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became at length so general, from the frequency of the military campaigns, in which every soldier was obliged to serve at his own charges, and from the ravages committed on the lands by the hostile armies, which reduced the poorer sort entirely to beggary, that the plebeians began to look upon their order as born to a state of hereditary servitude. Hence that desperate measure of abandoning the city and encamping in arms upon the Mons Sacer. All that the people at this time desired was not power, but a relief from oppression and cruelty. And had this just claim been readily listened to, and a relief granted to them, if not by an entire abolition of the debts, at least by repressing the enormous" usury, and taking away the inhuman rights of slavery and of corporal punishment, this people would, in all probability, have cheerfully returned to order and submission, and the Roman constitution might long have remained, what we have seen it was at first, aristocratical. But a torrent imprudently resisted will in time acquire that impetuous force which carries every thing before it. The patricians, sensible that they had pushed matters to a most alarming extreme, and now thoroughly intimidated, were obliged to grant the demand of creating popular magistrates. The tribunate being once established, we shall see it become the main object with these magistrates to increase their own powers by continual demands and bold encroachments. The people, regarding them as the champions of their rights, are delighted to find themselves gradually approaching to an equality with the higher order; and no longer bounding their desires to ease and security, become soon equally influenced by ambition as their superiors, while that passion in them is the less subject to control that they have more to gain and less to lose. While this people, borne down by hardships and oppression, seek no more than the redress of real grievances and a share of ease and happiness as the members of a free state, we applaud their spirited exertions, and execrate that arbitrary and inhuman principle which prompted the higher order to treat them as slaves or inferior beings. But when we behold this people compassing at length by a vigorous and manly resistance the end they wished for attaining ease and security, nay power, which at first they had not sought, and never dreamed of; when we see them, after this, increasing in their demands, assuming all that arrogance they justly blamed before, goaded on by the ambition of their leaders to aim at tyrannizing in their turn we view with proper discrimination the love of liberty and its extreme, licentiousness; and treat with just detestation the authors of those pernicious measures, which embroiled the state in endless factions, and paved the way for a total loss of that liberty which this deluded people knew not to put a true value upon when they actually possessed it.

Some authors, and among the rest the Abbé Condillac, pretend to find in those perpetual dissensions and violent struggles between

the patrician and plebeian orders at Rome, the true cause of the glorious and prodigious extension of her empire, and of al her subsequent grandeur and prosperity. This, though not an uncommon mode of reasoning, is by far more specious than it is solid. I would ask what shadow of necessary connection there is between the factious disorders, and internal convulsions of a state, and the extension of her empire by foreign conquest? On the contrary, it seems a self-evident proposition, that while the one spirit exists, the other for the time is extinguished, or lies altogether dormant; for the ambition of domestic rule cannot otherwise be gratified than by a constant and servile attention to the arts of popularity, incompatible with the generous passion which leads to national aggrandizement. The people too, won only by corruption, and split by rival demagogues into factions, imbittered against each other with the most rancorous hostilities, are incapable of that cordial union to which every foreign enterprise must owe its success. The martial spirit may, no doubt, be kept alive, and find improving exercise in a civil war or rebellion; but this spirit finds too much exercise at home, to seek for employment in foreign conquests; and in the breasts of the leading men, those selfish motives, either of avarice or the love of power, which are commonly the sources of all civil disorders, are baneful to every generous and patriotic feeling, which seeks alone the true greatness or glory of the

state.

In the present case, the true causes of the wonderful extension of the Roman empire will be sought in vain, in the perpetual contests between the higher and the lower orders. These, instead of being productive of national aggrandizement, were the immediate causes of the fall of the commonwealth and the ruin of civil liberty. The main source of the extension of the empire by its conquests, is to be found in the extraordinary abilities of a few great men, who, either in a subordinate station had too much worth to prefer a selfish interest to the glory of their country, or who, spurning the more confined object of superior power at home, proposed to themselves a nobler and more glorious aim by extending the limits of that empire which they ruled as sovereigns.

It is not to be denied that other causes, likewise, contributed to the aggrandizement of the Roman empire. Several of these have been pointed out by Montesquieu. Such was, among others, the very power of those enemies they had to encounter; a power which must either have entirely oppressed and annihilated them, or forced them to that most vigorous and animated exertion to which they owed their successes. Such enemies were the Gauls, the Macedonians under Pyrrhus, and the Carthaginians under Hannibal. So far were the factions of the state from being the cause of those successes, and that rapid extension of empire, that 't was the formidable power of such external enemies that, lulling

asleep for the time every source of domestic faction and disorder, enabled the republic to employ its whole strength, and make those spirited efforts to which it owed its most glorious successes.

CHAPTER IV.

Increase of the power of the Tribunes--They convoke an assembly of the Peo ple-Coriolanus Disputes on the Agrarian Law -- Law of Volero - and change produced by it.

THE disorders which we have seen allayed by the creation of the tribunes of the people, were only quieted for a very short space of time. We shall see them immediately renewed, and continued, with very little interruption, till the people acquired an equal title with the patricians to all the offices and dignities of the commonwealth. Thus, for a period of almost two centuries, the history of Rome, during every succeeding year, presents almost the same scenes; an endless reiteration of complaints, on account of the same or similar grievances; opposed by the same spirit, resisted by similar arguments, and usually terminating in the same way, to the increase of the popular power. As our object is to give rather a just idea of the character and spirit of nations, than a scrupulous detail, or minute chronicle of events, we shall, in that period, touch only on such circumstances as, while they are illustrative of the genius of the people, are necessary to form a connected chain of the principal events which had their influence on the revolutions and fate of this Republic.

The first tribunes of the people were created 260 years after the foundation of Rome, and seventeen years after the abolition of the regal government. These magistrates were habited like simple citizens; they had no exterior ensigns of power; they had neither tribunal nor jurisdiction as judges; they had no guards nor attendants, unless a single domestic termed Viator or Apparitor. They stood without the senate-house, nor durst they enter it unless they were called in by the consuls: but possessing, as we have said, the power of suspending or annulling, by a single veto, the most solemn decrees of that body, their influence and authority were very great.

Every thing, for a little while, wore an appearance of tranquillity. The senators blindly applauded themselves on the success of their negotiation, as they saw the people pleased, and could see

nothing to fear from those rude and simple magistrates, who had not even the outward symbols of power But this delusion was

of short continuance.

It was in the beginning of spring, that the people had retreated to the Mons Sacer; at a time when it was customary to plough and sow the fields of the republic. As the lands had lain neglected during those commotions, it was not surprising that the fol lowing harvest should be a season of great scarcity. This, perhaps, the senate, by proper precautions, might have prevented. The tribunes accused that body of negligence, and of a design to raise a famine among the people, while the patricians, as they insinuated, had taken care of themselves, by laying in abundant supplies.

The consuls assembled the people, and attempted to justify the senate; but being constantly interrupted by the tribunes, they could not make themselves be heard. They urged, that the tribunes having only the liberty of opposing, ought to be silent till a resolution was formed. The tribunes, on the other hand, contended that they had the same privileges in an assembly of the people that the consuls had in a meeting of the senate. The dispute was running high, when one of the consuls rashly said, that if the tribunes had convoked the assembly, they, instead of interrupting them, would not even have taken the trouble of coming there; but that the consuls having called this assembly, they ought not to be interrupted. This imprudent speech was an acknowledgment of a power in the tribunes to convoke the public assemblies; a power which they themselves had never dreamt of. It may be believed they were not remiss in laying hold of the concession. They took the whole people to witness what had been said by the consuls, and an assembly of the people was summoned, by the tribunes, to meet the next day.*

The whole people assembled by daybreak. Icilius, one of the tribunes, urged that, in order that they might be in a capacity of effectually fulfilling their duty, in protecting and vindicating the rights of the people, they should have the power, not only of calling them together, but of haranguing them without being subject to any interruption. The people were unanimously of this opinion; and a law to that purpose was instantly passed by general acclamation. The consuls would have rejected this law, on the score of the assembly's being held against all the established forms: --it had not been legally summoned, and there had been no consultation of the auspices; but the tribunes declared that they would pay no more regard to the decrees of the senate, than the consuls and the senate should pay to those of the people. The senate was forced to yield, and the new law was ratified by the consent

*Dion Hal. 1. c. Liv. lib. ii. Plutarch in Coriol

of both orders. Thus there were now established in the republic two separate legislative powers, which maintained a constant opposition to each other.

There was but one method by which the senate might, perhaps, have recovered their power. This was, by exercising their authority with such moderation, and so much regard to the interests of the people, as to render the functions of the tribunes superfluous. But this was a difficult part to act. Being once supreme, they could not stoop to an abasement of power, and inflexibly struggling to maintain a prerogative which they wanted real strength to vindicate, they prepared for themselves only a greater humiliation.

One of the most violent of the senators was Caius Marcius, surnamed Coriolanus, from a successful campaign he had made against the Volsci, in which he had taken Corioli, one of their principal towns. Coriolanus had aspired to the consulate, but the people, fearing his high and arrogant spirit, had excluded him from that dignity. Incensed at this disappointment, he took every opportunity of expressing his resentment; and in particular, declared openly in the senate, that the necessities of the people, occasioned by the present famine, furnished an opportunity which ought not to be neglected, of compelling them to relinquish all pretensions to authority, and to abolish their new magistrates.

The people, exasperated beyond measure, vowed vengeance against Coriolanus, and they summoned him to appear before them, and answer for his conduct. He refused, and the Ediles had orders to arrest him, but were repulsed in the attempt by his partisans among the patricians. In a tumultuous assembly of the people, one of the tribunes proceeded, with a daring stretch of authority, to pronounce Coriolanus guilty of treason, and award a capital punishment: but the people themselves were sensible that this was going too far; they repealed this precipitate sentence; allowed him twenty-seven days to prepare his defence, and summoned him to appear before their assembly after the lapse of that

term.

During this interval the consuls and the chief senators, who saw the dangerous consequences of violent measures, endeavored, by persuasion, to promote a good understanding between the orders. They labored to convince the tribunes that it had hitherto been the constant practice, and agreeable to the constitution of the republic, that every public measure should originate by a motion in the senate, and that till this body had given a decree, no business. of state could be agitated in the assembly of the people. The tribunes did not acquiesce in these propositions: they contended that the authority of the people was coördinate with that of the senate; and that-the Valerian law having ordained a right of appeal to the people from the senate, and all magistrates-they must, of course, possess the right of citing before them any citizens

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