right of voting are thus
fundamental in this form of government. A people possessing sovereign
power ought to do itself everything that it can do well; what it cannot
do well it must leave to its ministers. Its ministers, however, are not
its own unless it nominates them; it is, therefore, a fundamental maxim
of this government that the people should nominate its ministers. The
people is admirably fitted to choose those whom it must entrust with
some part of its authority. It knows very well that a man has often been
to war, and that he has gained such and such victories, and it is
therefore very capable of electing a general. It knows if a judge is
hardworking and if the generality of suitors are content with his
decisions, and it knows if he has not been condemned for corruption;
this is sufficient to enable a people to elect its praetors.

All these things are facts about which a people can learn more in a
market-place than a monarch can in a palace. But does a people know how
to conduct an affair of state, to study situations, opportunities, and
profit by them? No. The generality of citizens have sufficient ability
to be electors, but not enough to be elected, and the people, though it
is capable of forming a judgment on the administration of others, is not
competent to undertake the administration itself. The people have always
too much action or too little. Sometimes with a hundred thousand arms it
overtakes everything; sometimes with a hundred thousand feet it moves as
slowly as a centipede.

In a popular state the people are divided into certain classes, and on
the way in which this division is carried out depend the duration of a
democracy and its prosperity. Election by lot is the democratic method;
election by choice the aristocratic method. Determination by lot allows
every citizen a reasonable hope of serving his country; but it is a
defective measure, and it is by regulating and correcting it that great
legislators have distinguished themselves. Solon, for instance,
established at Athens the method of nominating by choice all the
military posts, and of electing by lot the senators and the judges;
moreover, he ordained that the candidates for election by lot should
first be examined, and that those who were adjudged unworthy should be
excluded; in that manner he combined the method of chance and the method
of choice.

It does not require much probity for a monarchy or a despotism to
maintain itself. The