The Complete Aristotle (eng.)

generals should only be re-elected after an
interval of five years, and some young men who were popular with
the soldiers of the guard for their military prowess, despising the
magistrates and thinking that they would easily gain their purpose,
wanted to abolish this law and allow their generals to hold
perpetual commands; for they well knew that the people would be
glad enough to elect them. Whereupon the magistrates who had charge
of these matters, and who are called councillors, at first
determined to resist, but they afterwards consented, thinking that,
if only this one law was changed, no further inroad would be made
on the constitution. But other changes soon followed which they in
vain attempted to oppose; and the state passed into the hands of
the revolutionists, who established a dynastic oligarchy.
    All constitutions are overthrown either from within or from
without; the latter, when there is some government close at hand
having an opposite interest, or at a distance, but powerful. This
was exemplified in the old times of the Athenians and the
Lacedaemonians; the Athenians everywhere put down the oligarchies,
and the Lacedaemonians the democracies.
    I have now explained what are the chief causes of revolutions
and dissensions in states.
VIII
    We have next to consider what means there are of preserving
constitutions in general, and in particular cases. In the first
place it is evident that if we know the causes which destroy
constitutions, we also know the causes which preserve them; for
opposites produce opposites, and destruction is the opposite of
preservation.
    In all well-attempered governments there is nothing which should
be more jealously maintained than the spirit of obedience to law,
more especially in small matters; for transgression creeps in
unperceived and at last ruins the state, just as the constant
recurrence of small expenses in time eats up a fortune. The expense
does not take place at once, and therefore is not observed; the
mind is deceived, as in the fallacy which says that ‘if each part
is little, then the whole is little.’ this is true in one way, but
not in another, for the whole and the all are not little, although
they are made up of littles.
    In the first place, then, men should guard against the beginning
of change, and in the second place they should not rely upon the
political devices of which I have already spoken invented only to
deceive the people, for they are proved by experience to be
useless. Further, we note that oligarchies as well as aristocracies
may last, not from any inherent stability in such forms of
government, but because the rulers are on good terms both with the
unenfranchised and with the governing classes, not maltreating any
who are excluded from the government, but introducing into it the
leading spirits among them. They should never wrong the ambitious
in a matter of honor, or the common people in a matter of money;
and they should treat one another and their fellow citizen in a
spirit of equality. The equality which the friends of democracy
seek to establish for the multitude is not only just but likewise
expedient among equals. Hence, if the governing class are numerous,
many democratic institutions are useful; for example, the
restriction of the tenure of offices to six months, that all those
who are of equal rank may share in them. Indeed, equals or peers
when they are numerous become a kind of democracy, and therefore
demagogues are very likely to arise among them, as I have already
remarked. The short tenure of office prevents oligarchies and
aristocracies from falling into the hands of families; it is not
easy for a person to do any great harm when his tenure of office is
short, whereas long possession begets tyranny in oligarchies and
democracies. For the aspirants to tyranny are either the principal
men of the state, who in democracies are demagogues and in
oligarchies members of ruling houses, or those who hold great
offices, and have a long tenure of them.
    Constitutions are preserved when their destroyers are at a
distance, and sometimes also because they are near, for the fear of
them makes the government keep in hand the constitution. Wherefore
the ruler who has a care of the constitution should invent terrors,
and bring distant dangers near, in order that the citizens may be
on their guard, and, like sentinels in a night watch, never relax
their attention. He should endeavor too by help of the laws to
control the contentions and