For
government is the ordering of the magistracies of the state; and these
the community share between themselves, either as they can attain them
by force, or according to some common equality which there is amongst
them, as poverty, wealth, or something which they both partake of.
There must therefore necessarily be as many different forms of
governments as there are different ranks in the society, arising from
the superiority of some over others, and their different situations.
And these seem chiefly to be two, as they say, of the winds: namely,
the north and the south; and all the others are declinations from
these. And thus in politics, there is the government of the many and
the government of the few; or a democracy and an oligarchy: for an
aristocracy may be considered as a species of oligarchy, as being also
a government of the few; and what we call a free state may be
considered as a democracy: as in the winds they consider the west as
part of the north, and the east as part of the south: and thus it is
in music, according to some, who say there are only two species of it,
the Doric and the Phrygian, and all other species of composition they
call after one of these names; and many people are accustomed to
consider the nature of government in the same light; but it is both
more convenient and more correspondent to truth to distinguish
governments as I have done, into two species: one, of those which are
established upon proper principles; of which there may be one or two
sorts: the other, which includes all the different excesses of these;
so that we may compare the best form of government to the most
harmonious piece of music; the oligarchic and despotic to the more
violent tunes; and the democratic to the soft and gentle airs.
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