Institutes 4.20.8 — OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT.

CON treatise-section · status:draft · license:PD

**OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT.**

And certainly it were a very idle occupation for private men to discuss what would be the best form of polity in the place where they live, seeing these deliberations cannot have any influence in determining any public matter. Then the thing itself could not be defined absolutely without rashness, since the nature of the discussion depends on circumstances. And if you compare the different states with each other, without regard to circumstances, it is not easy to determine which of these has the advantage in point of utility, so equal are the terms on which they meet. Monarchy is prone to tyranny. In an aristocracy, again, the tendency is not less to the faction of a few, while in popular ascendancy there is the strongest tendency to sedition. French “On conte trois especes de regime civil: c’est assavoir Monarchie, qui est la domination d’un seul, soit qu’on le nomme Roy ou Due, ou autrement: Aristoeratie qui est une domination gouvernee par les principaux et gens d’apparence: et Democratie, qui est une domination populaire, en laquelle chacun du peuple a puissance.”— There are three kinds of civil government; namely, Monarchy, which is the domination of one only, whether he be called King or Duke, or otherwise; Aristocracy, which is a government composed of the chiefs and people of note; and Democracy, which is a popular government, in which each of the people has power.

Source

• source-manifest/institutes — Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, tr. Beveridge 1845 (PD)
• evidence_grade: D_doctrinal_textbook