Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/431

 CHA*-. IX. NEW PRINCirLES OF GOVERNMENT. 425 And if the sacerdotal class had tried to defend them, it was not in the name of the public interest; it was in the name of religious tradition. But in the period which we now enter, tradition no longer holds empire, and religion no longer governs. The i*egulating prin- ciple from which all institutions now derive their au- thority — the only one which is above individual willsr and which obliges them all to submit — is public inter- est. What the Latins call res publica, the Greeks ji) yoip6i-, replaces the old religion. This is what, from this time, establishes institutions and laws, and by this all the important acts of cities are judged. In the de- liberations of senates, or of jiopular assemblies, when a law is discussed, or a form of government, or a question of private right, or a political institution, no one any longer asks what religion prescribes, but what the gen- eral interest demands. A saying is attributed to Solon which well charac- terizes this new regime. Some one asked him if he had given his country the best constitution. "No," he replied, "but the one which is the best suited to it." Now it was something quite new to expect in forms of gov- ernment, and in laws, only a relative merit. The an- cient constitutions, founded upon the rules of a worship^ were proclaimed infallible and immutable. They pos- sessed the rigor and inflexibility of the religion. Solon indicated by this answer that, in future, political con- stitutions should conform to the wants, the manners, and the interests of the men of each age. There was no longer a question of absolute truth; the rules of government were for the future to be flexible and va- riable. It is said that Solon wished at the most that his laws might be observed for a hundred years. The precepts of public interest are not so absolutcv