Explore "The Social Contract" by Jean-Jacques Rousseau on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
In the elections of the prince and the magistrates, which are, as I have said, complex acts, there are two possible methods of procedure, choice and lot. Both have been employed in various republics, and a highly complicated mixture of the two still survives in the election of the Doge at Venice.
"Election by lot," says Montesquieu, "is democratic in nature. " I agree that it is so; but in what sense? "The lot," he goes on, "is a way of making choice that is unfair to nobody; it leaves each citizen a reasonable hope of serving his country. " These are not reasons.