The mischiefs which Aristotle regarded as attendant on democracies have certainly been found in some governments which have borne that name. Aristotle could not have denounced them as he does unless he had seen them exemplified in some Greek democracies: in the governments (nominally at least democratic), which ruled in Paris during the French Revolution, all and more than all the evils that he describes were to be found. Athens was practically exempt from them, and we may seek causes for its immunity. One cause, the long training that the Athenians went through under the constitution of Cleisthenes, has been already noticed: the other was that at Athens the principles on which Greek democracy was founded were actually followed out in the daily life of the community, the citizens gave their time and attention to the work of government, and the people was far more truly a self-governing people than any other that has ever existed. From what has just been said it will be seen that I regard Athens as the sole historical example of a true democracy in the Greek sense of the term. The Florentine Republic after 1324 A.D. is often compared with the Athenian democracy: but, out of the three characteristics of Greek democracy, the Florentine constitution had only the two least important: the citizens had indeed, as far as possible, equal shares in the enjoyment of office, and the assembly was free to do as it liked: but the assembly was rarely convoked, and the true governors were not the assembled citizens, but some fifty citizens selected by drawing lots every two months or every four months to fill the various magistracies and boards which ruled the city[244]. In modern Switzerland some faint traces of actual self-government by the citizens can be detected in the yearly assemblies held in four of the smaller cantons, and in the cantonal and federal Referenda, or popular votes on new laws: but they are no more than traces, and do not make the Swiss government at all like the Athenian: and, beside this, Switzerland is a federal state while Athens was a city, and for that reason the two states are so unlike that it is useless to compare them. [244] Hallam, _Middle Ages_, chapter III.: in the cabinet edition, vol. I. pages 421-423.