We will assign a
reason for this when we come to treat of the alterations which
different states are likely to undergo. The middle state is therefore
best, as being least liable to those seditions and insurrections which
disturb the community; and for the same reason extensive governments
are least liable to these inconveniences; for there those in a middle
state are very numerous, whereas in small ones it is easy to pass to
the two extremes, so as hardly to have any in a medium remaining, but
the one half rich, the other poor: and from the same principle it is
that democracies are more firmly established and of longer continuance
than oligarchies; but even in those when there is a want of a proper
number of men of middling fortune, the poor extend their power too
far, abuses arise, and the government is soon at an end.
We ought to consider as a proof of what I now advance, that the best
lawgivers themselves were those in the middle rank of life, amongst
whom was Solon, as is evident from his poems, and Lycurgus, for he was
not a king, and Charondas, and indeed most others. What has been said
will show us why of so many free states some have changed to
democracies, others to oligarchies: for whenever the number of those
in the middle state has been too small, those who were the more
numerous, whether the rich or the poor, always overpowered them and
assumed to themselves the administration of public affairs; from hence
arose either a democracy or an oligarchy.
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