The Complete Aristotle (eng.)

officers by all out of all; and that all should rule over each,
and each in his turn over all; that the appointment to all offices,
or to all but those which require experience and skill, should be
made by lot; that no property qualification should be required for
offices, or only a very low one; that a man should not hold the
same office twice, or not often, or in the case of few except
military offices: that the tenure of all offices, or of as many as
possible, should be brief, that all men should sit in judgment, or
that judges selected out of all should judge, in all matters, or in
most and in the greatest and most important—such as the scrutiny of
accounts, the constitution, and private contracts; that the
assembly should be supreme over all causes, or at any rate over the
most important, and the magistrates over none or only over a very
few. Of all magistracies, a council is the most democratic when
there is not the means of paying all the citizens, but when they
are paid even this is robbed of its power; for the people then draw
all cases to themselves, as I said in the previous discussion. The
next characteristic of democracy is payment for services; assembly,
law courts, magistrates, everybody receives pay, when it is to be
had; or when it is not to be had for all, then it is given to the
law-courts and to the stated assemblies, to the council and to the
magistrates, or at least to any of them who are compelled to have
their meals together. And whereas oligarchy is characterized by
birth, wealth, and education, the notes of democracy appear to be
the opposite of these—low birth, poverty, mean employment. Another
note is that no magistracy is perpetual, but if any such have
survived some ancient change in the constitution it should be
stripped of its power, and the holders should be elected by lot and
no longer by vote. These are the points common to all democracies;
but democracy and demos in their truest form are based upon the
recognized principle of democratic justice, that all should count
equally; for equality implies that the poor should have no more
share in the government than the rich, and should not be the only
rulers, but that all should rule equally according to their
numbers. And in this way men think that they will secure equality
and freedom in their state.
III
    Next comes the question, how is this equality to be obtained?
Are we to assign to a thousand poor men the property qualifications
of five hundred rich men? and shall we give the thousand a power
equal to that of the five hundred? or, if this is not to be the
mode, ought we, still retaining the same ratio, to take equal
numbers from each and give them the control of the elections and of
the courts?—Which, according to the democratical notion, is the
juster form of the constitution—this or one based on numbers only?
Democrats say that justice is that to which the majority agree,
oligarchs that to which the wealthier class; in their opinion the
decision should be given according to the amount of property. In
both principles there is some inequality and injustice. For if
justice is the will of the few, any one person who has more wealth
than all the rest of the rich put together, ought, upon the
oligarchical principle, to have the sole power—but this would be
tyranny; or if justice is the will of the majority, as I was before
saying, they will unjustly confiscate the property of the wealthy
minority. To find a principle of equality which they both agree we
must inquire into their respective ideas of justice.
    Now they agree in saying that whatever is decided by the
majority of the citizens is to be deemed law. Granted: but not
without some reserve; since there are two classes out of which a
state is composed—the poor and the rich—that is to be deemed law,
on which both or the greater part of both agree; and if they
disagree, that which is approved by the greater number, and by
those who have the higher qualification. For example, suppose that
there are ten rich and twenty poor, and some measure is approved by
six of the rich and is disapproved by fifteen of the poor, and the
remaining four of the rich join with the party of the poor, and the
remaining five of the poor with that of the rich; in such a case
the will of those whose qualifications, when both sides are added
up, are the greatest, should prevail. If they turn out to be equal,
there is no greater difficulty than at present, when, if the
assembly or the courts are