Book V.
Chap. 8.of their body; privileges ought to be for the senate, and simple respect for the senators.
In aristocratical governments there are two principal sources of disorder: excessive inequality between the governors and the governed; and the same inequality between the different members of the body that governs. From these two inequalities, hatreds and jealousies arise, which the laws ought always to prevent or repress.
The first inequality is chiefly, when the privileges of the nobility are honorable only as they are ignominious to the people. Such was the law at Rome by which the Patricians were forbidden to marry Plebeians[1]; a law that had no other effect than to render the Patricians on the one side more haughty, and on the other more odious[2].
This inequality occurs likewise when the condition of the citizens differs with regard to taxes: which may happen four different ways, when the nobles assume the privilege of paying none; when they commit frauds to exempt themselves[3]; when they engross the taxes to themselves under pretence of rewards or appointments for their respective employments; in sine, when they render the common people tributary, and divide among their own body the profits arising from the several subsidies. This last case is very rare; an aristocracy so instituted would be the most intolerable of all governments.
