BOOK IV - CHAPTER XII

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_ After what has been said, it follows that we should now show what
particular form of government is most suitable for particular persons;
first laying this down as a general maxim, that that party which
desires to support the actual administration of the state ought always
to be superior to that which would alter it. Every city is made up of
quality and quantity: by quality I mean liberty, riches, education,
and family, and by quantity its relative populousness: now it may
happen that quality may exist in one of those parts of which the city
is composed, and quantity in another; thus the number of the ignoble
may be greater than the number of those of family, the number of the
poor than that of the rich; but not so that the quantity of the one
shall overbalance the quality of the other; those must be properly
adjusted to each other; for where the number of the poor exceeds the
proportion we have mentioned, there a democracy will rise up, and if
the husbandry should have more power than others, it will be a
democracy of husbandmen; and the democracy will be a particular
species according to that class of men which may happen to be most
numerous: thus, should these be the husbandmen, it will be of these,
and the best; if of mechanics and those who hire themselves out, the
worst possible: in the same manner it may be of any other set between
these two. But when the rich and the noble prevail more by their
quality than they are deficient in quantity, there an oligarchy
ensues; and this oligarchy may be of different species, according to
the nature of the prevailing party. Every legislator in framing his
constitution ought to have a particular regard to those in the middle
rank of life; and if he intends an oligarchy, these should be the
object of his laws; if a democracy, to these they should be entrusted;
and whenever their number exceeds that of the two others, or at least
one of them, they give [1297a] stability to the constitution; for
there is no fear that the rich and the poor should agree to conspire
together against them, for neither of these will choose to serve the
other. If any one would choose to fix the administration on the widest
basis, he will find none preferable to this; for to rule by turns is
what the rich and the poor will not submit to, on account of their
hatred to each other. It is, moreover, allowed that an arbitrator is
the most proper person for both parties to trust to; now this
arbitrator is the middle rank.

Those who would establish aristocratical governments are mistaken not
only in giving too much power to the rich, but also in deceiving the
common people; for at last, instead of an imaginary good, they must
feel a real evil, for the encroachments of the rich are more
destructive to the state than those of the poor. _

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