For in great states
it is possible, and indeed necessary, that every office should have
a special function; where the citizens are numerous, many may hold
office. And so it happens that some offices a man holds a second
time only after a long interval, and others he holds once only; and
certainly every work is better done which receives the sole, and not
the divided attention of the worker. But in small states it is
necessary to combine many offices in a few hands, since the small
number of citizens does not admit of many holding office: for who will
there be to succeed them? And yet small states at times require the
same offices and laws as large ones; the difference is that the one
want them often, the others only after long intervals. Hence there
is no reason why the care of many offices should not be imposed on the
same person, for they will not interfere with each other. When the
population is small, offices should be like the spits which also serve
to hold a lamp. We must first ascertain how many magistrates are
necessary in every state, and also how many are not exactly necessary,
but are nevertheless useful, and then there will be no difficulty in
seeing what offices can be combined in one. We should also know over
which matters several local tribunals are to have jurisdiction, and in
which authority should be centralized: for example, should one
person keep order in the market and another in some other place, or
should the same person be responsible everywhere? Again, should
offices be divided according to the subjects with which they deal,
or according to the persons with whom they deal: I mean to say, should
one person see to good order in general, or one look after the boys,
another after the women, and so on? Further, under different
constitutions, should the magistrates be the same or different? For
example, in democracy, oligarchy, aristocracy, monarchy, should
there be the same magistrates, although they are elected, not out of
equal or similar classes of citizen but differently under different
constitutions- in aristocracies, for example, they are chosen from the
educated, in oligarchies from the wealthy, and in democracies from the
free- or are there certain differences in the offices answering to
them as well, and may the same be suitable to some, but different
offices to others? For in some states it may be convenient that the
same office should have a more extensive, in other states a narrower
sphere.
Pages:
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197