Rousseau_contrat-social

If we bear in mind that the election of rulers is a function of
government, and not of Sovereignty, we shall see why the lot is the
method more natural to democracy, in which the administration is better
in proportion as the number of its acts is small.
In every real democracy, magistracy is not an advantage, but a
burdensome charge which cannot justly be imposed on one individual
rather than another. The law alone can lay the charge on him on whom the
lot falls. For, the conditions being then the same for all, and the
choice not depending on any human will, there is no particular
application to alter the universality of the law.
In an aristocracy, the prince chooses the prince, the government is
preserved by itself, and voting is rightly ordered.
The instance of the election of the Doge of Venice confirms, instead of
destroying, this distinction; the mixed form suits a mixed government.
For it is an error to take the government of Venice for a real
aristocracy. If the people has no share in the government, the nobility
is itself the people. A host of poor Barnabotes never gets near any
magistracy, and its nobility consists merely in the empty title of
Excellency, and in the right to sit in the Great Council. As this Great
Council is as numerous as our General Council at Geneva, its illustrious
members have no more privileges than our plain citizens. It is
indisputable that, apart from the extreme disparity between the two
republics, the bourgeoisie of Geneva is exactly equivalent to the
patriciate of Venice; our natives and inhabitants correspond to the
townsmen and the people of Venice; our peasants correspond to the
subjects on the mainland; and, however that republic be regarded, if its
size be left out of account, its government is no more aristocratic than
our own. The whole difference is that, having no life-ruler, we do not,
like Venice, need to use the lot.
Election by lot would have few disadvantages in a real democracy, in
which, as equality would everywhere exist in morals and talents as well
as in principles and fortunes, it would become almost a matter of
indifference who was chosen. But I have already said that a real
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