aristocracy is a breakwater against despotism, even if there is no middle class as yet in existence to join them. If they are alone, they cannot generally make head against a tyrannical government; but if there is a people, this may be within the power of the two classes united. In a limited or mixed monarchy a nobility has been thought to be a kind of mediating power between the throne and the common mass of people. There is some truth in this, where the upper class keeps its independence and is sure of its position against democratic violence. The barons of England were not content with wresting from King John privileges for themselves, but included all free Englishmen; and the barons in the times of Henry III. called the representatives of shires with those of towns, to parliament. There has always been a party in the nobility against rotten boroughs, and in favor of extending suffrage. But in other countries it took a great while to approach the position where a large number of the English. nobility stood even in the fourteenth century.

An aristocracy in a republic as it is called, that is, where there is nothing higher than they are, has almost always been a harsh and haughty, or a divided order. Nowhere has aristocracy, whether titled or untitled, coalesced. with a strong democracy, but the two orders have quarrelled, and the aristocracy has been divided within itself, one part holding with the people. The result was, as we saw in Rome, in the Greek and the Italian aristocracies, a tyranny or a democracy predominant. If the pride of a governing order would permit them to bring within the circle of their privileges all among the commons who distinguished themselves by great achievements, wealth or talents, they might keep their place, although they might have to modify their spirit. But a government of an aristocracy is so incapable of union, so unequal to suit itself to the effects of changes in property which time brings with it, so narrow often in the views which circulate among its members, that it seems, for more reasons than one, as we have had occasion to say before, to be the weakest and most uncertain of all governments.

The British aristocracy has been made to fit into the system of polity in a very wise manner. In the first place, there is no broad line separating between the nobility and the common people. The knights and baronets, and the higher aristocracy, have the right of marrying into families of commoners, against which the German laws of ebenbürtigkeit draw a strict line, and the younger branches of titled families are finally merged in the people; while yet there is a certain healthy stimulus from the consciousness of a respectable birth, preventing them from leading a dependent or a listless life. These are so many pathways over a chasm which the aristocracies in other countries have not been willing, if able, to bridge. Then, again, the British system is a wise one, as far as relates to supplying new recruits to the aristocracy and the peerage. Without being intended as a bribe, this way of creating new peers secures the support of the government by new men representing a fresh class in society. The old families must continually become fewer, not only for the reasons which diminish the number of families of an average respectability on the male or on both sides, but because their position supplies them with few motives to put a check on self-indulgence. They have in general, also, more stagnation of intellect than families under the influence of a desire to rise. Probably a peerage descending in the male line, if unreplenished, would in a few centuries almost run out.

Whether, in the future, hereditary aristocracies can maintain themselves, when so many men of intelligence and wealth do not share their privileges, is very doubtful. And it is certain that the feeling of equality of rights, running, as it is apt to do from the sphere of private into that of political rights, will oppose all institutions which give a few men a special and exceptional power-not as representatives, but as a privileged hereditary class. But of this we intend to speak under the head of revolutions in government. Whether the place of a hereditary peerage can be supplied by a house of illustrious men, selected on account of their wisdom or distinguished services, without reference to birth, and either elected by the

country or named by some nominating power, or in part, at least, open to certain men who have filled high stations, is discussed in another place. (§ 223.)

This, however, seems certain, that no laws which keep landed property in a family, or restrict marriage between the orders of society can long accomplish the end for which they are enacted—that is, the end of keeping their blood pure and preventing such property from passing out of their hands. When a country feels that such institutions are intended to prevent the natural influences of wealth acquired by industry and of superior untitled intelligence; when they are regarded as a support of undeserved hereditary rights, which in themselves imply merit and intelligence, the fall of a peerage with legislative rights is not far off. Whether the nobility fall or not, its control in politics must cease.

Whether a municipal town under the supremacy of national law, yet having some self-government, may not have an upper class with somewhat more of privilege than the body of the inhabitants, without falling into the evils to which small states, like many Greek states, Milan, Florence, and other city-states have been subject, is a question of some interest. Certain it is that those towns of Europe, in the middle ages, which contained such a class and yet were subject to a national or other considerable feudal power, were not in a condition to fall into such evils. And yet, in their origin and through their early growth, they had the same general development with Milan, Florence, and many Italian cities. It is easy to see from the sketch of the Florentine constitution how the larger part of the miseries aud faults of the republic grew out of its practical independence. But we cannot take up the consideration of such towns and their civil order until we come to treat of municipal government together with centralization and distribution of power by themselves.

CHAPTER VI.

DEMOCRACY AND DEMOCRACIES.

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WE understand by democracy the polity in which the people or community, as an organized whole, has the chief power in its hands, and can through its agents manage the government for what seems to it to be its welfare. The doctrine that all power is ultimately derived from the community may be consistent with the choice of a life-long tyrant or a hereditary line of kings; but the transfer of power to an authority like either of these destroys the democracy itself, even if the tyrant or the king administers affairs for the general good and not for his own separate interests. On the other hand, when there exists a clearly defined democracy, the welfare of the lower class, or of a party or of a section of the country may be aimed at by the government, to the injury of the country as a whole, without putting an end to the democracy. The form determines its nature, the spirit its quality.

Again, we may doubt whether a polity deserves the name of a democracy, when a considerable number of citizens are excluded from political rights. One case of this kind we have considered-that where a large body of slaves exists and the active citizens do not amount to half their number. The polity would be seriously affected if they should be set free and receive civic rights. It would then be a democracy indeed, but would it be such if they remained in servitude? The ancients, where slaves were found under every form of polity, did not count them in at all, as changing the forms of states, any more than children and women. They were in all polities a caput mortuum, and did not affect the differences between one polity and another.

It may be asked again whether that be a democracy where restrictions on the right of suffrage or the right of holding office confine the actual control of affairs to a few hands. Here we refer to political restrictions, because there may be, there always is, a very great majority of citizens who have no chance in their whole life of holding office. In regard to suffrage, it may be said that the more it excludes from office or from the power of choosing others, the more it approaches to aristocracy; but so long as the qualification for active citizenship can be overcome by thrift or intelligence, and actually excludes a few of the whole only, so long the democracy is unaffected either in its form or its spirit: in its form, because no permanent line of birth or of any other personal property is drawn; in its spirit, because the intelligent class of society can and must perceive that what is best for all is best for them, while a great mass of voters without property or intelligence can only be led by demagogues who regard the true interests of neither portion of the community.

And hence, among the variety of forms that may be conceived of, we may doubt whether certain ones belong to aristocracies or to democracies; we may call a polity a very mild type of aristocracy, or a democracy with aristocratic leanings. But this is inevitable, for while in the material world nature has definite, almost unchangeable species, in the moral and political spheres there is no such fixity.

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The size of a democratic state has nothing to do with its Small and large nature; and yet, in order that a large one may democratic states. be true to the idea, the principle of representation must be introduced into it, and thus a most important difference arises between two types of this polity. The early states being small, and those around the Mediterranean being gathered chiefly within walls for the purposes of defence, the democracies, when their era came, had no need of a representative system. Their size made the meeting of the citizens in assemblies an easy thing, and the political habits thus