y years, to preserve the equipoise, governing by the general
consent of the community, formed by free debate. He made the undivided
people sovereign; but he subjected the popular initiative to a court of
revision, and assigned a penalty to the proposer of any measure which
should be found to be unconstitutional. Athens, under Pericles, was the
most successful Republic that existed before the system of
representation; but its splendour ended with his life.

The danger to liberty from the predominance either of privilege or
majorities was so manifest, that an idea arose that equality of fortune
would be the only way to prevent the conflict of class interests. The
philosophers, Phaleas, Plato, Aristotle, suggested various expedients to
level the difference between rich and poor. Solon had endeavoured to
check the increase of estates; and Pericles had not only strengthened
the public resources by bringing the rich under the control of an
assembly in which they were not supreme, but he had employed those
resources in improving the condition and the capacity of the masses. The
grievance of those who were taxed for the benefit of others was easily
borne so long as the tribute of the confederates filled the treasury.
But the Peloponnesian war increased the strain on the revenue and
deprived Athens of its dependencies. The balance was upset; and the
policy of making one class give, that another might receive, was
recommended not only by the interest of the poor, but by a growing
theory, that wealth and poverty make bad citizens, that the middle class
is the one most easily led by reason, and that the way to make it
predominate is to depress whatever rises above the common level, and to
raise whatever falls below it. This theory, which became inseparable
from democracy, and contained a force which alone seems able to destroy
it, was fatal to Athens, for it drove the minority to treason. The glory
of the Athenian democrats is, not that they escaped the worst
consequences of their principle, but that, having twice cast out the
usurping oligarchy, they set bounds to their own power. They forgave
their vanquished enemies; they abolished pay for attendance in the
assembly; they established the supremacy of law by making the code
superior to the people; they distinguished things that were
constitutional from things that were legal, and resolved that no
legislative act should pass until it had been pronounced consistent with
the constit