but are added to from time to time as
new elements arise and gain the preponderance in the state. We often
attribute to the wisdom of our ancestors great political effects which
have sprung unforeseen from the accident of the situation. Power, not
wisdom, is most commonly the source of political revolutions. And
the result, as in the Roman Republic, of the co-existence of opposite
elements in the same state is, not a balance of power or an equable
progress of liberal principles, but a conflict of forces, of which one
or other may happen to be in the ascendant. In Greek history, as well as
in Plato's conception of it, this 'progression by antagonism' involves
reaction: the aristocracy expands into democracy and returns again to
tyranny.

The constitution of the Laws may be said to consist, besides the
magistrates, mainly of three elements,--an administrative Council,
the judiciary, and the Nocturnal Council, which is an intellectual
aristocracy, composed of priests and the ten eldest guardians of the law
and some younger co-opted members. To this latter chiefly are assigned
the functions of legislation, but to be exercised with a sparing hand.
The powers of the ordinary council are administrative rather than
legislative. The whole number of 360, as in the Athenian constitution,
is distributed among the months of the year according to the number of
the tribes. Not more than one-twelfth is to be in office at once,
so that the government would be made up of twelve administrations
succeeding one another in the course of the year. They are to exercise
a general superintendence, and, like the Athenian counsellors, are to
preside in monthly divisions over all assemblies. Of the ecclesia
over which they presided little is said, and that little relates to
comparatively trifling duties. Nothing is less present to the mind of
Plato than a House of Commons, carrying on year by year the work of
legislation. For he supposes the laws to be already provided. As little
would he approve of a body like the Roman Senate. The people and the
aristocracy alike are to be represented, not by assemblies, but by
officers elected for one or two years, except the guardians of the law,
who are elected for twenty years.

The evils of this system are obvious. If in any state, as Plato says
in the Statesman, it is easier to find fifty good draught-players than
fifty good rulers, the greater part of the 360 who compose the council
must be unfitted to r