Part Ii. Chapter Xc.

The strong conservative tendency, which prevailed among the Athenians under their democratic constitution, was, I believe, first noticed by Mr W. Warde Fowler. There is a striking passage on the matter in his City-state of the Greeks and Romans (pages 170, 171).

The mischiefs which Aristotle regarded as attendant on democracies have certainly been found in some governments which have borne that name. Aristotle could not have denounced them as he does unless he had seen them exemplified in some Greek democracies: in the governments (nominally at least democratic), which ruled in Paris during the French Revolution, all and more than all the evils that he describes were to be found. Athens was practically exempt from them, and we may seek causes for its immunity. One cause, the long training that the Athenians went through under the constitution of Cleisthenes, has been already noticed: the other was that at Athens the principles on which Greek democracy was founded were actually followed out in the daily life of the community, the citizens gave their time and attention to the work of government, and the people was far more truly a self-governing people than any other that has ever existed.

From what has just been said it will be seen that I regard Athens as the sole historical example of a true democracy in the Greek sense of the term. The Florentine Republic after 1324 A.D. is often compared with the Athenian democracy: but, out of the three characteristics of Greek democracy, the Florentine constitution had only the two least important: the citizens had indeed, as far as possible, equal shares in the enjoyment of office, and the assembly was free to do as it liked: but the assembly was rarely convoked, and the true governors were not the assembled citizens, but some fifty citizens selected by drawing lots every two months or every four months to fill the various magistracies and boards which ruled the city. In modern Switzerland some faint traces of actual self-government by the citizens can be detected in the yearly assemblies held in four of the smaller cantons, and in the cantonal and federal Referenda, or popular votes on new laws: but they are no more than traces, and do not make the Swiss government at all like the Athenian: and, beside this, Switzerland is a federal state while Athens was a city, and for that reason the two states are so unlike that it is useless to compare them.

Hallam, Middle Ages, chapter III.: in the cabinet edition, vol. I. pages 421-423.

(5) Oligarchy, or the rule of the few rich for the advantage of their own class, admits of several degrees and varieties. There is something of oligarchy wherever the enjoyment of public office is limited to those who have a certain amount of property: there is a larger element of oligarchy if the qualifying amount is fixed extremely high, or if the body of rulers fill up vacancies in their own number, or if offices descend from father to son: and the state is completely oligarchic if, besides all this, the law does not control the rulers but the rulers control the law. We may detect a minute trace of oligarchy in Solon's constitution which excluded the poorest citizens from the archonship. Perfect oligarchies are exemplified in the Bacchiadæ of Corinth whose power was hereditary and set them above the law, so that they could order Labda's child to be killed, and in the Eupatridæ or hereditary nobles of Athens, whose oppressive rule necessitated Solon's reforms. Other instances of oligarchy are found in the exclusive rule of the patricians at Rome from 510 B.C. to 367 B.C., and in the monopoly of office which was enjoyed by the wealthiest class of the Romans between 150 B.C. and the time of Julius Cæsar. The most complete example of an oligarchy is found at Venice between 1310 and the fall of the republic in 1797.

Aristotle, Politics. Bekker IV. 5. 1-2 and IV. 6. 7-11. Welldon, pages 266-267, pages 271-272.

(6) Tyranny, the rule of one man for his private interest, has been exemplified in the stories of the despots of Corinth and Athens. For other instances we must go to the great storehouse of illustrations of tyranny, the mediæval history of Italy where, besides the well known despots Eccelin da Romano, the Visconti, the Medici, and Cesar Borgia, there is such a host of minor tyrants that pages might be filled with a mere enumeration of their names.

We are now in a position to make some general remarks on Aristotle's classification of polities--to see in some measure what it was, and what it was not.

Aristotle defined a polity as "an ordering or arrangement of a state in respect of its offices generally and especially of the supreme office": and from this definition, as well as from his use of the word πολιτεία, it is clear that he regarded a polity as the form on which a whole government and not merely a part of a government was constructed. But nevertheless he recognised that a government consisting wholly of kingship or wholly of aristocracy was, at least among the Greeks, merely an ideal or perhaps an imaginary government, and was not within the range of practical politics. And herein Greek history shows that he was right: for we never find in it a whole government composed solely of kingship or wholly of aristocracy. On the other hand we find that not only kingship and aristocracy, but also oligarchy and democracy, constantly occur as forms or principles on which a part of a government was constructed: for example the ancient Spartan constitution was in one part kingly, in another aristocratic, in another democratic; Solon's constitution contained elements both of democracy and of oligarchy; and even the mature Athenian democracy contained a trace of aristocracy in the selection of the ten generals for merit and not by chance. Hence it is clear that, while kingship, aristocracy, polity, democracy, oligarchy and tyranny were polities, and each of them was a form on which a whole government either real or ideal could be erected, four of them at least, kingship, aristocracy, democracy and oligarchy, were also forms on which a part of a government could be constructed, and which entered in very various combinations into the making of actual governments.

Politics III. 6. 1. Welldon, p. 116.

In the Politics (IV. 2. Bekker. Welldon, pp. 253, 254) Aristotle says that "speculation about the ideally best polity is nothing else than a discussion of kingship and aristocracy": and that "kingship must be a mere name and not a reality, unless it is justified by a vast superiority of the reigning king over his subjects":--a condition that can rarely if ever be fulfilled. See also Sidgwick, Elements of Politics, p. 579.

From what has been said it will be seen that Aristotle's classification of polities was based much more on philosophic theory than on history and that, in some part at least of its extent, it is not a direct classification of actual and concrete governments.

The only actual governments which it directly and straightforwardly classifies are those which were constructed wholly on the lines of any single one of the six polities, and these were tyrannies, pure oligarchies and Polities. As to the rest of the governments which Aristotle knew, it enabled him to describe them admirably, but did not help him to assign to them brief, distinctive and convenient class-names: for instance, it enabled him to describe the Spartan government as containing elements of kingship, of aristocracy and of democracy, and the constitution of the Phœnician city of Carthage as containing elements of kingship, aristocracy, oligarchy and democracy; but it did not furnish him with any class-name for either of those governments other than the single word normal or the descriptions of them which have just been mentioned.

The descriptions of the Spartan and the Carthaginian governments are given in the Politics II. 9 and II. 11.

It has been necessary for me in speaking of the Greek governments to employ some class-names, and the names that I have used are tribal governments and city governments. The mere fact of using these names implied an assumption that the governments of the Greek tribes and the governments of the Greek cities formed in some way two distinct classes. With the aid of the Aristotelian polities and our historical examination of Greek governments we may now make some observations which will help us to see whether the assumption was justified by facts.

Firstly, it may be noticed that all governments of Greek tribes were mixed governments containing within them in combination both the rule of the one and the rule of the few, or both the rule of the few and the rule of the many: and all governments of Greek city states were pure or unmixed governments, that is to say pure oligarchy, or pure tyranny, or pure democracy (in so far as a pure democracy is in the nature of things possible). In making this general statement about the governments of city states I do not regard Argolis from the time of Pheidon to 480 B.C., and Athens in the days of Cleisthenes as city states in the strictest sense of the term: for in Argolis the central city of Argos was by no means the sole place of importance, but was counterbalanced by the two ancient cities of Tiryns and Mycenæ, and in Attica in the time of Cleisthenes the rural districts were in some respects as important as the city of Athens.

Secondly, all the governments of the tribes were limited and constitutional, and all the governments of the city states with one possible exception, were absolute or unconstitutional. These propositions might almost be regarded as corollaries to those which preceded them, since in a mixed government the various elements impose limitations on the authority of one another, and ensure that each of them shall be subject to a constitution or general understanding about the exercise of power, while in an unmixed government the ruling person or class is likely to be subject to no restrictions: but it is more satisfactory to establish their truth from history. A moment's consideration shows that the mixed governments which prevailed in the tribes of the heroic age and at ancient Sparta, as well as those in which the military class were the ruling class, were all limited and constitutional. The unmixed governments of the cities were oligarchies, or tyrannies, or democracies. It is obvious that oligarchies and tyrannies were absolute governments, and in a democracy Aristotle tells us that the ruling class, the whole body of citizens, was above the law. The one possible exception occurs in the fully developed Athenian democracy, which was in many respects exceptional among Greek democracies. It is by no means clear that at Athens the mass of the citizens was an absolute ruler. The truth seems to be that it was an absolute ruler in so far that there were no limitations that it could not throw off at pleasure, but in practice it was very much like a constitutional ruler because it voluntarily submitted to formalities which restrained its actions.

Thirdly, in the tribes, government was conducted for the good of the whole community; in the city states, except perhaps Athens, it was conducted for the good of the rulers. After all that has been said, these propositions require no further proving.

We find then that in the tribes governments were mixed, constitutional and, in Aristotle's sense, normal; in the city states they were unmixed, and with one possible exception they were absolute and, in Aristotle's sense, abnormal or perverted.

Now that we have discovered from observation of numerous instances that the governments of the Greek tribes and the governments of the Greek cities stood in strong contrast with one another, we may try to find out the causes to which the contrast was due.

In the case of tribes it is impossible to make out completely why their governments were mixed, constitutional, and normal, because we know but little about the tribes and nothing of their history. But at any rate we may observe that the tribes were militant communities engaged in a constant struggle for existence with other similar communities, and that in such communities it is essential to the safety of each and all of their members that all the classes which contribute to the fighting strength should be kept contented and zealous in the common cause, and that therefore it is necessary that none of those classes should be oppressed and that each should have its fair share in determining their common action.

In the case of city states the reasons why the governments were unmixed, absolute, and abnormal are best seen contrasting a city state with a larger political community: for example, England in the middle ages. In that large political community it was impossible, owing to the size of the territory, the importance of the country districts, and the diverse characters of different districts, for any single person or class to engross all power and become the sole ruler. The size of the territory necessitated the existence of local rulers or magnates, the barons: and diversities of local character made each locality inclined in case of need to act for itself under its own baron. The result was that if any person or class attempted to become omnipotent and oppressive, some of the local districts rose in revolt under their barons and the attempt ended in failure. In a city state all the circumstances were different: the country districts had no strength or importance, the power, whether it was a person or a class, that ruled in the city, met with no resistance from outside the city, and, owing to the small size of the territory, had all its enemies within its reach, and could easily destroy them unless they chose to go into exile.

In my second chapter it was stated tentatively and without proof that there is an intimate connexion between the form of a political body and the form of the government by which it is ruled. The connexion between form of political body and form of government has now been traced in the case of the Greek tribes and cities, and it has been shown that the assumption which I made when I divided the Greek governments before the battle of Chæroneia into tribal governments and city governments was one for which history affords justification.