ARISTOCRACY

(Gr. cc^tiTTac; the best, . K^aLtuv, to govern.) According to the acceptation in which the word is used by ancient writers, a government in which all the best citizens of the state, i. e. those excelling either in hereditary distinction or in wealth, ruled their fellow citizens. When the power was in the hands of a small cla of these, who had acquired it by chance or usurpation, such a government was said to be an oligarchy. Thus aristocracy is enumerated by Aristotle among the distinct forms of government;' oligarchy is onl}^ mentioned as a perversion of aristocracy: and the distinction as taken by him is, that in an aristocracy the governors rule for the public good, and in an oligarchy for their own. In modern times, those governments have usually been termed aristocratic in which a small privileged cla of noble or wealthy persons either governed absolutely, or shared the government in various proportions with the sovereign or with the people. Thus the Republic of Venice presented the purest example of an aristocracy among the older governments of Europe: while the government of the United Provinces, before the French Revolution, might also be cited as an instance of an aristocratic commonwealth; and Great Britain of a monarchy tempered by aristocracy. In a stricter sense, however, the word nas been used by modern speculative politicians to signify any government in which "a minority of adult males" constitute the ruling cla . In this sense, the government of France, that of England both in respect of the House of Commons and of the House of Lords, and, in short, almost every state in which a census is adopted as the qualification of those who elect representatives in the national a embly, must be cited as aristocratic. The word aristocracy is also frequently used to signify a cla of persons in the state: the wealthy and noble cla es in a body, or the latter cla by itself. [s. 99]