tion to their doctrines. But in truth, there is only one BOOK considerable party amongst the Schütes, that of the follow- XXIII. ers of Ali, who reject the Sunna: their creed is dominant in Persia.

individuals

It is difficult to speak with precision as to the number of followers belonging to each religion actually existing in the world-a misplaced zeal leads the different parties to exaggerate their numbers, as if there were no truth in Seneca's Number of observation, that a great majority often indicates a bad of each recause.* Infidel writers in particular, have thought they ligion, were rendering an important service to their cause, by ridiculously exaggerating the numbers of Mahometans and Pagans, not considering that truth will be always truth, whether it be believed by many or by few.

The following numbers may be regarded as nearly approaching the truth:

Languages and religious creeds are the ties of moral society, which often survive the fall of civil and political society; but it is the latter which determines the boundaries of states and empires, which it is the province of political geography to describe. We must then take a general view of the varied forms of this society.

The ties which unite husband and wife, parents and Domestic children, formed the family or domestic society. The re- society. lation of master and servant had its origin when society

* Argumentum pessimi, turba.

BOOK was in this state. The weak not being able to assert their XXIII. rights, or procure the means of subsistence, must have soon resolved to claim the protection of the strong. Those families that happened to live in the same neighbourhood, would, after quarrelling for a while, at last agree to live in harmony together. Certain rules would be established amongst them, not yet to be considered as laws, but as customs. The union of these families did not form a state, Civil socie- but only a civil society. These small societies must soon have perceived that their customs and observances required to be fixed, and to be invested with the character of laws. Men of superior natural capacity became the unlettered lawgivers of these hamlets or villages. As soon as the various relations in which men stood to each other were fixed by laws, political society commenced.

ty.

Political society.

But this was a society without government, and soon became a prey to the evils of anarchy. Experience of these evils taught men that a physical force is indispensably requisite to support the laws, which of themselves have a force purely moral. A government is thus established under some form or other. The convention which fixes the original laws of civil society, is called the social compact; that which fixes the existence of the form of a government, and adjusts the circumstances connected with it, is called States or the constitution. By this last convention, civil society is republics. constituted a state, or, if the term is more agreeable, a re

Supreme power.

public; for this last word, derived from the Latin, originally signifies every civil society having a government and laws, without reference to the form.

A government is the union of physical force established by the will of civil society to maintain the laws and the constitution. The force of the government, regulated by the established laws, is called the supreme power. The supreme power may be divided into different branches, as, for example, the legislative power, subdivisible into the proposing, the deliberating, and the decerning power; the executive power subdivisible into the administrative, the judicial, the military, and the power of supreme inspection.

These divisions are partly arbitrary. The manner in which BOOK the supreme power is organised, subdivided, and concen- XXIII. trated, is called the form of government. The supreme power represents the national sovereignty, which is nothing but the supreme power not organised, existing in the hands of a civil society without government.

ment.

Forms of government are innumerable; but we shall point Forms of out those most generally known, by advancing from the governstate of the greatest physical dissemination of powers, to that of their greatest concentration. These two extremes approach each other more nearly than is imagined.

Pure democracy exists in that state in which the supreme Democrapower is immediately exercised by the majority of the na-cy. tion: this form of government differs from the state of primitive civil society, in which all equally rule. Commissorial democracy is a state in which the supreme power is exercised by a council immediately chosen from the people, revocable, and responsible. Such functionaries are not then the representatives of the nation, but merely its proxies and commissioners. We term a representative democracy that state in which the supreme power is exercised by magistrates, chosen by the people, who represent them, and who, consequently, taken collectively, are sovereign and not responsible. This form is subdivided into a pure representative democracy, when the people themselves directly choose their representatives-and into a representative electoral democracy, where the people choose electoral bodies, who again elect the representatives.

Elective aristocracy resembles representative democracy. AristocraIt is when the people, either mediately or intermediately, cy choose their magistrates, not indifferently from among the citizens, but from a certain class determined by law. Elective aristocracy is pure or free, when the people have created the privileged class, or the aristocratic body,-when admission into that body is open to all citizens,-when the members of this body are amenable to the supreme power in the hands of the people. Simple or pure aristocracy is, when the people have chosen once for all, as their pleni

BOOK potentiary representatives, a body which governs, and which XXIII. is renewed without the concurrence of the people. Every

Democratic monar

form of government, compounded of those which we have just named, is called an aristo-democracy. When the aristocratic party seem predominant, we have a temperate aristocracy, when the democratical, we have a temperate democracy. Rome, after the expulsion of the Tarquins, was an bereditary oligarchical aristocracy, which gradually changed into an aristo-democracy, composed of all the other kinds. The Patricians were the hereditary aristocratic body; the senate an elective free aristocracy; the assemblies of the people represented the democracy.

A democratic monarchy is a democracy in which the suchy. preme power is partly exercised by an individual and partly by a democratic body. As the supreme power may be variously divided, it is impossible to ascertain the number of the different kinds of democratical monarchies. It may be hereditary, when the nation has chosen a certain family, or elective, when at each vacancy a monarch is chosen. The right of election may be vested in the people, in an electoral body, in a single elector. These variations are common to other kinds of monarchy. The legislative power may be divided between the commissioners of the people and the monarch, or it may belong to the former only. The judicial and military powers may be dependent upon the monarch, or upon the body of the nation. The democratic body itself may be chosen without or with the concurrence of the monarch.

Aristocratical monarchy.

Aristocratical monarchy is a state in which the supreme power is jointly shared by the monarch and the aristocracy. This latter body may be a free elective aristocracy, when an assembly of representatives chosen by the people from the council of the monarch; an elective hereditary aristocracy chosen by the people, or by the monarch, or by both conjointly; or lastly, a pure and perpetual aristocracy, independent alike of the people and the sovereign. Such were the nobility in the most European states before the present epoch. The aristo-democratic monarchy is a govern

ment composed of a monarch, of an aristocratic body, and BOOK of a democratic body. By a mixed government is generally XXIII. understood a monarchy of this description. The different combinations of this form are so multiplied that it is impossible to class them.

A pure or absolute monarchy is a state in which the su- Absolute Monarchy. preme power is entirely confided to one individual, or, in other words, a state in which the majority of the nation is represented by a single individual. Absolute monarchy differs from despotism in this, that the monarch holds his power of the nation, either by expressed or tacit consent; the despot, on the contrary, pretends to hold his power from God, and from his own sword. The dictatorship was a kind of absolute monarchy, elective and temporary, in the Roman republic.

The word anarchy literally means the absence of a go- Anarchy. vernment. Taking the word government in its true and literal signification, it is evident that anarchy may arise in two ways: 1st, from the non-existence of any supreme power in civil society; 2d, from the preponderance of unconstitutional power, exercised in an arbitrary manner and without the form of a government. Anarchy may be modified in a thousand ways. The following are the forms of it which appear to be most worthy of being defined.

Ochlocracy, or popular anarchy, takes place when a mob Ochlocraor a multitude unlawfully usurp a supreme power. Ac-cy. cording to this definition, even the majority, when they are not legally constituted sovereign, can exercise only anarchical power. Oligarchy occurs when a small number of Oligarchy. individuals or families exercise the supreme power without having been chosen by the constitutional sovereign. It dif fers then from pure aristocracy. Demagogy is when one Demagogy. or several individuals, without legal appointment, lead and manage the people at their will, actually exercising the power which they seem to leave in the hands of the multitude. The word tyrant signified originally chief or monarch. Virgil employs it more than once in this honourable sense, but it was afterwards limited, to denote him who,