And so, although from terror there arise some
confusion in the republic, yet no one will be able to elude the law and
declare the election of anyone to an illegal military command, without
its being immediately disputed by other candidates; and to settle the
dispute, it will, in the end, be necessary to have recourse to the
constitution ordained once for all, and approved by all, and to order
the affairs of the dominion according to the existing laws. I may
therefore absolutely assert, that as the aristocracy, which is in the
hands of one city only, so especially that which is in the hands of
several, is everlasting, or, in other words, can be dissolved or changed
into another form by no internal cause.
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1. Machiavelli.
2. Cic. ad Quint. Grat. iii. 8, 4. The better reading is "rumour," not
"tumour." "The good" in such a passage means the aristocratic party.
3. Not by law, except before B.C. 287 and in the interval between the
dictatorship of Sulla and the consulship of Pompey and Crassus. But in
the golden age of the republic the senate in fact controlled the
tribunes.
4. Ovid, "Amores," III. iv. 17.
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CHAPTER XI.
OF DEMOCRACY.
I PASS, at length, to the third and perfectly absolute dominion, which
we call democracy. The difference between this and aristocracy consists,
we have said, chiefly in this, that in an aristocracy it depends on the
supreme council's will and free choice only, that this or that man is
made a patrician, so that no one has the right to vote or fill public
offices by inheritance, and that no one can by right demand this right,
as is the case in the dominion, whereof we are now treating.
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