The surest way to diminish the influence of property in elections is so to alter the constituencies as to remove the electors from the immediate control of individual proprietors.

Under the old Ionic and hereditary divisions of four tribes, many ancient associations and ties between the poorer and the nobler classes were necessarily formed.

By one bold innovation, the whole importance of which was not immediately apparent, Clisthenes abolished these venerable divisions, and, by a new geographical survey, created ten tribes instead of the former four.

These were again subdivided into districts, or demes; the number seems to have varied, but at the earliest period they were not less than one hundred--at a later period they exceeded one hundred and seventy.

To these demes were transferred all the political rights and privileges of the divisions they supplanted.