“There is nothing that more characterizes a complete citizen,” says Aristotle, “than having a share in the judicial and executive part of the government.... He, and he only, is a citizen who enjoys a due share in the government of that community of which he is a member.” But Aristotle was speaking from the point of view of a community in which not all individuals there resident were the sort of citizens he was talking about. According to that great Greek the best-ordered states did not include in the term “citizen” mechanics or others who worked for wages, and utterly unmentionable in any such connection was the great mass of slaves who had virtually no human rights at all. Aristotle’s “citizen” was one of the relatively few endowed with political rights and responsibilities. In the Greek city-states and in the early Roman Republic, citizenship was at first restricted to certain of the older houses (_phylos, gentes_), but with the development of economic intercourse the few dominant families gradually lost their exclusive power, and other free inhabitants were included in participation in the affairs of state. In Rome the right of citizenship was conferred at first upon the leading families in allied cities, and later upon whole communities. By the year 100 B.C., nearly all Italians were citizens. But the Empire brought about great restrictions in this matter; a gradual narrowing of the limitations took place; along with a great extension of the name “citizen” came a great decrease in the actual participation of the “citizen” in the business of government; so that by the time the Emperor Caracalla was extending something called “citizenship” to all Roman subjects, he actually was doing little more than to make certain intolerable taxes universal. So the old Greek and Roman idea of “citizenship” will not answer our purpose. We have, however imperfect our realization of the fact, something quite different to offer, something vastly greater to demand.