Page:Montesquieu - The spirit of laws.djvu/291

Rh An elective monarchy like that of Rome, necessarily supposeth a powerful aristocratic body to support it; without which it changes immediately into tyranny or into a popular state. But a popular state has no need of this distinction of families to maintain itself. To this it was owing that the Patricians, who were a necessary part of the constitution under the regal government, became a superfluous branch under the consuls: the people could suppress them without hurting themselves, and change the constitution without corrupting it.

After Servius Tullius had reduced the Patricians, it was natural that Rome should fall from the regal hands into those or the people. But the people had no occasion to be afraid of relapsing under a regal power, by reducing the Patricians.

A state may alter two different ways, either by the amendment or by the corruption of the constitution. If it has preserved its principles and the constitution changes, it is owing to its amendment; if upon changing the constitution its principles are lost, it is because it has been corrupted.

Rome after the expulsion of the kings, should naturally have been a democracy. The people had already the legislative power in their hands; it was their unanimous consent that had expelled the kings; and if they had not continued steady in those principles, the Tarquins might easily have been restored. To pretend that their design in expelling them was to render themselves slaves to a few families, is quite unreasonable. The situation therefore of things required that Rome should be a democracy; and yet it was not. There was a Rh