means there will be the same number of them also as was mentioned.
Besides, different judges may be joined together; I mean those who are
chosen out of the whole people or part of them or both; so that all
three may sit together in the same court, and this either by vote,
lot, or both. And thus much for the different sorts of judges. Of these
appointments that which admits all the community to be judges in all
causes is most suitable to a democracy; the second, which appoints that
certain persons shall judge all causes, to an oligarchy; the third,
which appoints the whole community to be judges in some causes, but
particular persons in others, to an aristocracy or free state.
BOOK V
CHAPTER I
We have now gone through those particulars we proposed to speak of; it
remains that we next consider from what causes and how alterations
in government arise, and of what nature they are, and to what the
destruction of each state is owing; and also to what form any form of
polity is most likely to shift into, and what are the means to be
used for the general preservation of governments, as well as what are
applicable to any particular state; and also of the remedies which
are to be applied either to all in general, or to any one considered
separately, when they are in a state of corruption: and here we ought
first to lay down this principle, that there are many governments, all
of which approve of what is just and what is analogically equal; and yet
have failed from attaining thereunto, as we have already mentioned; thus
democracies have arisen from supposing that those who are equal in one
thing are so in every other circumstance; as, because they are equal
in liberty, they are equal in everything else; and oligarchies, from
supposing that those who are unequal in one thing are unequal in all;
that when men are so in point of fortune, that inequality extends to
everything else. Hence it follows, that those who in some respects are
equal with others think it right to endeavour to partake of an equality
with them in everything; and those who are superior to others endeavour
to get still more; and it is this more which is the inequality: thus
most states, though they have some notion of what is just, yet are
almost totally wrong; and, upon this account, when either party has not
that share in the administration which answers to his expectations, he
becomes seditious: but those who of all others have the greatest right
to be so are the last that are; namely, those who excel in virtue;
for they alone can be called generally superior. There are, too, some
persons of distinguished families who, because they are so, disdain to
be on an equality with others, for those esteem themselves noble who
boast of their ancestors' merit and fortune: these, to speak truth, are
the origin and fountain from whence seditions arise. The alterations
which men may propose to make in governments are two; for either they