very extensive, if they are [1273a] persons of no account, they may be very hurtful to the state, as they have always been to the Lacedaemonians; * also the greater part of those things which become reprehensible by their excess are common to all those governments
Now of those principles on which the Carthaginians have established their mixed form of government, composed of an aristocracy and democracy, some incline to produce a democracy, others an oligarchy:
- for instance, if the kings and the senate are unanimous upon any point in debate, they can choose whether they will bring it before the people or no;
- but if they disagree, it is to these they must appeal, who are not only to hear what has been approved of by the senate, but are finally to determine upon it;
- and whosoever chooses it, has a right to speak against any matter whatsoever that may be proposed, which is not permitted in other cases.
The five, who elect each other, have very great and extensive powers; and these choose the hundred, who are magistrates of the highest rank: their power also continues longer than any other magistrates, for it commences before they come into office, and is prolonged after they are out of it; and in this particular the state inclines to an oligarchy: but as they are not elected by lot, but by suffrage, and are not permitted to take money, they are the greatest supporters imaginable of an aristocracy.
The determining all causes by the same magistrates, and not orae in one court and another in another, as at Lacedaemon, has the same influence.