never again attempted. A more sure and less dangerous expedient was afterwards followed, which was, to divide the tribunes. One tribune could, by his veto, oppose or suspend any decree; but if another opposed him, the veto was of no effect. Icilius, one of the tribunes, having opposed the forming of the levies, his four colleagues, gained over by the senate, took the opposite side; and it was therefore agreed that the consideration of the agrarian law should be postponed till the termination of the war.

When that period arrived, the contest was again renewed. The tribunes brought on the consideration of the law; they demanded why the last consuls had not named decemviri; and they even pretended to call them to account and to punish them for this omission. Genucius, a tribune, summoned the consuls of the current year to execute the decree which had been so long neglected. They refused, on pretence that a decree of the senate, when not executed by those consuls to whom it was directed, was held to be abrogated. Genucius then summoned the consuls of the preceding year to answer for their conduct, and vowed, as is said, that he would prosecute them to his latest breath. They took care that he should keep his word, for the next day he was found dead in his bed. The people were made to regard this as a judgment of the gods, who thus expressed their disapprobation of the schemes of this factious tribune; and his colleagues were intimidated for some time from prosecuting his views; not less, perhaps, from the apprehension of human than of divine vengeance.

The consuls and senate, trusting to the effect of this example, assumed a more rigid authority, and the levies were made with severe exactness. Among those whom the consuls had enrolled as a common soldier, was a plebeian named Volero, who, in a former campaign, had been a centurion, and was esteemed a good officer. He complained of

the injustice done him in thus degrading him, and refused to obey. The consuls ordered him to be scourged, from which sentence he appealed to the people. One of the consular lictors endeavouring to arrest him was beaten off; and the people, tumultuously taking his part, broke the fasces and drove the consuls out of the forum. The senate was immediately assembled, and the consuls demanded that Volero should be thrown from the Tarpeian Rock. The plebeians, on the other hand, called for justice against the consuls for a breach of the Valerian law, in disregarding Volero's appeal to the people; and the contest lasted till the election of the annual magistrates, when Volero was chosen one of the tribunes. The person of a tribune was sacred, and that of a consul, when out of office, was not so; but Volero did not choose to limit his vengeance to the two consuls : the whole senate was the object of his resentment, and he resolved to strike a blow which they should

never recover.

The election of the tribunes of the people had hitherto been held in the comitia curiata. Volero urged that as these comitia could not be summoned but by a decree of the senate, that body might, on various pretences, postpone or refuse to summon them; that the previous ceremony of

consulting the auspices was necessary, and these, the priests, who were the augurs, could interpret in any manner they chose; and that, lastly, it was always held necessary that whatever was done in those assemblies should be confirmed by a decree of the senate. He represented all these formalities as being nothing else than restrictions imposed by the senate on the popular deliberations and proposed that henceforth the magistrates of the people should be chosen in the comitia called by tribes, which were exempt from all those restraints.

The senate, by throwing difficulties in the way, found means to retard for some time the passing of a law so fatal to their power; but their opposition was in the main ineffectual; for it passed at last, and with this remarkable addition, that all questions, in which the affairs of the people were agitated, should henceforward be debated in the comitia tributa.

This famous law of Volero completed the change in the constitution of the Roman Republic. The supreme authority from this time may be considered as having passed from the higher orders into the hands of the people. The consuls con

tinued to preside in the comitia held by centuries; but the tribunes presided in those assemblies in which the most important business of the commonwealth was now transacted. The senate retained, however, a considerable degree of power. They had the disposal of the public money; they sent and received ambassadors,—made treaties-and their decrees had the force of a law while not annulled by a decree of the people. In a word, this body continued to have respect, and at least the appear

ance of authority, which we shall observe to have yet its effect in frequently restraining the violence of the popular measures. The consuls too, though in most points of effective power and authority subordinate to the tribunes, had yet in some particulars a vestige of supremacy. They were absolute at the head of the army, and first in command in the civil authority within the city. Their office still carried with it that external show of dignity which commands respect and submission, and which, over the minds of the vulgar, is frequently attended with the same influence as substantial power.

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CHAPTER V.

An Agrarian Law never seriously projected-Decemviri proposed to digest a Code of Laws-Cincinnatus-Appointment of Decemvirs-Laws of the Twelve Tables-Tyranny of the Decemvirs-Infamous Conduct of Appius Claudius- Death of Virginia-Abolition of the Decemvirate.

THE People having now attained so very considerable an increase of authority, might certainly have prevailed in obtaining the favourite measure of an agrarian law. But the truth is, this measure was nothing more than a political engine, occasionally employed by the popular magistrates for exciting commotions, and weakening the power of the patricians. It was a measure attended necessarily with so much difficulty in the execution, that few even of the people themselves had a sincere desire of seeing it accomplished. The ex

tensive disorder it must have introduced in the territorial possessions of the citizens, by a new distribution of all the lands acquired by conquest to the republic since the time of Romulus; the affection which even the poorest feel for a small patrimonial inheritance, the place of their nativity, and the repository of the bones of their forefathers; and that most admirable and most salutary persuasion that it is an act of impiety to alter or remove ancient