This experiment gave Solon a thorough insight into the temper of his countrymen, and most probably induced him to accommodate his subsequent regulations to the humour and prejudices of the people. For as he wanted the authority which naturally arises from royal birth, as well as that which is founded on the unlimited confidence of the people, advantages which Lycurgus possessed in so eminent a degree, he was obliged to consult rather what was practicable, than what was strictly right; and endeavour, as far as he was able, to please all parties. That he acknowledged this, seems evident from his answer to one who asked him “whether the laws he had given the Athenians were the best he could possibly have made?”[51] “They are the best,” replied Solon, “which the Athenians are capable of receiving.” Thus whilst he confined the magistracies and the executive part of the government solely to the rich, he lodged the supreme power in the hands of the poorer citizens. For though every freeman whose fortune did not amount to a particular census or estimate, was excluded from all state offices by the laws of Solon; yet he had a legal right of giving his opinion and suffrage in the Εκκλησια or assembly of the people, which was wholly composed of this inferior class of citizens. But as all elections, and all cases of appeal from the superior courts were determined by the voices of this assembly; as no law could pass without their approbation, and the highest officers in the republick were subject to their censure, this assembly became the _dernier resort_ in all causes, and this mob government, as it may be justly termed, was the great leading cause of the ruin of their republick. Anacharsis the Scythian philosopher, who at that time resided with Solon, justly ridiculed this excess of power which he had lodged in the people.[52] For when he had heard some points debated, first in the senate, and afterwards decided in the assembly of the people, he humourously told Solon, that at Athens “wise men debated, but fools decided.” Solon was as sensible of this capital defect as Anacharsis; but he was too well acquainted with the licentiousness and natural levity of the people, to divest them of a power, which he knew they would resume by violence at the first opportunity. The utmost therefore he could do was to fix his two senates as the moorings of the constitution.[53] That of four hundred, to secure the state against the fluctuating temper and tumultuous fury of the people;[54] that of the areopagus, to restrain the dangerous encroachments of the great and wealthy.[55] He repealed all the laws of Draco, those against murder alone excepted; rightly judging, as Plutarch remarks, that it was not only most iniquitous, but most absurd, to inflict the same punishment upon a man for being idle, or stealing a cabbage or an apple out of a garden, as for committing murder or sacrilege.[56] But as the account