an themselves. For their decrees are like the others'
edicts; their demagogues like the others' flatterers: but their greatest
resemblance consists in the mutual support they give to each other, the
flatterer to the tyrant, the demagogue to the people: and to them it is
owing that the supreme power is lodged in the votes of the people,
and not in the laws; for they bring everything before them, as their
influence is owing to their being supreme whose opinions they entirely
direct; for these are they whom the multitude obey. Besides, those who
accuse the magistrates insist upon it, that the right of determining on
their conduct lies in the people, who gladly receive their complaints as
the means of destroying all their offices.

Any one, therefore, may with great justice blame such a government as
being a democracy, and not a free state; for where the government is
not in the laws, then there is no free state, for the law ought to be
supreme over all things; and particular incidents which arise should be
determined by the magistrates or the state. If, therefore, a
democracy is to be reckoned a free state, it is evident that any such
establishment which centres all power in the votes of the people cannot,
properly speaking, be a democracy: for their decrees cannot be general
in their extent. Thus, then, we may describe the several species of
democracies.

CHAPTER V

Of the different species of oligarchies one is, when the right to the
offices is regulated by a certain census; so that the poor, although the
majority, have no share in it; while all those who are included therein
take part in the management of public affairs. Another sort is, when
[1292b] the magistrates are men of very small fortune, who upon any
vacancy do themselves fill it up: and if they do this out of the
community at large, the state approaches to an aristocracy; if out of
any particular class of people, it will be an oligarchy. Another sort of
oligarchy is, when the power is an hereditary nobility. The fourth is,
when the power is in the same hands as the other, but not under the
control of law; and this sort of oligarchy exactly corresponds to a
tyranny in monarchies, and to that particular species of democracies
which I last mentioned in treating of that state: this has the
particular name of a dynasty. These are the different sorts of
oligarchies and democracies.

It should also be known, that it often happens that a free state, where