ARISTOCRACY, a form of government, where the supreme power is vested in the principal persons of the state, either on account of their nobility, or their ca pacity and probity.
Aristocracies, says Archdeacon Paley, are of two kinds; first, where the power of the nobility belongs to them in their collective capacity alone ; that is, where, although the government reside in an as sembly of the order, yet the members of the assembly, separately and possess no authority or privilege beyond the rest of the community : such is the case in the constitution of Venice. Se condly, where the nobles are severally in vested with great personal power and im munities, and where the power of the senate is little more than the aggregate power of the individuals who compose it; such was the case in the constitution of Poland. Of these two forms of govern ment, the first is more tolerable than the last ; for although many, or even all, the members of a senate should be so pro fligate, as to abuse the authority of their stations in the prosecution of private de signs. yet, whilst all were not under a temptation to the same injustice, and hav ing the same end to gain, it would still be difficult to obtain the consent of a ma jority to any specific act of oppression, which the iniquity of an individual might prompt him to propose : or, if the will were the same, the power is more confin ed ; one tyrant, whether the tyranny re side in a single person, or a senate, can not exercise oppression in so many places at the same time, as may be carried on by the dominion of a numerous nobility over their respective vassals and depend dents. Of all species of domination, this
is the most odious ; the freedom and sa tisfaction of private life are more restrain ed and harassed by it, than by the most vexatious laws, or even by the lawless will of an arbitrary monarch, from whose knowledge, and from whose injustice, the greatest part of his subjects are re moved by their distance, or concealed by their obscurity. An aristocracy of this kind has been productive, in several in stances, of disastrous revolutions, and the people have concurred with the reigning prince in exchanging their condition for the miseries of despotism. This was the case in Denmark about the middle of the seventeenth century, and more lately in Sweden. In England, also, the people beheld the depression of the barons, un der the house of Tudor, with satisfaction, although they saw the crown acquiring thereby a power, which no limitations, provided at that time by the constitution, were likely to confine.
From such events this lesson may be drawn : " That a mixed government, which admits a patrician order into the constitution, ought to circumscribe the personal privileges of the nobility, espe cially claims of hereditary jurisdiction and local authority, with a jealousy equal to the solicitude with which it provides for its own preservation." Paley's Princ. of Philos.