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CONSTITUTIONS OF THE GRECIAN STATES. 1071private life,and hence the education of youth, on which theprevalence and continuance of good morals depend, formed.one of their leading objects. They were deeply convinced^that that moral person,the state, would otherwise he incapable of governing itself. To this it must be added, thatin these small commonwealths, in these towns with theirterritories, many regulations could be made and executed,which could not be put into operation in a powerful andwidely extended nation. Whether these regulations werealways good, and always well adapted to their purpose, isquite another question ; it is our duty at present to show,from what point of view those lawgivers were accustomed toregard the art of regulating the state, and the means of preserving and directing it. 2Whenever a commonwealth or city governs itself, it is afundamental idea, that the supreme power resides with itsmembers, with the citizens. But it mayrest with the citizens collectively, or only with certain classes, or perhapsonly with certain families. Thus there naturally aroseamong the Greeks that difference, which they designated bythe names of Aristocracies and Democracies; and to one ofthese two classes, they referred all their constitutions. Butit is not easy to draw a distinct line between the two. Whenwe are speaking of the meaning which they bore in practical politics,we roust beware of taking them in that signification, which was afterwards given them by the speculativepoliticians, by Aristotle 3 and others. In their practicalpolitics, the Greeks no doubt connected certain ideas withthose denominations ;but the ideas were not very distinctlydefined ;and the surest way of erring would be, to desireto define them more accurately than was done by the Greeksthemselves. The fundamental idea of the democratic constitution was, that all citizens, as such, should enjoy equal1Aristot Polit Op. ii. p. 301, 336.2 This taken together, forms what the Greeks called political science*8 If here, in investigating the practical meaning of those words, we canmake no use of the theoretical definitions of Aristotle in his Politics, wewould not hy any means give up the right of citing him as of authority in thehistory of the Greek constitutions, in so far as ne himself speaks of them,And whose testimony on these subjects deserves more weight than that ofthe man, who, in a work which has unfortunately been lost, described and.analyzed all the known forms of government of his time, two hundred andin .number,fifty-five