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.
Copyrights
Politics: A Treatise on Government from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
