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.
