“The Council of the Bean (as was shown by my Lord Navarchus de Paralo in his full discourse), being the proposing Senate of Athens (for that of the Areopagites was a judicatory), consisted of 400, some say 500 senators, elected annually, all at once, and by a mere lot without suffrage. Wherefore though the Senate, to correct the temerity of the lot, had power to cast out such as they should judge unworthy of that honor, this related to manners only, and was not sufficient to repair the commonwealth, which by such means became impotent; and forasmuch as her Senate consisted not of the natural aristocracy, which in a commonwealth is the only spur and rein of the people, it was cast headlong by the rashness of her demagogues or grandees into ruin; while her Senate, like the Roman tribunes (who almost always, instead of governing, were rather governed by the multitude), proposed not to the result only, but to the debate also of the people, who were therefore called to the pulpits, where some vomited, and others drank, poison. “The Senate of Lacedaemon, most truly discovered by my Lord Laco de Scytale, consisted but of thirty for life, whereof the two kings, having but single votes, were hereditary, the rest elected by the free suffrage of the people, but out of such as were sixty years of age. These had the whole debate of the commonwealth in themselves, and proposed to the result only of the people. And now the riddle which I have heretofore found troublesome to unfold, is out; that is to say, why Athens and Lacedaemon, consisting each of the Senate and the people, the one should be held a democracy, and the other an aristocracy, or laudable oligarchy, as it is termed by Isocrates; for that word is not, wherever you meet it, to be branded, Seeing it is used also by Aristotle, Plutarch, and others, sometimes in a good sense. The main difference was that the people in this had the result only, and in that the debate and result, too. But for my part, where the people have the election of the Senate, not bound to a distinct order, and the result, which is the sovereign power, I hold them to have that share in the government (the Senate being not for life) whereof, with the safety of the commonwealth, they are capable in nature, and such a government, for that cause, to be democracy; though I do not deny but in Lacedaemon, the paucity of the senators considered, it might be called oligarchy, in comparison of Athens; or, if we look on their continuance for life, though they had been more, aristocracy.