Even democracy had its illegal or corrupt form--in OCHLOCRACY or mob rule; for democracy did not signify the rule of the lower orders alone, but of all the people--the highest as the lowest.

If the highest became by law excluded--if the populace confined the legislative and executive authorities to their own order--then democracy, or the government of a whole people, virtually ceased, and became the government of a part of the people--a form equally unjust and illegitimate--equally an abuse in itself, whether the dominant and exclusive portion were the nobles or the mechanics.

Thus in modern yet analogous history, when the middle class of Florence expelled the nobles from any share of the government, they established a monopoly under the name of liberty; and the resistance of the nobles was the lawful struggle of patriots and of freemen for an inalienable privilege and a natural right.
VI.

We should remove some very important prejudices from our minds, if we could once subscribe to a fact plain in itself, but which the contests of modern party have utterly obscured--that in the mere forms of their government, the Greek republics cannot fairly be pressed into the service of those who in existing times would attest the evils, or proclaim the benefits, of constitutions purely democratic.

In the first place, they were not democracies, even in their most democratic shape:--the vast majority of the working classes were the enslaved population.