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.
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;
