But how could Sparta, at the period of the boasted superiority of her political institution, obtain a constant enjoyment of just and virtuous kings, when they necessarily received an hereditary monarch, good, bad, or indifferent, because he happened to be of the blood royal?
As to aristocrats, Who will endure, say they, that men should distinguish themselves by such a title, and that not by the voice of the people, but by their own votes?
For how is such a one judged to be best either in learning, sciences, or arts ?[310] * * * XXXIV.

* * * If it does so by hap-hazard, it will be as easily upset as a vessel if the pilot were chosen by lot from among the passengers.

But if a people, being free, chooses those to whom it can trust itself--and, if it desires its own preservation, it will always choose the noblest--then certainly it is in the counsels of the aristocracy that the safety of the State consists, especially as nature has not only appointed that these superior men should excel the inferior sort in high virtue and courage, but has inspired the people also with the desire of obedience towards these, their natural lords.

But they say this aristocratical State is destroyed by the depraved opinions of men, who, through ignorance of virtue (which, as it belongs to few, can be discerned and appreciated by few), imagine that not only rich and powerful men, but also those who are nobly born, are necessarily the best.

And so when, through this popular error, the riches, and not the virtue, of a few men has taken possession of the State, these chiefs obstinately retain the title of nobles, though they want the essence of nobility.