Book II.
Chap. 2.is lodged in the hands of a part of the people, it is then an aristocracy.
In a democracy the people are in some respects the sovereign, and in others the subject.
There can be no exercise of sovereignty but by their suffrages, which are their own will; now the sovereign's will is the sovereign himself. The laws therefore which establish the right of suffrage, are fundamental to this government. In fact, it is as important to regulate in a republic, in what manner, by whom, to whom, and concerning what, suffrages are to be given, as it is in a monarchy to know who is the prince and after what manner he ought to govern.
Libanius[1] says, that at Athens a stranger who intermeddled in the assemblies of the people, was punished with death. This is because such a man usurped the rights of sovereignty.
It is an essential point to fix the number of citizens who are to form the public assemblies, otherwise it might be uncertain whether they had the votes of the whole, or of only a part of the people. At Sparta the number was fixt to ten thousand. But at Rome, a city designed by providence to rise from the weakest beginnings to the highest pitch of grandeur; at Rome, a city doomed to experience all the vicissitudes of fortune; at Rome, who had sometimes all her inhabitants without her walls, and sometimes all Italy and a considerable part of the world within them: at Rome, I say, this number was never fixed,[2] and this was one of the principal causes of her ruin.
The people in whom the supreme power resides, ought to do of themselves whatever conveniently then can; and what they themselves cannot rightly perform, they must do by their ministers.
