ARISTOCRACY. A government in which a class of men rules supreme.
Aristotle classified governments according to the person or persons in whom the supreme power is vested: in monarchies or kingdoms, in which one rules supreme; in aristocracies, in which a class Of men rules supreme; and in democracies, in which the people at large, the multitude, rules. The term aristocracy is derived from the Greek word apart% which came, indeed, to settle down as the super lative of oya0o;, good, hut originally meant the strongest, the most powerful; and in the compound term aristocracy it meant those who wielded the greatest power and had the greatest influence,—the privileged ones. The aristocracies in ancient Greece were, in many cases, governments arrogated by vio lence. If the number of ruling aristocrats was very small, the government was called an oligarchy. Aristotle says that in democracies the "dema gogues lead the people to place themselves above the laws, and divide the people, by constantly speaking against the rich ; and in oligarchies the rulers always speak in the interest of the rich. At present," he says, "the rulers, in some oligar chies, take an oath, 'And I will be hostile to the people, and advise, as much as is in my power, what may be injurious to them.'" (Politics, v. ch. 9.) There are circumstances which may make an aris tocracy unavoidable; but it has always this inherent deficiency, that the body of aristocrats, being set apart from the people indeed, yet not sufficiently so, as the monarch is (who, besides, being but one, must needs rely on the classes beneath him), shows its,lf severe and harsh so soon ae the people become a substantial portion of the community. The strug
gle between the aristocratic and the democratic ele ment is a prominent feature of the middle ages; and at a later period it is equally remarkable that the crown, in almost every country of the European con tinent, waged war, generally with the assistance of the commonalty, with the privileged class, or aristo cracy. The real aristocracy is that type of govern ment which has nearly entirely vanished from our cis Caucasian race ; although the aristocratic element is found, like the democratic element, in various degrees, in most of the existing governments. The term aristocracy is at present frequently used for the body of privileged persons in the government of any institution,—for instance, in the church. In the first French Revolution, Aristocrat came to mean any person not belonging to the levellers, end whom the latter desired to pull down. The modern French communists use the slang term Aristo for aristocrat. The most complete and consistently developed aris tocracy in history was the Republic of Venice,—a government considered by many early publicists as a model : it illustrated, however, in an eminent degree, the fear and consequent severity inherent in aristocracies. See GOVERNMENT; ABSOLUTISM; MONARCHY.