For their duty is but to provide against one
private person doing wrong to another, and therefore to decide disputes
between private persons, as well patricians as commons, and to exact
penalties from delinquents, and even from patricians, syndics, and
senators, as far as they have offended against the laws, whereby all are
bound. But disputes that may arise between cities that are subject to
the dominion, are to be decided in the supreme council.
39. Furthermore the principle regulating the time, for which the judges
should be appointed, is the same in both dominions, and also the
principle of a certain part of them retiring every year; and, lastly,
although it is not necessary for every one of them to be of a different
family, yet it is necessary that two related by blood should not sit on
the same bench together. And this last point is to be observed also in
the other councils, except the supreme one, in which it is enough, if it
be only provided by law that in elections no man may nominate a
relation, nor vote upon his nomination by another, and also that two
relations may not draw lots from the urn for the nomination of any
minister of the dominion. This, I say, is sufficient in a council that
is composed of so large a number of men, and has no special profits
assigned to it. And so utterly unharmed will the dominion be in this
quarter, that it is absurd to pass a law excluding from the supreme
council the relations of all the patricians, as we said in the
fourteenth section.
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