For all,
who are born of citizen parents, or on the soil of the country, or who
have deserved well of the republic, or have accomplished any other
conditions upon which the law grants to a man right of citizenship; they
all, I say, have a right to demand for themselves the right to vote in
the supreme council and to fill public offices, nor can they be refused
it, but for crime or infamy.
2. If, then, it is by a law appointed, that the elder men only, who have
reached a certain year of their age, or the first-born only, as soon as
their age allows, or those who contribute to the republic a certain sum
of money, shall have the right of voting in the supreme council and
managing the business of the dominion; then, although on this system the
result might be, that the supreme council would be composed of fewer
citizens than that of the aristocracy of which we treated above, yet,
for all that, dominions of this kind should be called democracies,
because in them the citizens, who are destined to manage affairs of
state, are not chosen as the best by the supreme council, but are
destined to it by a law. And although for this reason dominions of this
kind, that is, where not the best, but those who happen by chance to be
rich, or who are born eldest, are destined to govern, are thought
inferior to an aristocracy; yet, if we reflect on the practice or
general condition of mankind, the result in both cases will come to the
same thing.
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