Page:The City-State of the Greeks and Romans.djvu/116

92 a certain social condition. It is, in fact, in one sense a less natural form of constitution than either aristocracy or democracy. Each of these is the direct and natural political expression of a state of society. If the rich or the well-born exercise a predominant influence in a State, the resulting political form is aristocracy or oligarchy; if the poor or the low-born carry the full weight which their numbers would naturally bring them, the resulting political form is democracy. But of what is monarchy the political expression? Neither in an aristocratic nor in a democratic state of society is monarchy entirely secure, because it cannot fully represent the needs, the feelings, or the prejudices of that society. When, as we shall see in the next chapter, it was called in to lead the first popular impulse in the cities of the Greek world, it was speedily rejected as soon as that work of leadership was accomplished — the Greek tyrannies were proverbially of short duration. And in the age of which we are now speaking, where it existed in an aristocratic society, though much longer lived, it could not be permanent, simply because it represented that society ever more and more inadequately.

All history teaches us that aristocracies have a strong tendency to grow steadily narrower; that their sentiment and privilege alike increase in strength with time. Now a monarchy may serve fairly well as the political expression of an aristocratic society, but the narrower and more prejudiced that society grows, the less chance will the monarchy