the Athenian democracy--are but too
evident and melancholy tokens of the imperfection of human wisdom.
Life, property, and character were at the hazard of a popular
election. These evils must have been long in progressive operation;
but perhaps they were scarcely visible till the fatal innovation of
Pericles, and the flagrant excesses that ensued allowed the people
themselves to listen to the branding and terrible satire upon the
popular judicature, which is still preserved to us in the comedy of
Aristophanes.

At the same time, certain critics and historians have widely and
grossly erred in supposing that these courts of "the sovereign
multitude" were partial to the poor and hostile to the rich. All
testimony proves that the fact was lamentably the reverse. The
defendant was accustomed to engage the persons of rank or influence
whom he might number as his friends, to appear in court on his behalf.
And property was employed to procure at the bar of justice the
suffrages it could command at a political election. The greatest vice
of the democratic Heliaea was, that by a fine the wealthy could
purchase pardon--by interest the great could soften law. But the
chances were against the poor man. To him litigation was indeed
cheap, but justice dear. He had much the same inequality to struggle
against in a suit with a powerful antagonist, that he would have had
in contesting with him for an office in the administration. In all
trials resting on the voice of popular assemblies, it ever has been
and ever will be found, that, caeteris paribus, the aristocrat will
defeat the plebeian.

VIII. Meanwhile the progress of general education had been great and
remarkable. Music [223], from the earliest time, was an essential
part of instruction; and it had now become so common an acquirement,
that Aristotle [224] observes, that at the close of the Persian war
there was scarcely a single freeborn Athenian unacquainted with the
flute. The use of this instrument was afterward discontinued, and
indeed proscribed in the education of freemen, from the notion that it
was not an instrument capable of music sufficiently elevated and
intellectual [225]; yet it was only succeeded by melodies more
effeminate and luxurious. And Aristophanes enumerates the change from
the old national airs and measures among the worst symptoms of
Athenian degeneracy. Besides the musician, the tutor of the gymnasium
and the grammarian still made the nom