Page:Montesquieu - The spirit of laws.djvu/66

14 cast an eye on the continual series of surprising elections made by the Athenians and Romans; which no one surely will attribute to hazard.

We know that though the people of Rome assumed to themselves the right of raising plebeians to public offices, yet they could not resolve to chuse them; and though at Athens the magistrates were allowed by the law of Aristides, to be elected from all the different classes of inhabitants, yet there never was case, says Xenophon, that the common people petitioned for employments that could endanger their security or glory.

As most citizens have a capacity of chusing, though they are not sufficiently qualified to be chosen, so the people, though capable of calling others to an account for their administration, are incapable of the administration themselves.

The public business must be carried on, with a certain motion neither too quick nor too slow. But the motion of the people is always either too remiss or too violent. Sometimes with a hundred thousand arms they overturn all before them; and sometimes with a hundred thousand feet they creep like insects.

In a popular state the inhabitants are divided into certain classes. It is in the manner of making this division that great legislators have signalized themselves, and it is on this the duration and prosperity of democracy have always depended.

Servius Tullius followed the spirit of aristocracy in the distribution of his classes. We find in Livy and in Dionysius Halicarnasseus, in what manner he lodged the right of suffrage in the hands of the principal citizens. He had divided Rh