The Complete Aristotle (eng.)

classes insult them, the offender should be punished more
severely than if he had wronged one of his own class. Provision
should be made that estates pass by inheritance and not by gift,
and no person should have more than one inheritance; for in this
way properties will be equalized, and more of the poor rise to
competency. It is also expedient both in a democracy and in an
oligarchy to assign to those who have less share in the government
(i.e., to the rich in a democracy and to the poor in an oligarchy)
an equality or preference in all but the principal offices of
state. The latter should be entrusted chiefly or only to members of
the governing class.
IX
    There are three qualifications required in those who have to
fill the highest offices—(1) first of all, loyalty to the
established constitution; (2) the greatest administrative capacity;
(3) virtue and justice of the kind proper to each form of
government; for, if what is just is not the same in all
governments, the quality of justice must also differ. There may be
a doubt, however, when all these qualities do not meet in the same
person, how the selection is to be made; suppose, for example, a
good general is a bad man and not a friend to the constitution, and
another man is loyal and just, which should we choose? In making
the election ought we not to consider two points? what qualities
are common, and what are rare. Thus in the choice of a general, we
should regard his skill rather than his virtue; for few have
military skill, but many have virtue. In any office of trust or
stewardship, on the other hand, the opposite rule should be
observed; for more virtue than ordinary is required in the holder
of such an office, but the necessary knowledge is of a sort which
all men possess.
    It may, however, be asked what a man wants with virtue if he
have political ability and is loyal, since these two qualities
alone will make him do what is for the public interest. But may not
men have both of them and yet be deficient in self-control? If,
knowing and loving their own interests, they do not always attend
to them, may they not be equally negligent of the interests of the
public?
    Speaking generally, we may say that whatever legal enactments
are held to be for the interest of various constitutions, all these
preserve them. And the great preserving principle is the one which
has been repeatedly mentioned—to have a care that the loyal citizen
should be stronger than the disloyal. Neither should we forget the
mean, which at the present day is lost sight of in perverted forms
of government; for many practices which appear to be democratical
are the ruin of democracies, and many which appear to be
oligarchical are the ruin of oligarchies. Those who think that all
virtue is to be found in their own party principles push matters to
extremes; they do not consider that disproportion destroys a state.
A nose which varies from the ideal of straightness to a hook or
snub may still be of good shape and agreeable to the eye; but if
the excess be very great, all symmetry is lost, and the nose at
last ceases to be a nose at all on account of some excess in one
direction or defect in the other; and this is true of every other
part of the human body. The same law of proportion equally holds in
states. Oligarchy or democracy, although a departure from the most
perfect form, may yet be a good enough government, but if any one
attempts to push the principles of either to an extreme, he will
begin by spoiling the government and end by having none at all.
Wherefore the legislator and the statesman ought to know what
democratical measures save and what destroy a democracy, and what
oligarchical measures save or destroy an oligarchy. For neither the
one nor the other can exist or continue to exist unless both rich
and poor are included in it. If equality of property is introduced,
the state must of necessity take another form; for when by laws
carried to excess one or other element in the state is ruined, the
constitution is ruined.
    There is an error common both to oligarchies and to democracies:
in the latter the demagogues, when the multitude are above the law,
are always cutting the city in two by quarrels with the rich,
whereas they should always profess to be maintaining their cause;
just as in oligarchies the oligarchs should profess to maintaining
the cause of the people, and should take oaths the opposite of
those which they now take. For there are cities in which they
swear—‘I