be en­trust­ed to the cit­izens in gen­er­al, or all of them to some; ei­ther to one mag­is­trate or more; or some to one, and some to an­oth­er, or some to all, but oth­ers to some: to en­trust all to all is in the spir­it of a democ­ra­cy, for the peo­ple aim at equal­ity. There are many meth­ods of del­egat­ing these pow­ers to the cit­izens at large, one of which is to let them ex­ecute them by turn, and not al­to­geth­er, as was done by Tel­le­cles, the Mile­sian, in his state. In oth­ers the supreme coun­cil is com­posed of the dif­fer­ent mag­is­trates, and they suc­ceed to the of­fices of the com­mu­ni­ty by prop­er di­vi­sions of tribes, wards, and oth­er very small pro­por­tions, till ev­ery one in his turn goes through them: nor does the whole com­mu­ni­ty ev­er meet to­geth­er, with­out it is when new laws are en­act­ed, or some na­tion­al af­fair is de­bat­ed, or to hear what the mag­is­trates have to pro­pose to them. An­oth­er method is for the peo­ple to meet in a col­lec­tive body, but on­ly for the pur­pose of hold­ing the comi­tia, mak­ing laws, de­ter­min­ing con­cern­ing war or peace, and in­quir­ing in­to the con­duct of their mag­is­trates, while the re­main­ing part of the pub­lic busi­ness is con­duct­ed by the mag­is­trates, who have their sep­arate de­part­ments, and are cho­sen out of the whole com­mu­ni­ty ei­ther by vote or bal­lot. An­oth­er method is for the peo­ple in gen­er­al to meet for the choice of the mag­is­trates, and to ex­am­ine in­to their con­duct; and al­so to de­lib­er­ate con­cern­ing war and al­liances, and to leave oth­er things to the mag­is­trates, who­ev­er hap­pen to be cho­sen, whose par­tic­ular em­ploy­ments are such as nec­es­sar­ily re­quire per­sons well skilled there­in. A fourth method is for ev­ery per­son to de­lib­er­ate up­on ev­ery sub­ject in pub­lic as­sem­bly, where the mag­is­trates can de­ter­mine noth­ing of them­selves, and have on­ly the priv­ilege of giv­ing their opin­ions first; and this is the method of the most pure democ­ra­cy, which is anal­ogous to the pro­ceed­ings in a dy­nas­tic oli­garchy and a tyran­nic monar­chy.

These, then, are the meth­ods in which pub­lic busi­ness is con­duct­ed in a democ­ra­cy. When the pow­er is in the hands of part of the com­mu­ni­ty on­ly, it is an oli­garchy and this al­so ad­mits of dif­fer­ent cus­toms; for when­ev­er the of­fi­cers of the state are cho­sen out of those who have a mod­er­ate for­tune, and these from that cir­cum­stance are many, and when they de­part not from that line which the law has laid down, but care­ful­ly fol­low it, and when all with­in the cen­sus are el­igi­ble, cer­tain­ly it is then an oli­garchy, but found­ed on true prin­ci­ples of gov­ern­ment [1298b] from its mod­er­ation. When the peo­ple in gen­er­al do not par­take of the de­lib­er­ative pow­er, but cer­tain per­sons cho­sen for that pur­pose, who gov­ern ac­cord­ing to law; this al­so, like the first, is an oli­garchy. When those who have the de­lib­er­ative pow­er elect each oth­er, and the son suc­ceeds to the fa­ther, and when they can su­per­sede the laws, such a gov­ern­ment is of ne­ces­si­ty a strict oli­garchy. When some per­sons de­ter­mine on one thing, and oth­ers on an­oth­er, as war and peace, and when all in­quire in­to the con­duct of their mag­is­trates, and oth­er things are left to dif­fer­ent of­fi­cers, elect­ed ei­ther by vote or lot, then the gov­ern­ment is an aris­toc­ra­cy or a free state. When some are cho­sen by vote and oth­ers by lot, and these ei­ther from the peo­ple in gen­er­al, or from a cer­tain num­ber elect­ed for that pur­pose, or if both the votes and the lots are open to all, such a state is part­ly an aris­toc­ra­cy, part­ly a free gov­ern­ment it­self. These are the dif­fer­ent meth­ods in which the de­lib­er­ative pow­er is vest­ed in dif­fer­ent states, all of whom fol­low some reg­ula­tion here laid down. It is ad­van­ta­geous to a democ­ra­cy, in the present sense of the word, by which I mean a state where­in the peo­ple at large have a supreme pow­er, even over the laws, to hold fre­quent pub­lic as­sem­blies; and it will be best in this par­tic­ular to im­itate the ex­am­ple of oli­garchies in their courts of jus­tice; for they fine those who are ap­point­ed to try caus­es if they do not at­tend, so should they re­ward the poor for com­ing to the pub­lic as­sem­blies: and their coun­sels will be best when all ad­vise with each oth­er, the cit­izens with the no­bles, the no­bles with the cit­izens. It is al­so ad­vis­able when the coun­cil is to be com­posed of part of the cit­izens, to elect, ei­ther by vote or lot, an equal num­ber of both ranks. It is al­so prop­er, if the com­mon peo­ple in the state are very nu­mer­ous, ei­ther not to pay ev­ery one for his at­ten­dance, but such a num­ber on­ly as will make them equal to the no­bles, or to re­ject many of them by lot.

In an oli­garchy they should ei­ther call up some of the com­mon peo­ple to the coun­cil, or else es­tab­lish a court, as is done in some oth­er states, whom they call pre-​ad­vis­ers or guardians of the laws, whose busi­ness should be to pro­pose first what they should af­ter­wards en­act. By this means the peo­ple would have a place in the ad­min­is­tra­tion of pub­lic af­fairs, with­out hav­ing it in their pow­er to oc­ca­sion any dis­or­der in the gov­ern­ment. More­over, the peo­ple may be al­lowed to have a vote in what­ev­er bill is pro­posed, but may not them­selves pro­pose any­thing con­trary there­to; or they may give their ad­vice, while the pow­er of de­ter­min­ing may be with the mag­is­trates on­ly. It is al­so nec­es­sary to fol­low a con­trary prac­tice to what is es­tab­lished in democ­ra­cies, for the peo­ple should be al­lowed the pow­er of par­don­ing, but not of con­demn­ing, for the cause should be re­ferred back again to the mag­is­trates: where­as the con­trary takes place in re­publics; for the pow­er of par­don­ing is with the few, but not of con­demn­ing, which is al­ways re­ferred [1299a] to the peo­ple at large. And thus we de­ter­mine con­cern­ing the de­lib­er­ative pow­er in any state, and in whose hands it shall be.

CHAP­TER XV

We now pro­ceed to con­sid­er the choice of mag­is­trates; for this branch of pub­lic busi­ness con­tains many dif­fer­ent Parts, as how many there shall be, what shall be their par­tic­ular of­fice, and with re­spect to time how long each of them shall con­tin­ue in place; for some make it six months, oth­ers short­er, oth­ers for a year, oth­ers for a much longer time; or whether they should be per­pet­ual or for a long time, or nei­ther; for the same per­son may fill the same of­fice sev­er­al times, or he may not be al­lowed to en­joy it even twice, but on­ly once: and al­so with re­spect to the ap­point­ment of mag­is­trates, who are to be el­igi­ble, who is to choose them, and in what man­ner; for in all these par­tic­ulars we ought prop­er­ly to dis­tin­guish the dif­fer­ent ways which may be fol­lowed; and then to show which of these is best suit­ed to such and such gov­ern­ments.

Now it is not easy to de­ter­mine to whom we ought prop­er­ly to give the name of mag­is­trate, for a gov­ern­ment re­quires many per­sons in of­fice; but ev­ery one of those who is ei­ther cho­sen by vote or lot is not to be reck­oned a mag­is­trate. The priests, for in­stance, in the first place; for these are to be con­sid­ered as very dif­fer­ent from civ­il mag­is­trates: to these we may add the chore­gi and her­alds; nay, even am­bas­sadors are elect­ed: there are some civ­il em­ploy­ments which be­long to the cit­izens; and these are ei­ther when they are all en­gaged in one thing, as when as sol­diers they obey their gen­er­al, or when part of them on­ly are, as in gov­ern­ing the wom­en or ed­ucat­ing the youth; and al­so some eco­nom­ic, for they of­ten elect corn-​me­ters: oth­ers are servile, and in which, if they are rich, they em­ploy slaves. But in­deed they are most prop­er­ly called mag­is­trates, who are mem­bers of the de­lib­er­ative coun­cil, or de­cide caus­es, or are in some com­mand, the last more es­pe­cial­ly, for to com­mand is pe­cu­liar to mag­is­trates. But to speak truth, this ques­tion is of no great con­se­quence, nor is it the province of the judges to de­cide be­tween those who dis­pute about words; it may in­deed be an ob­ject of spec­ula­tive in­quiry; but to in­quire what of­fi­cers are nec­es­sary in a state, and how many, and what, though not most nec­es­sary, may yet be ad­van­ta­geous in a well-​es­tab­lished gov­ern­ment, is a much more use­ful em­ploy­ment, and this with re­spect to all states in gen­er­al, as well as to small cities.

In ex­ten­sive gov­ern­ments it is prop­er to al­lot one em­ploy­ment to one per­son, as there are many to serve the pub­lic in so nu­mer­ous a so­ci­ety, where some may be passed over for a long time, and oth­ers nev­er be in of­fice but once; and in­deed ev­ery­thing is bet­ter done which has the whole at­ten­tion of one per­son, than when that [1299b] at­ten­tion is di­vid­ed amongst many; but in small states it is nec­es­sary that a few of the cit­izens should ex­ecute many em­ploy­ments; for their num­bers are so small it will not be con­ve­nient to have many of them in of­fice at the same time; for where shall we find oth­ers to suc­ceed them in turn? Small states will some­times want the same mag­is­trates and the same laws as large ones; but the one will not want to em­ploy them so of­ten as the oth­er; so that dif­fer­ent charges may be in­trust­ed to the same per­son with­out any in­con­ve­nience, for they will not in­ter­fere with each oth­er, and for want of suf­fi­cient mem­bers in the com­mu­ni­ty it will be nec­es­sary. If we could tell how many mag­is­trates are nec­es­sary in ev­ery city, and how many, though not nec­es­sary, it is yet prop­er to have, we could then the bet­ter know how many dif­fer­ent of­fices one might as­sign to one mag­is­trate. It is al­so nec­es­sary to know what tri­bunals in dif­fer­ent places should have dif­fer­ent things un­der their ju­ris­dic­tion, and al­so what things should al­ways come un­der the cog­ni­sance of the same mag­is­trate; as, for in­stance, de­cen­cy of man­ners, shall the clerk of the mar­ket take cog­ni­sance of that if the cause aris­es in the mar­ket, and an­oth­er mag­is­trate in an­oth­er place, or the same mag­is­trate ev­ery­where: or shall there be a dis­tinc­tion made of the fact, or the par­ties? as, for in­stance, in de­cen­cy of man­ners, shall it be one cause when it re­lates to a man, an­oth­er when it re­lates to a wom­an?

In dif­fer­ent states shall the mag­is­trates be dif­fer­ent or the same? I mean, whether in a democ­ra­cy, an oli­garchy, an aris­toc­ra­cy, and a monar­chy, the same per­sons shall have the same pow­er? or shall it vary ac­cord­ing to the dif­fer­ent for­ma­tion of the gov­ern­ment? as in an aris­toc­ra­cy the of­fices of the state are al­lot­ted to those who are well ed­ucat­ed; in an oli­garchy to those who are rich; in a democ­ra­cy to the freemen? Or shall the mag­is­trates dif­fer as the com­mu­ni­ties dif­fer? For it may hap­pen that the very same may be some­times prop­er, some­times oth­er­wise: in this state it may be nec­es­sary that the mag­is­trate have great pow­ers, in that but small. There are al­so cer­tain mag­is­trates pe­cu­liar to cer­tain states–as the pre-​ad­vis­ers are not prop­er in a democ­ra­cy, but a sen­ate is; for one such or­der is nec­es­sary, whose busi­ness shall be to con­sid­er be­fore­hand and pre­pare those bills which shall be brought be­fore the peo­ple that they may have leisure to at­tend to their own af­fairs; and when these are few in num­ber the state in­clines to an oli­garchy. The pre-​ad­vis­ers in­deed must al­ways be few for they are pe­cu­liar to an oli­garchy: and where there are both these of­fices in the same state, the pre-​ad­vis­er’s is su­pe­ri­or to the sen­ator’s, the one hav­ing on­ly a demo­crat­ical pow­er, the oth­er an oli­garchi­cal: and in­deed the [1300a] pow­er of the sen­ate is lost in those democ­ra­cies, in which the peo­ple, meet­ing in one pub­lic as­sem­bly, take all the busi­ness in­to their own hands; and this is like­ly to hap­pen ei­ther when the com­mu­ni­ty in gen­er­al are in easy cir­cum­stances, or when they are paid for their at­ten­dance; for they are then at leisure of­ten to meet to­geth­er and de­ter­mine ev­ery­thing for them­selves. A mag­is­trate whose busi­ness is to con­trol the man­ners of the boys, or wom­en, or who takes any de­part­ment sim­ilar to this, is to be found in an aris­toc­ra­cy, not in a democ­ra­cy; for who can for­bid the wives of the poor from ap­pear­ing in pub­lic? nei­ther is such a one to be met with in an oli­garchy; for the wom­en there are too del­icate to bear con­trol. And thus much for this sub­ject. Let us en­deav­our to treat at large of the es­tab­lish­ment of mag­is­trates, be­gin­ning from first prin­ci­ples. Now, they dif­fer from each oth­er in three ways, from which, blend­ed to­geth­er, all the va­ri­eties which can be imag­ined arise. The first of these dif­fer­ences is in those who ap­point the mag­is­trates, the sec­ond con­sists in those who are ap­point­ed, the third in the mode of ap­point­ment; and each of these three dif­fer in three man­ners; for ei­ther all the cit­izens may ap­point col­lec­tive­ly, or some out of their whole body, or some out of a par­tic­ular or­der in it, ac­cord­ing to for­tune, fam­ily, or virtue, or some oth­er rule (as at Megara, where the right of elec­tion was amongst those who had re­turned to­geth­er to their coun­try, and had re­in­stat­ed them­selves by force of arms) and this ei­ther by vote or lot. Again, these sev­er­al modes may be dif­fer­ent­ly formed to­geth­er, as some mag­is­trates may be cho­sen by part of the com­mu­ni­ty, oth­ers by the whole; some out of part, oth­ers out of the whole; some by vote, oth­ers by lot: and each of these dif­fer­ent modes ad­mit of a four-​fold sub­di­vi­sion; for ei­ther all may elect all by vote or by lot; and when all elect, they may ei­ther pro­ceed with­out any dis­tinc­tion, or they may elect by a cer­tain di­vi­sion of tribes, wards, or com­pa­nies, till they have gone through the whole com­mu­ni­ty: and some mag­is­trates may be elect­ed one way, and oth­ers an­oth­er. Again, if some mag­is­trates are elect­ed ei­ther by vote or lot of all the cit­izens, or by the vote of some and the lot of some, or some one way and some an­oth­er; that is to say, some by the vote of all, oth­ers by the lot of all, there will then be twelve dif­fer­ent meth­ods of elect­ing the mag­is­trates, with­out blend­ing the two to­geth­er. Of these there are two adapt­ed to a democ­ra­cy; name­ly, to have all the mag­is­trates cho­sen out of all the peo­ple, ei­ther by vote or lot, or both; that is to say, some of them by lot, some by vote. In a free state the whole com­mu­ni­ty should not elect at the same time, but some out of the whole, or out of some par­tic­ular rank; and this ei­ther by lot, or vote, or both: and they should elect ei­ther out of the whole com­mu­ni­ty, or out of some par­tic­ular per­sons in it, and this both by lot and vote. In an oli­garchy it is prop­er to choose some mag­is­trates out of the whole body of the cit­izens, some by vote, some by lot, oth­ers by both: by lot is most cor­re­spon­dent to that form of gov­ern­ment. In a free aris­toc­ra­cy, some mag­is­trates [1300b] should be cho­sen out of the com­mu­ni­ty in gen­er­al, oth­ers out of a par­tic­ular rank, or these by choice, those by lot. In a pure oli­garchy, the mag­is­trates should be cho­sen out of cer­tain ranks, and by cer­tain per­sons, and some of those by lot, oth­ers by both meth­ods; but to choose them out of the whole com­mu­ni­ty is not cor­re­spon­dent to the na­ture of this gov­ern­ment. It is prop­er in an aris­toc­ra­cy for the whole com­mu­ni­ty to elect their mag­is­trates out of par­tic­ular per­sons, and this by vote. These then are all the dif­fer­ent ways of elect­ing of mag­is­trates; and they have been al­lot­ted ac­cord­ing to the na­ture of the dif­fer­ent com­mu­ni­ties; but what mode of pro­ceed­ing is prop­er for dif­fer­ent com­mu­ni­ties, or how the of­fices ought to be es­tab­lished, or with what pow­ers shall be par­tic­ular­ly ex­plained. I mean by the pow­ers of a mag­is­trate, what should be his par­tic­ular province, as the man­age­ment of the fi­nances or the laws of the state; for dif­fer­ent mag­is­trates have dif­fer­ent pow­ers, as that of the gen­er­al of the army dif­fers from the clerk of the mar­ket.

CHAP­TER XVI

Of the three parts of which a gov­ern­ment is formed, we now come to con­sid­er the ju­di­cial; and this al­so we shall di­vide in the same man­ner as we did the mag­is­te­ri­al, in­to three parts. Of whom the judges shall con­sist, and for what caus­es, and how. When I say of whom, I mean whether they shall be the whole peo­ple, or some par­tic­ulars; by for what caus­es I mean, how many dif­fer­ent courts shall be ap­point­ed; by how, whether they shall be elect­ed by vote or lot. Let us first de­ter­mine how many dif­fer­ent courts there ought to be. Now these are eight. The first of these is the court of in­spec­tion over the be­haviour of the mag­is­trates when they have quit­ted their of­fice; the sec­ond is to pun­ish those who have in­jured the pub­lic; the third is to take cog­ni­sance of those caus­es in which the state is a par­ty; the fourth is to de­cide be­tween mag­is­trates and pri­vate per­sons, who ap­peal from a fine laid up­on them; the fifth is to de­ter­mine dis­putes which may arise con­cern­ing con­tracts of great val­ue; the sixth is to judge be­tween for­eign­ers, and of mur­ders, of which there are dif­fer­ent species; and these may all be tried by the same judges or by dif­fer­ent ones; for there are mur­ders of mal­ice prepense and of chance-​med­ley; there is al­so jus­ti­fi­able homi­cide, where the fact is ad­mit­ted, and the le­gal­ity of it dis­put­ed.

There is al­so an­oth­er court called at Athens the Court of Phreat­tae, which de­ter­mines points re­lat­ing to a mur­der com­mit­ted by one who has run away, to de­cide whether he shall re­turn; though such an af­fair hap­pens but sel­dom, and in very large cities; the sev­enth, to de­ter­mine caus­es where­in strangers are con­cerned, and this whether they are be­tween stranger and stranger or be­tween a stranger and a cit­izen. The eighth and last is for small ac­tions, from one to five drach­ma’s, or a lit­tle more; for these ought al­so to be legal­ly de­ter­mined, but not to be brought be­fore the whole body of the judges. But with­out en­ter­ing in­to any par­tic­ulars con­cern­ing ac­tions for mur­der, and those where­in strangers are the par­ties, let us par­tic­ular­ly treat of those courts which have the ju­ris­dic­tion of those mat­ters which more par­tic­ular­ly re­late to the af­fairs of the com­mu­ni­ty and which if not well con­duct­ed oc­ca­sion sedi­tions and com­mo­tions in the state. Now, of ne­ces­si­ty, ei­ther all per­sons must have a right to judge of all these dif­fer­ent caus­es, ap­point­ed for that pur­pose, ei­ther by vote or lot, or all of all, some of them by vote, and oth­ers by lot, or in some caus­es by vote, in oth­ers by lot. Thus there will be four sorts of judges. There [1301a] will be just the same num­ber al­so if they are cho­sen out of part of the peo­ple on­ly; for ei­ther all the judges must be cho­sen out of that part ei­ther by vote or lot, or some by lot and some by vote, or the judges in par­tic­ular caus­es must be cho­sen some by vote, oth­ers by lot; by which means there will be the same num­ber of them al­so as was men­tioned. Be­sides, dif­fer­ent judges may be joined to­geth­er; I mean those who are cho­sen out of the whole peo­ple or part of them or both; so that all three may sit to­geth­er in the same court, and this ei­ther by vote, lot, or both. And thus much for the dif­fer­ent sorts of judges. Of these ap­point­ments that which ad­mits all the com­mu­ni­ty to be judges in all caus­es is most suit­able to a democ­ra­cy; the sec­ond, which ap­points that cer­tain per­sons shall judge all caus­es, to an oli­garchy; the third, which ap­points the whole com­mu­ni­ty to be judges in some caus­es, but par­tic­ular per­sons in oth­ers, to an aris­toc­ra­cy or free state.