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Updated: June 16, 2025
Grote has admirably described the rise of the primitive oligarchies upon the face of the first monarchy, but perhaps because he so much loves historic Athens, he has not sympathised with pre-historic Athens. He has not shown us the need of a fixed life when all else was unfixed life.
It will not be difficult to perceive of the many states which there are, for we have seen that there are various forms both of democracies and oligarchies, to which we should give the first place, to which the second, and in the same manner the next also; and to observe what are the particular excellences and defects of each, after we have first described the best possible; for that must be the best which is nearest to this, that worst which is most distant from the medium, without any one has a particular plan of his own which he judges by.
The Russian and Austrian governments, and even the French government in its normal condition, are oligarchies of officials, of whom the head of the state does little more than select the chiefs. I am speaking of the regular course of their administration; for the will of the master of course determines many of their particular acts.
In Freiburg, Lucerne, Schaffhausen, and St. Gall the oligarchies resigned their authority; Constance asserted its independence. Within Berne itself, tranquillity was with difficulty preserved by Steiger, the venerable mayor, a man of extreme firmness of character.
The truth is, of course, that art may flourish under any form of government. It flourished in the Athenian aristocracy and under the despotic bureaucracies of China, Persia, and Byzantium. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries it flourished under the feudal system, and in the fifteenth amongst the oligarchies and tyrannies of Italy.
Thus the United Netherlands had not only ceased to be a unified state in any real sense of the word, but had ceased likewise to be a free state. It consisted of a large number of semi-independent oligarchies of the narrowest description; and the great mass of its population was deprived of every vestige of civic rights.
Monarchies of many sorts, aristocracies, oligarchies, democracies, even communisms, have been tried; and all, save the last, have managed to hold their own with some degree of success. It is easy to bring objections against each form of government, just as it is easy to say something specious in its favor.
Moreover, there are some other states which are called by the same name, that differ both from oligarchies and free states, wherein not only the rich but also the virtuous have a share in the administration; and have therefore acquired the name of aristocracies; for in those governments wherein virtue is not their common care, there are still men of worth and approved goodness.
One of the chief obstacles to such a development is the centuries of conflict during which modern nations have been built up and the strong bonds of nationalism have been established as a means of holding divergent groups of people in line by particular oligarchies operating in particular civilizations. On the economic level such difficulties are minimal.
We have come to regard it as a matter of course that under all absolutions and narrow oligarchies the community, so soon as it became educated and as its social elaboration developed a free class with private initiatives, so soon, indeed, as it attained to any power of thought and expression at all, would express discontent.
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