8.2. 2. Of the Corruption of the Principles of Democracy.
The principle of democracy is corrupted not only when the spirit of
equality is extinct, but likewise when they fall into a spirit of
extreme equality, and when each citizen would fain be upon a level with
those whom he has chosen to command him. Then the people, incapable of
bearing the very power they have delegated, want to manage everything
themselves, to debate for the senate, to execute for the magistrate, and
to decide for the judges.
When this is the case, virtue can no longer subsist in the republic.
The people are desirous of exercising the functions of the magistrates,
who cease to be revered. The deliberations of the senate are slighted;
all respect is then laid aside for the senators, and consequently for
old age. If there is no more respect for old age, there will be none
presently for parents; deference to husbands will be likewise thrown
off, and submission to masters. This licence will soon become general,
and the trouble of command be as fatiguing as that of obedience. Wives,
children, slaves will shake off all subjection. No longer will there be
any such thing as manners, order, or virtue.
We find in Xenophon's Banquet a very lively description of a
republic in which the people abused their equality. Each guest gives in
his turn the reason why he is satisfied. "Content I am," says Chamides,
"because of my poverty. When I was rich, I was obliged to pay my court
to informers, knowing I was more liable to be hurt by them than capable
of doing them harm. The republic constantly demanded some new tax of me;
and I could not decline paying. Since I have grown poor, I have acquired
authority; nobody threatens me; I rather threaten others. I can go or
stay where I please. The rich already rise from their seats and give me
the way. I am a king, I was before a slave: I paid taxes to the
republic, now it maintains me: I am no longer afraid of losing: but I
hope to acquire."
The people fall into this misfortune when those in whom they
confide, desirous of concealing their own corruption, endeavour to
corrupt them. To disguise their own ambition, they speak to them only
of the grandeur of the state; to conceal their own avarice, they
incessantly flatter theirs.
The corruption will increase among the corruptors, and likewise
among those who are already corrupted. The people will divide the public
money among themselves, and, having added the administration of affairs
to their indolence, will be for blending their poverty with the
amusements of luxury. But with their indolence and luxury, nothing but
the public treasure will be able to satisfy their demands.
We must not be surprised to see their suffrages given for money. It
is impossible to make great largesses to the people without great
extortion: and to compass this, the state must be subverted. The greater
the advantages they seem to derive from their liberty, the nearer they
approach towards the critical moment of losing it. Petty tyrants arise
who have all the vices of a single tyrant. The small remains of liberty
soon become insupportable; a single tyrant starts up, and the people are
stripped of everything, even of the profits of their corruption.
Democracy has, therefore, two excesses to avoid — the spirit of
inequality, which leads to aristocracy or monarchy, and the spirit of
extreme equality, which leads to despotic power, as the latter is
completed by conquest.
True it is that those who corrupted the Greek republics did not
always become tyrants. This was because they had a greater passion for
eloquence than for the military art. Besides there reigned an implacable
hatred in the breasts of the Greeks against those who subverted a
republican government; and for this reason anarchy degenerated into
annihilation, instead of being changed into tyranny.
But Syracuse being situated in the midst of a great number of petty
states, whose government had been changed from oligarchy to tyranny,
[1]
and being governed by a senate
[2]
scarcely ever mentioned in history,
underwent such miseries as are the consequence of a more than ordinary
corruption. This city, ever a prey to licentiousness
[3]
or oppression, equally labouring under the sudden and alternate succession of liberty
and servitude, and notwithstanding her external strength, constantly
determined to a revolution by the least foreign power — this city, I
say, had in her bosom an immense multitude of people, whose fate it was
to have always this cruel alternative, either of choosing a tyrant to
govern them, or of acting the tyrant themselves.
Footnotes
[1]
See Plutarch in Timoleon and Dion.
[2]
It was that of the Six Hundred, of whom mention is made by
Diodorus, xix. 5.
[3]
Upon the expulsions of the tyrants, they made citizens of
strangers and mercenary troops, which gave rise to civil wars. --
Aristotle, "Politics," v. 3. The people having been the cause of the
victory over the Athenians, the republic was changed. — Ibid., 4. The
passion of two young magistrates, one of whom carried off the other's
boy, and in revenge the other debauched his wife, was attended with a
change in the form of this republic. — Ibid.
