Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Book ILytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron
History
Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Book I
Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron
Athens (Greece) -- History
was in its nature certain of democratic advances. The moment you
widen the suffrage, you may date the commencement of universal
suffrage. He who enjoys certain advantages from the possession of ten
acres, will excite a party against him in those who have nine; and the
arguments that had been used for the franchise of the one are equally
valid for the franchise of the other. Limitations of power by
property are barriers against a tide which perpetually advances.
Timocracy, therefore, almost invariably paved the way to democracy.
But still the old aristocratic faction, constantly invaded, remained
powerful, stubborn, and resisting, and there was scarcely a state in
Greece that did not contain the two parties which we find to-day in
England, and in all free states--the party of the movement to the
future, and the party of recurrence to the past; I say the past, for
in politics there is no present! Wherever party exists, if the one
desire fresh innovations, so the other secretly wishes not to preserve
what remains, but to restore what has been. This fact it is necessary
always to bear in mind in examining the political contests of the
Athenians. For in most of their domestic convulsions we find the
cause in the efforts of the anti-popular party less to resist new
encroachments than to revive departed institutions. But though in
most of the Grecian states were two distinct orders, and the
Eupatrids, or "Well-born," were a class distinct from, and superior
to, that of the commonalty, we should err in supposing that the
separate orders made the great political divisions. As in England the
more ancient of the nobles are often found in the popular ranks, so in
the Grecian states many of the Eupatrids headed the democratic party.
And this division among themselves, while it weakened the power of the
well-born, contributed to prevent any deadly or ferocious revolutions:
for it served greatly to soften the excesses of the predominant
faction, and every collision found mediators between the contending
parties in some who were at once friends of the people and members of
the nobility. Nor should it be forgotten that the triumph of the
popular party was always more moderate than that of the antagonist
faction--as the history of Athens will hereafter prove.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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