The constitution of the Laws may be said to consist, besides the magistrates, mainly of three elements,—­an administrative Council, the judiciary, and the Nocturnal Council, which is an intellectual aristocracy, composed of priests and the ten eldest guardians of the law and some younger co-opted members.  To this latter chiefly are assigned the functions of legislation, but to be exercised with a sparing hand.  The powers of the ordinary council are administrative rather than legislative.  The whole number of 360, as in the Athenian constitution, is distributed among the months of the year according to the number of the tribes.  Not more than one-twelfth is to be in office at once, so that the government would be made up of twelve administrations succeeding one another in the course of the year.  They are to exercise a general superintendence, and, like the Athenian counsellors, are to preside in monthly divisions over all assemblies.  Of the ecclesia over which they presided little is said, and that little relates to comparatively trifling duties.  Nothing is less present to the mind of Plato than a House of Commons, carrying on year by year the work of legislation.  For he supposes the laws to be already provided.  As little would he approve of a body like the Roman Senate.  The people and the aristocracy alike are to be represented, not by assemblies, but by officers elected for one or two years, except the guardians of the law, who are elected for twenty years.

The evils of this system are obvious.  If in any state, as Plato says in the Statesman, it is easier to find fifty good draught-players than fifty good rulers, the greater part of the 360 who compose the council must be unfitted to rule.  The unfitness would be increased by the short period during which they held office.  There would be no traditions of government among them, as in a Greek or Italian oligarchy, and no individual would be responsible for any of their acts.  Everything seems to have been sacrificed to a false notion of equality, according to which all have a turn of ruling and being ruled.  In the constitution of the Magnesian state Plato has not emancipated himself from the limitations of ancient politics.  His government may be described as a democracy of magistrates elected by the people.  He never troubles himself about the political consistency of his scheme.  He does indeed say that the greater part of the good of this world arises, not from equality, but from proportion, which he calls the judgment of Zeus (compare Aristotle’s Distributive Justice), but he hardly makes any attempt to carry out the principle in practice.  There is no attempt to proportion representation to merit; nor is there any body in his commonwealth which represents the life either of a class or of the whole state.  The manner of appointing magistrates is taken chiefly from the old democratic constitution of Athens, of which it retains some of the worst features, such as the use of the