No ancient author gives us the precise phraseology of any constitutional provision relating to the legislative power in the Roman republic; nor did any one of them write a treatise, preserved to our times, with clear definitions of the legislative functions of the senate and of the centuriate and tribal assemblies. It seems probable that in some time of civil discord the senate promised that the tribal assembly should possess complete power to enact laws, but gave the promise in questionable phraseology, or with vexatious conditions.

That the concession was made in a riot or civil war is indicated by its incompleteness. If adopted in time of peace, it probably would have been comprehensive enough to secure harmony among the different legislative bodies, and would have been expressed in language worthy of quotation, discussion, and laudatory comment by historians and orators. The intention of the senators to keep control of the legislation is evinced by the facts that they retained the management of the administration; that in all subsequent generations they systematically refused to execute those tribal enactments which they disliked; that by refusing to execute they practically repealed them; and that the tribal assembly never called the senate to account for its disregard of the constitution, nor tried to take away the legislative power of the rival centuriate assembly. The latter organization being under the influence of the patricians, and having control of the election of consuls, prætors, and curule ædiles, who after the close of their executive terms became senators, presented an insuperable obstacle to any steady domination by the plebeians. The tribal assembly seems to have had little power except during brief periods of popular excitement. The rules recognized by the courts that a law became

void by neglect; that the order of the consul, whether based upon legislative authority or not, unless vetoed by his colleague, was law during his term; that he could not be called to account before the end of his term, for any illegal act; that the resolution of the senate was law for a year, unless sooner rejected by the centuriate, or tribal assemblies; and that the senators were not responsible to any tribunal for refusing to enforce any law;—all these indicate the predominance of aristocratic influences in the government.

Of the discord and even bitter hostility between the senate and the tribal assemblies, there are many reports. Indeed, the domestic history of the republic is made up, to a large extent, of the outbreaks of such hostility. The secessions of the plebeians, the assassinations of popular leaders accused of aspiring to royal power, and the refusals of the senate to execute agrarian laws, and to fulfill promises of relief to the debtor class, could not have occurred under a government that was administered harmoniously.

SEC. 447. Nobles United.-In a state that permits a struggle between aristocratic and democratic tendencies, statesmanship and selfish ambition combine their forces to drive many of the noble and wealthy political leaders into the popular party. While national strength and greatness shall depend mainly on the multitude, it will be the duty of a wise ruler to educate the populace, and gradually confer on them larger shares in the government, until they become fit for complete equality. If the contest between the two parties be peaceful and healthy, the progressive side will gain strength continuously, and thus will be able to confer increasing rewards on its leaders. Under such influences, Solon, Cleisthenes, Aristides,

and Pericles were potent in Athens; Russell, Brougham, and Gladstone in England; Stein in Prussia; Mirabeau Thiers, and Gambetta, in France; and Victor Emanuel, and Cavour in modern Italy. But no man deserving a place in this list belongs to ancient Rome. That state, at least in the period of the historical republic, had many revolutionists, but no great political reformer who labored to make the government more liberal.

In most other countries possessing a nobility and an active political life, a considerable number of the nobles have sided with the commoners, and labored with them steadily for generation after generation in a healthy and consistent struggle for liberal constitutional amendments. It was so in ancient Athens, and it is so in the Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and Austria of our time, but it was not so in ancient Rome. There no body of patricians sided with the plebeians. If a noble showed democratic leanings, he stood alone in his order. The political struggle was not steady and healthy, but convulsive and violent. When an important amendment was adopted, it was the result of a riot. To pacify the multitude, the nobles made a promise of concession, and in many cases violated the promise. The senate was not one of the fields in which the two political parties contended for the mastery; it was the organized representative of the aristocrats. When an official proposed or favored an agrarian bill, the people and authors, like Cicero, Sallust, and Livy, said he had taken side against the senate. Such remarks were made about Tiberius Gracchus, Caius Gracchus, Caius Marius, and Julius Cæsar.

In the Roman senate there were no famous parliamentary debates on questions of constitutional law, no

eloquent pleas for the enactment of additional guaranties of popular freedom. Of the orations delivered in that body, and preserved to our time, not one relates to the contest between the progressive and conservative sides of government. It may be considered characteristic of the political life of Rome that the most notable senatorial orations of Rome known to us are devoted to the conspiracy of Catiline; not to a project of peaceful reform, but to a plot for a malignant and blood-thirsty revolution.

The unanimity of the Roman nobles for century after century, in their opposition to democratic ideas, was perhaps caused by the association of these ideas with rudeness and disorder. The plebeians, as a class, were the coarsest populace ever admitted to a share in the government. Their secessions, riots, political murders, their devotion to war as their main occupation, their fondness for gladiatorial shows, their system of demanding such shows as bribes for votes, and their custom of living, not by their productive labor, but by the plunder taken from their conquered provinces, these together characterize them as entirely different from the multitude in any other constitutional state. Such a coarse populace could not offer an attractive partnership to a great statesman, and therefore it was that the ablest ancient Romans, including Sulla, Cicero, and Cæsar, were enemies of democratic institutions.

If the Roman constitution had been constructed upon a logical plan, the two forms of the popular assembly Iwould each have had a distinct function. Each would have had the duty of expressing the opinion of the multitude upon a certain class of measures. But the constitution was not logically constructed, and there was no

division of labor between the tribal and the centuriate organizations. Those bills prepared by the tribunes were submitted to the tribal groups; those prepared by the consuls, to the centuriate groups. The author of the bill sought the approval of the body which he convened, over which he presided, and in which he had the most influence. Since nearly two hundred group votes, a majority of the whole number, had to be counted in the centuriate assembly, and only eighteen in the tribal assembly, the latter was the more convenient of the two modes of obtaining an expression of the popular will. Except in times of excitement which amounted almost to riot, the taking of the popular vote on bills was a matter of empty form.

Whatever the Publilian, the Horatian, or the Hortensian law may have said, we know that, practically, unless when frightened by a furious plebeian mob, the senate held firm control over the legislation as well as over the administration of the state till the time of Sulla. The tribal assembly was democratic in its feelings, but it never acquired a predominant influence in the government except during Spasms of popular excitement, too brief and disorderly for the enactment of comprehensive reforms. There was no well-devised scheme of democratic government; no well organized democratic party; no democratic side in the senate; no Cleisthenes or Pericles among the Roman nobles; no systematic agitation, even among the plebeians, for the transfer of the elections from the centuriate to the tribal assembly, or for the reconstruction of these latter groups, so that they should be of equal size approximately, or for the abolition of the rules. practically excluding the poor men from office. When the people were assembled to hear an address about some