Book 6
14
Again, it is the people who bestow offices on the deserving, which are the most honourable rewards of virtue. It has also the absolute power of passing or repealing laws; and, most important of all, it is the people who deliberate on the question of peace or war. And when provisional terms are made for alliance, suspension of hostilities, or treaties, it is the people who ratify them or the reverse.
14
These considerations again would lead one to say that the chief power in the state was the people’s, and that the constitution was a democracy.
15
Such, then, is the distribution of power between the The mutual relation of the three. several parts of the state. I must now show how each of these several parts can, when they choose, oppose or support each other.
