The Supreme Council and Syndics

[11.] What are the basic institutions by which the supreme council should be supported and strengthened.

Section 2 of this Chapter showed that the council of a medium-sized state should have 5,000 members.

How do we:

• prevent the government from gradually falling into fewer hands?
• ensure that their number keeps pace with the growth of the state?
• ensure that equality is maintained among the patricians as far as possible?
• ensure that business is speedily dispatched in the councils?
• ensure that the people do not suffer while the power of the patricians or council exceeds that of the people?

[12.] Of these objectives, the main obstacle to attaining the first is jealousy.

Men are by nature enemies. Even when they are joined and bound together by laws, they still retain their nature.

This, I believe, is why democracies turn into aristocracies, and these eventually into monarchies.

Most aristocracies were once democracies, for this reason, that a people in search of new territories, when it has found them and cultivated them, retains as a single body an equal right in government, because no one will ingly grants sovereignty to another.

But although each of them thinks it fair that he should have against another the same right as the other has against him, yet he thinks it unfair that foreigners who come to join them should have equal rights with them in a state which they have won for themselves by their toil and held at the cost of their blood.

Nor do the foreigners themselves make any objection to this, having come to settle there not with view to being rulers but to promote their private in terests, and they are quite happy provided they are granted freedom to transact their own business in security. 18

But meanwhile, the population increases through the influx of foreigners who gradually adopt the national customs. But those foreigners have no right to hold office.

While their number increases day by day, that of the citizens for many reasons diminishes.

Clans often die out some men are disqualified by reason of their crimes, and many take no part in public affairs because of their straitened circumstances, while in the meantime the more powerful have this as their sole ambition, to rule alone.

In this way government gradually falls into the hands ofa few men, and at length by political manoeuvring into the hands of one man.

And to these one could add other causes which destroy governments of th is kind,I9 but since they are quite familiar I pass them by, and I shall now describe in an orderly way the laws by which the kind of state under discussion must be preserved.

[13] The principal law of this state must be that whereby the proportion of patricians to the population is determined. For (by Section I of this Chapter) a ratio should be ma intained between the population and the patricians so that the number of patricians increases in proportion to the increase of the population.

This ratio (in accordance with what we said in Section 2 of this Chapter) should be about I to 50; that is to say, the number of patricians should never be less than this proportion.

For (by Section I of this Chapter), the number of patricians may be much greater than that of the people with no change in the form of state.

But it is only in their fewness that danger lies. As to how precautions may be taken aga inst the violation of this law, I shall presently discuss this in its proper place.

[14.] In some places patricians are chosen out of certa in clans only/o but to lay this down as an explicit law is to invite disaster.

For clans often die ou� the exclusion of other clans can never be without disgrace, and, furthermore, it is contrary to this form of government for patrician status to be hereditary, by Section I of this Chapter.

But this system would make the government seem21 rather like a democracy, a democracy in the hands of very few citizens, such as we described in Section 12 of this Chapter.

On the other hand, it is impossible- indeed absurd as I shall show in Section 39 ofthis Chapter-to try to prevent the patricians from appointing their own sons and kinsmen, thereby retaining the right to govern in the hands of certa in clans.

However, provided that they do not claim this privilege by express law and that the others are not excluded (I mean those who are born within the state, speak the mother tongue, have not married a foreign wife, are not of ill-fame or servants, and do not gain their livelihood by some menial occupation, among whom are also to be reckoned wine-shop keepers, tapsters, and

the like}, the form of the state will nevertheless be preserved, and it will still be possible to maintain the ratio between patricians and the populace.

[15] Furthermore, ifit be enacted by law that no young men can be appointed, it will never come about that a few clans could keep in their hands the right to govern. So a law should be enacted that no one under the age of thirty can be placed on the roll of candidates 22

[16] Thirdly, all patricians should be required by law to assemble at a particular location in the city at certain fixed times; and whoever fa ils to attend council, unless preven ted by illness or some public business, should pay a heavy fine.

Otherwise most patricians would neglect public affairs to attend to their private business.

[17] The duty of this council should be to enact and to repeal laws and to a point their patrician colleagues and all ministers of state. 23 For one who holds the supreme right, which we have declared to belong to this council, cannot possibly grant to another the power24 to enact and repeal laws without thereby ceding his own right and transferring it to him to whom he has granted that power. For he who even for a single day has the power to enact and repeal laws can change the entire form of the state. But one can, while retaining one’s supreme right, delegate to others the task of dealing with the daily business of the state in accordance with the established laws. Moreover, if ministers of state were to be appointed by any other authority than this council, then the members of this council ought more rightly to be called minors than patricians.

[18] Some are wont to appoint a governor or leader over this council, either for life, as do the Venetians, or for a set period, as do the Genoese;25 but they take such precautions as to make it clear that the state is much endangered by this practice.26 And assuredly we cannot doubt that the state is thus brought close to monarchy. And as far as we can gather from history, the only reason for this practice is this, that before the establish men t of these councils they had been subject to a governor or leader as ifto a king. So while the appointment of a governor may meet the needs of a particular nation, this is not an essential requirement for aristocratic government considered simply as such.