If founded on conquest, in proportion to the number of the victors, is that aristocracy more or less oligarchical.

The extreme paucity of force with which the Dorians conquered their neighbours, was one of the main causes why the governments they established were rigidly oligarchical.
XXVII.

Proceeding onward, we find that in this aristocracy, are preserved the seeds of liberty and the germe of republicanism.

These conquerors, like our feudal barons, being sharers of the profit of the conquest and the glory of the enterprise, by no means allow undivided and absolute authority to their chiefs.

Governed by separate laws-- distinguished by separate privileges from the subdued community, they are proud of their own freedom, the more it is contrasted with the servitude of the population: they preserve liberty for themselves-- they resist the undue assumptions of the king [68]--and keep alive that spirit and knowledge of freedom which in after times (as their numbers increase, and they become a people, distinct still from the aboriginal natives, who continue slaves) are transfused from the nobles to the multitude.