have popular assemblies been, of those who best deserved from them.
Now, the circumstance which makes these examples of more importance, is, that this very power of the people in Athens, claimed so confidently for an inherent right, and insisted on as the undoubted privilege of an Athenian born, was the rankest encroachment imaginable, and the grossest degeneracy from the form that Solon left them. In short, their government was grown into a dominatio plebis, or tyranny of the people, who by degrees had broke and overthrown the balance, which that legislator had very well fixed and provided for. This appears not only from what has been already said of that lawgiver, but more manifestly from a passage in Diodorus[1]; who tells us, that Antipater, one of Alexander's captains, abrogated the popular government in Athens, and restored the power of suffrages and magistracy to such only, as were worth two thousand drachmas; by which means, says he, that republick came to be again administered by the laws of Solon. By this quotation it is manifest that great author looked upon Solon's institution, and a popular government, to be two different things. And as for this restoration by Antipater, it had neither consequence nor continuance worth observing.
I might easily produce many more examples, but these are sufficient: and it may be worth the reader's time to reflect a little on the merits of the cause, as well as of the men, who had been thus dealt with by their country. I shall direct him no farther than by repeating, that Aristides was the most
- ↑ Lib, 18.
renowned
