Basil Edward Hammond

“ In such a government there was no likelihood that either the rich citizens could oppress the poor or the poor could oppress the rich: it was in short what Aristotle afterwards called a Polity, or the rule of all the citizens conducted for the good of the whole community. There is every reason to believe that no government with precisely the same qualities existed elsewhere in Greece: for, if there had been one, Aristotle, who admired such governments beyond all others, would have mentioned it in his Politics. ”

“ To resist such a people as the Macedonians the Greeks would have had to do the impossible: to unlearn in a moment all the maxims of jealous precaution against rival cities by which they had regulated their conduct, to give up the practice of politics in miniature and understand at once what was needed in politics on a larger scale. As it was, the old jealousy between Athens and Sparta continued to be as active as ever, only one or two Greek states joined in resistance to the invader, and after the battle of Chæroneia in 338 B.C. Greece lay at the mercy of Philip king of Macedonia. ”

“ I must premise that I shall call some of the groups political communities, meaning by a political community a number of persons living under one government and also having much else in common besides government: the rest I shall call political aggregates, meaning by a political aggregate a number of persons or bodies of persons living under one government and having nothing else or very little else in common. ”

“ The federal system of government combined many advantages. It enabled the Greeks to continue to live as members of small self-governing communities—a way of living to which the physical features of their country naturally led them, and to which they were deeply attached: it gave them, through their union, much greater security than they could have enjoyed without it: and it formed a large part of them into a community that more resembled a nation than anything else that had yet arisen in Greece. ”

“ Hence it is clear that, while kingship, aristocracy, polity, democracy, oligarchy and tyranny were polities, and each of them was a form on which a whole government either real or ideal could be erected, four of them at least, kingship, aristocracy, democracy and oligarchy, were also forms on which a part of a government could be constructed, and which entered in very various combinations into the making of actual governments. ”

“ Aristocracy is constituted on the principle that power belongs to those few best men who are best qualified to use it for the good of the community230. The principle that power is based upon merit belongs to the best kind of monarchy, as we have just seen, and the only difference between aristocracy and this best kingship is that aristocracy gives the power to more than one and kingship to one only. ”

“ The common folk, being a monarch, determines to rule as a monarch owing no obedience to the constitution, so that, becoming a despot, it esteems most highly those men who flatter it the most: and this kind of democracy holds the same place among popular governments as tyranny among kingly governments. The same temper and character is found in this democracy as in tyranny: both of them are arbitrary rulers of the better citizens, only the one rules by resolutions, the other by decrees, and the one is influenced by demagogues, the other by personal adulators238. ”

“ 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. ”

“ For the rule of a heterogeneous empire the institutions of a city and even of an expanded city proved utterly unsuitable: and it was necessary that both the conquering city and the dominions which it had conquered should submit to be ruled under a centralised and despotic system of government adapted to the needs of a heterogeneous empire. The right system was only gradually made, but it had been completed by the death of the Emperor Constantine the Great in 337 A.D.
But it is time to return to the Germans: for the Germans were the successors of the Romans as masters of Western Europe. ”

“ But the possibility that a political body may be in two classes at once does not occur except during those periods when a community is gradually growing out of one form and into another. Such periods of transition have occurred in the history of many peoples: there was one in Greek history when the tribes were growing into cities: one in Roman history when the Republic was ceasing to be a mere enlarged city and was growing into a heterogeneous empire: and one in English history when the English were losing the character of a tribe and acquiring the qualities of a nation. ”

“ In 480 B.C., when the Spartans were at the height of their power, just after their king Leonidas and his three hundred had made their heroic defence at Thermopylæ, Xerxes asked Demaratus, who had once been king of Sparta but had been deposed, to tell him how many warriors remained to the Lacedæmonians and how many of them were as brave as the three hundred; Demaratus replied: "O king, the number of the Lacedæmonians is great and their cities are many: thou shalt know what thou desirest to learn. ”

“ In some cases two European nations or a European nation and some other European population have been brought under a single government: in other cases a European nation has expanded by the foundation of colonies far away from its original abode: and yet again in some cases a European state has conquered a host of non-European peoples and formed them into a heterogeneous empire dependent on itself. ”

“ The process of ostracism was devised to guard the state against any future demagogue who might, like Pisistratus, aspire to make himself a tyrant, and perhaps also against the recurrence of such a contest for the chief power as had arisen between Cleisthenes and Isagoras. The public assembly could, without naming any person, order that on a fixed date a vote should be taken in which each citizen might write on a potsherd the name of any man who ought in his opinion to be banished. ”

“ The marks then of a pure democracy as conceived by Aristotle are these: (1) All the citizens, and more especially the poor citizens, actively and habitually control the business of government, and come together in frequent general assemblies for that purpose: (2) The assembly of citizens is free to do whatever it pleases, not being bound to conform to any law, precedent, or established constitution: (3) Every citizen has, as far as the nature of things permits, an equal share with every other citizen of political power and the enjoyment of office. ”

“ Tyranny, the rule of one man for his private interest, has been exemplified in the stories of the despots of Corinth and Athens. For other instances we must go to the great storehouse of illustrations of tyranny, the mediæval history of Italy where, besides the well known despots Eccelin da Romano, the Visconti, the Medici, and Cesar Borgia, there is such a host of minor tyrants that pages might be filled with a mere enumeration of their names. ”

“ Although Athens ought, according to the modern use of terms, to be called rather an aristocracy than a democracy, it seems to be certain that the men actually and habitually employed in the daily work of government bore numerically a larger proportion to the whole population in ancient Athens than they have done in any other state known to history. ”

“ The Esquimaux, who live by catching seals and other marine animals, are not precluded from grouping their huts in small clusters: but nature offers so little reward to any combined effort of a large number of men that they have never cared to form political communities: and they afford perhaps the only example of human beings living as neighbours but without government. Leaving these very exceptional cases, we next observe a group of hunting peoples with whom nature dealt less unkindly. ”

“ In order to complete our survey of the chief political communities of the middle ages we must glance at northern Italy and Switzerland. Northern Italy contained many important towns which had been founded by the Romans: during the early part of the middle ages it became the commercial centre of Europe: the towns grew in wealth and influence, and before the year 1200 they succeeded in making themselves independent, and constituted themselves as city states, resembling the city states of ancient Greece. ”

“ There is something of oligarchy wherever the enjoyment of public office is limited to those who have a certain amount of property: there is a larger element of oligarchy if the qualifying amount is fixed extremely high, or if the body of rulers fill up vacancies in their own number, or if offices descend from father to son: and the state is completely oligarchic if, besides all this, the law does not control the rulers but the rulers control the law245. We may detect a minute trace of oligarchy in Solon's constitution which excluded the poorest citizens from the archonship. ”

“ We know that at Athens the whole mass of the citizens were able at any moment to do whatever they liked, subject to no restraint except from the Graphê Paranomôn and from their own characters and inclinations: and it seems certain that in every Greek city mentioned by the Greek writers as democratically governed the citizens were still more free from restraint: for many of the best and most careful writers were great admirers of artificial restraints on democracy, and if any city had provided itself with such restraints the fact would have been recorded. ”

“ There is no instance in Greek history of an aristocracy pure and simple. The most aristocratic governments in Greece were those of the tribes in the heroic age and the government of Sparta before 500 B.C.: but all these were instances of aristocracy combined with kingship. The elders who formed the Spartan council were selected for merit and the councils were aristocratic: but the kingly power was important as well as the power of the council, and the Spartan government is to be classed as a monarchy with a large element of aristocracy. ”

“ But it must be observed that what was an ideal democracy in the eyes of the Greeks was not an ideal democracy according to the views of our own time. When we speak of a democracy we generally mean a system of government in which the whole adult male population have some sort of control over public affairs. ”

“ In Attica at that time, as in all parts of ancient Greece at all times, the population consisted partly of free men (i.e. the citizens) and their families, and partly of slaves. In matters of government the decision of great matters rested with the assembly of all the free men: but, as most of the free men lived habitually in the country and the assembly met only about once in a month, the management of current business was left to the Archons for the year and the permanent council of the Areopagus composed of Archons and ex-Archons. ”

“ A state formed by colonial expansion presents difficulties to any one who tries to define its nature. It is like a family of plants all sprung from one stock; the stock has sent out offshoots, which have themselves struck root, but are still connected with the parent stock from which they sprang. ”

“ Turning to federal states, which form the fourth class of political communities, we find that all of them are alike in having a central government both legislative and executive, whose sphere of action is strictly limited by the constitution to certain portions of the work of governing, and in permitting each of the states, which are joined together in the federation, also to have a government of its own, which controls all business except that portion which is allotted by the constitution to the central government of the federation. ”

“ The business of the assembly at Ithaca was not exactly judicial and can scarcely be described as deliberation on policy. Telemachus summoned the elders and the people in order to declare to them that the proceedings of the suitors were intolerable to him, that he bade them leave his house, that he would resist them by force, if he could, and that if they were slain in his house no price for their lives would be due from him to their kindred. ”

“ It is clear that a government which allows the mass of the citizens to do whatever they choose must be beset with dangers, unless the citizens have learned habits of self-restraint and mutual forbearance from a long and gradual political education. ”

“ It is shown by the case of Aratus that the Achæans were more anxious that their strategus should be a good foreign minister than that he should be a good commander-in-chief: for though Aratus was a very poor general and lost many battles, his countrymen set such a value on his skill in dealing with foreign affairs that they elected him over and over again—not indeed in successive years, for the constitution forbade it—but as often as the law allowed. ”

“ In the prehistoric age the Athenians and all the Dorian peoples were conquering peoples: and all of them made their conquests under the leadership of kings. In the next age, which came between the heroic period and the beginning of Greek history in the proper sense of the word, the great majority of the Greek peoples had ceased to acquire new territory within Greece and had also ceased or were ceasing to be monarchically governed: two peoples, the Spartans and the Argives, were exceptional both in continuing to make territorial conquests and in still living under kingly rule. ”

“ The constitution, in the time of the Peloponnesian war, was arranged, in nearly all respects, according to the principles which the Greeks regarded as distinctive of ideal or extreme democracy, and tended to ensure firstly that all citizens should be equally treated in the distribution of offices, and secondly that the general assembly should be free to do as it liked. ”

“ Aristotle says that "speculation about the ideally best polity is nothing else than a discussion of kingship and aristocracy": and that "kingship must be a mere name and not a reality, unless it is justified by a vast superiority of the reigning king over his subjects":—a condition that can rarely if ever be fulfilled. ”