in a free state those of moderate fortunes only; when
the city grows rich, through peace or some other happy
cause, it becomes so little that every one’s
fortune is equal to the census, so that the whole
community may partake of all the honours of government;
and this change sometimes happens by little and little,
and insensible approaches, sometimes quicker.
These are the revolutions and seditions that arise
in oligarchies, and the causes to which they are owing:
and indeed both democracies and oligarchies sometimes
alter, not into governments of a contrary form, but
into those of the same government; as, for instance,
from having the supreme power in the law to vest it
in the ruling party, or the contrariwise.
CHAPTER VII
Commotions also arise in aristocracies, from there
being so few persons in power (as we have already
observed they do in oligarchies, for in this particular
an aristocracy is most near an oligarchy, for in both
these states the administration of public affairs is
in the hands of a few; not that this arises from the
same cause in both, though herein they chiefly seem
alike): and these will necessarily be most likely
to happen when the generality of the people are high-spirited
and think themselves equal to each other in merit;
such were those at Lacedasmon, called the Partheniae
(for these were, as well as others, descendants of
citizens), who being detected in a conspiracy against
the state, were sent to found Tarentum. They will
happen also when some great men are disgraced by those
who have received higher honours than themselves,
to whom they are no ways inferior in abilities, as
Lysander by the kings: or when an ambitious man
cannot get into power, as Cinadon, who, in the reign
of Agesilaus, was chief in a conspiracy against the
Spartans: and also when some are too poor and
others too rich, which will most frequently happen
in time of war; as at Lacedaemon during the Messenian
war, which is proved by a poem of Tyrtaeus, [1307a]
called “Eunomia;” for some persons being
reduced thereby, desired that the lands might be divided:
and also when some person of very high rank might still
be higher if he could rule alone, which seemed to
be Pausanias’s intention at Lacedaemon, when
he was their general in the Median war, and Anno’s
at Carthage. But free states and aristocracies
are mostly destroyed from want of a fixed administration
of public affairs; the cause of which evil arises
at first from want of a due mixture of the democratic
and the oligarchic parts in a free state; and in an
aristocracy from the same causes, and also from virtue
not being properly joined to power; but chiefly from
the two first, I mean the undue mixture of the democratic
and oligarchic parts; for these two are what all free
states endeavour to blend together, and many of those
which we call aristocracies, in this particular these
states differ from each other, and on this account
Copyrights
Politics: A Treatise on Government from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
