The remedy which Draco proposed by his laws, proving worse than the disease, the whole body of the people applied to Solon, as the only person equal to the difficult task of regulating their government. The supreme power of the state was at that time vested in nine magistrates, termed archons or governors, elected annually by the people out of the body of the nobility. But the community in general was split into three factions, each contending for such a form of government as was most agreeable to their different interests. The most sensible amongst the Athenians, dreading the consequence of these divisions, were willing, as Plutarch informs us, to invest Solon with absolute power; but our disinterested philosopher was a stranger to that kind of ambition, and preferred the freedom and happiness of his countrymen to the splendour of a crown.[48] He continued the archons in their office as usual, but limited their authority by instituting a senate of four hundred persons elected by the people, by way of ballot, out of the four tribes into which the community was at that time divided. He revived and improved the senate and court of Areopagus, the most sacred and most respectable tribunal, not only of Greece, but of all which we ever read of in history.[49] The integrity and equity of this celebrated court was so remarkable, that not only the Greeks, but the Romans, sometimes, submitted such causes to their determination which they found too intricate and difficult for their own decision. To prevent all suspicion of partiality either to plaintiff or defendant, this venerable court heard all causes and passed their definitive sentence in the dark, and the pleaders on either side were strictly confined to a bare representation of the plain truth of the fact, without either aggravation or embellishment. For all the ornament of fine language, and those powers of rhetorick which tended to bias the judgment by interesting the passions of the judges, were absolutely prohibited. Happy if the pleaders were restricted to this righteous method in our own courts of judicature, where great eloquence and great abilities are too often employed to confound truth and support injustice!