How to Elect Magistrates

Athenian

After finishing the preliminaries, we proceed to the appointment of magistracies.

In the ordering of a state there are 2 parts:

1. The number of the magistracies and the mode of establishing them

2. The laws for each of them, suitable in nature and number

How are magistrates elected?

The work of legislation is most important.

If a well-ordered city with good laws adds unsuitable offices, then:

• the good laws will be useless
• the greatest political injury and evil will accrue from them.

What will happen in the constitution of our intended state?

To prevent unsuitable officers:

• those who are appointed to magisterial power, and their families, should give satisfactory proof of what they are, from youth upward until the time of election
• those who are to elect should have been trained in habits of law, be well educated, prove that they may have a right judgment and may be able to select or reject men

But how can those who are brought together for the first time, and are strangers to one another and uneducated, avoid making mistakes in the choice of magistrates?

The matter is serious, and excuses will not serve the turn.

I will tell you, then, what you and I will have to do, since you, as you tell me, with nine others, have offered to settle the new state on behalf of the people of Crete, and I am to help you by the invention of the present romance. I certainly should not like to leave the tale wandering all over the world without a head;—a headless monster is such a hideous thing.

Let us remember what a courageously mad and daring creation this our city is.

I had in my mind the free and easy manner in which we are ordaining that the inexperienced colonists shall receive our laws.

A man need not be very wise to see that no one can easily receive laws at their first imposition. But if we could anyhow wait until those who have been imbued with them from childhood, and have been nurtured in them, and become habituated to them, take their part in the public elections of the state; I say, if this could be accomplished, and rightly accomplished by any way or contrivance—then, I think that there would be very little danger, at the end of the time, of a state thus trained not being permanent.

The Cnosians, above all the other Cretans, should not be satisfied with barely discharging their duty to the colony.

They should take the utmost pains to establish the offices which are first created by them in the best and surest manner.

Above all, this applies to the selection of the guardians of the law, who must be chosen first of all, and with the greatest care; the others are of less importance.

CLEINIAS: What method can we devise of electing them?

Athenian

I say to the Sons of the Cretans inasmuch as the Cnosians have precedence over the other states, they should, in common with those who join this settlement, choose a body of 37 in all.

19 are taken from the settlers.

The remainder from the citizens of Cnosus.

The Cnosians shall make a present to your colony.

You yourself shall be one of the 18, and shall become a citizen of the new state.

If you and they cannot be persuaded to go, the Cnosians may fairly use a little violence in order to make you.

CLEINIAS: But why, Stranger, do not you and Megillus take a part in our new city?

Athens and Sparta are proud. They are both a long way off.

But you and likewise the other colonists are conveniently situated as you describe.

I have been speaking of the way in which the new citizens may be best managed under present circumstances; but in after-ages, if the city continues to exist, let the election be on this wise.

All who are horse or foot soldiers, or have seen military service at the proper ages when they were severally fitted for it (compare Arist. Pol.), shall share in the election of magistrates; and the election shall be held in whatever temple the state deems most venerable, and every one shall carry his vote to the altar of the God, writing down on a tablet the name of the person for whom he votes, and his father’s name, and his tribe, and ward;

At the side he shall write his own name in like manner. Any one who pleases may take away any tablet which he does not think properly filled up, and exhibit it in the Agora for a period of not less than thirty days. The tablets which are judged to be first, to the number of 300, shall be shown by the magistrates to the whole city, and the citizens shall in like manner select from these the candidates whom they prefer; and this second selection, to the number of 100, shall be again exhibited to the citizens; in the third, let any one who pleases select whom he pleases out of the 100, walking through the parts of victims, and let them choose for magistrates and proclaim the seven-and-thirty who have the greatest number of votes.

But who, Cleinias and Megillus, will order for us in the colony all this matter of the magistrates, and the scrutinies of them? If we reflect, we shall see that cities which are in process of construction like ours must have some such persons, who cannot possibly be elected before there are any magistrates; and yet they must be elected in some way, and they are not to be inferior men, but the best possible. For as the proverb says, ‘a good beginning is half the business’; and ’to have begun well’ is praised by all, and in my opinion is a great deal more than half the business, and has never been praised by any one enough.

This colony of ours has a father and mother, who are no other than the colonizing state.

Many colonies have been, and will be, at enmity with their parents.

But in early days the child, as in a family, loves and is beloved; even if there come a time later when the tie is broken, still, while he is in want of education, he naturally loves his parents and is beloved by them, and flies to his relatives for protection, and finds in them his only natural allies in time of need.

This parental feeling already exists in the Cnosians, as is shown by their care of the new city; and there is a similar feeling on the part of the young city towards Cnosus.

There is no harm in repeating a good thing—that the Cnosians should take a common interest in all these matters, and choose, as far as they can, the eldest and best of the colonists, to the number of not less than a hundred; and let there be another hundred of the Cnosians themselves.

These, I say, on their arrival, should have a joint care that the magistrates should be appointed according to law, and that when they are appointed they should undergo a scrutiny.

When this has been effected, the Cnosians shall return home, and the new city do the best she can for her own preservation and happiness.

I would have the seven-and-thirty now, and in all future time, chosen to fulfil the following duties:—Let them, in the first place, be the guardians of the law; and, secondly, of the registers in which each one registers before the magistrate the amount of his property, excepting four minae which are allowed to citizens of the first class, three allowed to the second, two to the third, and a single mina to the fourth. And if any one, despising the laws for the sake of gain, be found to possess anything more which has not been registered, let all that he has in excess be confiscated, and let him be liable to a suit which shall be the reverse of honourable or fortunate.

Let any one who will, indict him on the charge of loving base gains, and proceed against him before the guardians of the law. And if he be cast, let him lose his share of the public possessions, and when there is any public distribution, let him have nothing but his original lot; and let him be written down a condemned man as long as he lives, in some place in which any one who pleases can read about his offences. The guardian of the law shall not hold office longer than twenty years, and shall not be less than fifty years of age when he is elected; or if he is elected when he is sixty years of age, he shall hold office for ten years only; and upon the same principle, he must not imagine that he will be permitted to hold such an important office as that of guardian of the laws after he is seventy years of age, if he live so long.