This difficulty seems now to be sufficiently answered, but there
is another akin to it. That inferior persons should have authority
in greater matters than the good would appear to be a strange thing,
yet the election and calling to account of the magistrates is the
greatest of all. And these, as I was saying, are functions which in
some states are assigned to the people, for the assembly is supreme in
all such matters. Yet persons of any age, and having but a small
property qualification, sit in the assembly and deliberate and
judge, although for the great officers of state, such as treasurers
and generals, a high qualification is required. This difficulty may be
solved in the same manner as the preceding, and the present practice
of democracies may be really defensible. For the power does not reside
in the dicast, or senator, or ecclesiast, but in the court, and the
senate, and the assembly, of which individual senators, or
ecclesiasts, or dicasts, are only parts or members. And for this
reason the many may claim to have a higher authority than the few; for
the people, and the senate, and the courts consist of many persons,
and their property collectively is greater than the property of one or
of a few individuals holding great offices. But enough of this.
The discussion of the first question shows nothing so clearly as
that laws, when good, should be supreme; and that the magistrate or
magistrates should regulate those matters only on which the laws are
unable to speak with precision owing to the difficulty of any
general principle embracing all particulars.
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