There are also
certain magistrates peculiar to certain states--as the pre-advisers
are not proper in a democracy, but a senate is; for one such order is
necessary, whose business shall be to consider beforehand and prepare
those bills which shall be brought before the people that they may
have leisure to attend to their own affairs; and when these are few in
number the state inclines to an oligarchy. The pre-advisers indeed
must always be few for they are peculiar to an oligarchy: and where
there are both these offices in the same state, the pre-adviser's is
superior to the senator's, the one having only a democratical power,
the other an oligarchical: and indeed the [1300a] power of the senate
is lost in those democracies, in which the people, meeting in one
public assembly, take all the business into their own hands; and this
is likely to happen either when the community in general are in easy
circumstances, or when they are paid for their attendance; for they
are then at leisure often to meet together and determine everything
for themselves. A magistrate whose business is to control the manners
of the boys, or women, or who takes any department similar to this, is
to be found in an aristocracy, not in a democracy; for who can forbid
the wives of the poor from appearing in public? neither is such a one
to be met with in an oligarchy; for the women there are too delicate
to bear control. And thus much for this subject. Let us endeavour to
treat at large of the establishment of magistrates, beginning from
first principles.
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