by the wise precaution which the censors had taken, to confine all citizens of mean or slavish extraction to four of the tribes. These were called the tribes of the city, and formed but a small proportion of the whole.

"Notwithstanding this precaution, we must suppose them to have been very improper parties in the participation of sovereignty, and likely enough to disturb the place of assembly with disorders and tumults. While the inferior people sunk in their characters, or were debased by the circumstances mentioned, the superior ranks, by their application to affairs of state, by their education, by the ideas of high birth and family distinction, by the superiority of fortune, began to rise in their estimation, in their pretensions, and in their power; and they entertained some degree of contempt for persons, whom the laws still required them to admit as their fellow-citizens and equals.

"In this disposition of parties, so dangerous in a commonwealth, and amidst materials so likely to catch the flame, some sparks were thrown, that soon kindled up anew all the popular animosities, which seemed to have been so long extinguished. Tiberius Gracchus, born of a plebeian family, but ennobled by the honors of his father, by his descent, on the side of his mother, from the first Scipio Africanus, and by his alliance with the second Scipio, who had married his sister, being now tribune of the people, and possessed of all the accomplishments required in a popular leader, great ardor, resolution, and eloquence, formed a project in itself extremely alarming, and in its consequences dangerous to the peace of the republic.

"Being called to account for his conduct as quæstor in Spain, the severity he experienced from the senate, and the protection he obtained from the people, filled his breast with animosity to the one, and a prepossession in favor of the other. Actuated by these dispositions, or by an idea not uncommon to enthusiastic minds, that the unequal distribution of property, so favorable to the rich, is an injury to the poor, he proposed a revival of the law of Licinius, by which Roman citizens had been restrained from accumulating estates in land above the value of five hundred jugera, little more than half as many acres. This was become impracticable, and even dangerous, in the present state of the republic. The distinctions of poor and rich are as necessary, in states of considerable extent, as labor and good government. The poor are destined to labor; and the rich, by the advantages of education, independence, and leisure, are qualified for superior stations. The empire was now greatly extended, and owed its safety and the order of its government to a respectable aristocracy, founded on the possession of fortune, as well as personal qualities and public honors. The rich were not, without some violent convulsion, to be stript of estates which they themselves had bought, or which they had inherited from their ancestors. The poor were not qualified at once to be raised to a state of equality with persons inured to a better condition. The project seemed to be as ruinous to government as it was to the security of property, and tended to place the members of the commonwealth, by one rash and precipitate step, in situations in which they were not at all qualified to act.

"For these reasons, as well as from motives of private interest affecting the majority of the nobles, the project of Tiberius was strenuously opposed by the senate; and, from motives of envy, interest, or mistaken zeal for justice, as warmly supported by the opposite party." Acting in concert with Appius Claudius, whose daughter he had married, a senator of the family of Crassus, who was then at the head of the priesthood, and Mucius Scævola the consul, he exhausted all his art, and displayed all his eloquence in declamation. "But when he came to propose that the law should be read, he found that his opponents had procured M. Octavius, one of his colleagues, to interpose his negative, and forbid any further proceeding in the business. Here, according to the law and the constitution, this matter should have dropped." But inflamed and unbalanced parties are not to be restrained by laws and constitutions. "The tribunes were instituted to defend their own party, not to attack their opponents; and to prevent, not to promote innovations. Every single tribune had a negative on the whole."

The rest of the story I must leave. The constitution thus violated, Gracchus next violated the sacred character of his colleague, the tribune. The senate were transported with indignation; violence ensued, and the two Gracchi fell. Afterwards, Marius carried the popular pretensions still higher; and Sylla might, if he would, have been emperor. Cæsar followed, and completed the catastrophe.

This commonwealth, by the splendor of its actions, the extent of its empire, the wisdom of its councils, the talents, integrity, and courage of a multitude of characters, exhibits the fairest prospect of our species, and is the most signal example, excepting England, of the wisdom and utility of a mixture of the three powers in a commonwealth. On the other hand, the various vicissitudes of its fortune, its perpetual domestic contests and internal revolutions, are the clearest proofs of the evils arising from the want of complete independence in each branch, and from an ineffectual balance.1

1 The author leaves us here without clearly defining the points in the Roman system in which the balance was defective. His observations on the same subject, scattered in the last chapter of the work, are more forcible than this analysis. Some valuable reflections upon the subject have been supplied by Lord Brougham, in his Political Philosophy, part ii. ch. 13, and others are to be found scattered in the pages of Niebuhr and Dr. Arnold; but a thoroughly republican and philosophical history, written by one familiar with all the phases of a popular government, remains yet to be written.

CHAPTER VIII.

ANCIENT ARISTOCRATICAL REPUBLICS.

ROME.

DIONYSIUS HALICARNASSENSIS, in the speech which he puts into the mouth of Valerius, has not only given us his own judgment, that the most perfect form of government is that which consists of an equal mixture of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, but he has repeated the same sentiment, in his own name, in other parts of his work. In the seventh section of his second book of the Roman Antiquities, he says of Romulus, that he was extremely capable of instituting the most perfect form of government. And, again; "I shall first speak of the form of government he instituted, which I look upon, of all others, to be the most self-sufficient to answer all the ends both of peace and war." This is a mixture of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, extolled by Polybius; and is nearly the same with that of Lycurgus, instituted at Sparta about a hundred years before. As the constitutions of Rome and Sparta lasted so many centuries longer than others of Greece and Italy, and produced effects so amazing upon the human character, we may rationally ascribe that duration and those effects to this composition, although the balance was very imperfect in both. The legal power, both of the kings and people, in both, was unequal to that of the senate, and, therefore, the predominant character in both was aristocracy. In Sparta, the influence of the monarchy and democracy was derived chiefly from the oath taken by the kings and ephori to support each other. An authority founded thus, in opinion, in religion, or rather in superstition, and not in legal power, would keep the senate in some awe, but not in any certain restraint.

Romulus divided all the people into three parts, and appointed a person of the first rank to be the chief of each of them. Then he subdivided each of these into ten others, and appointed as many of the bravest men to be the leaders of these. The greater divisions he called tribes, and the lesser curia. The commanders of the tribes were called tribuni; and those of the curiæ, curiones. He then divided the land into thirty portions, and gave one of them to each curia. He distinguished those who were eminent for their birth, virtues, and riches; and to these he gave the name of fathers. The obscure, the mean, and the poor, he called plebeians, in imitation of the government at Athens, where, at that time, those who were distinguished by their birth and fortune, were called "well-born," to whom the administration of government was committed; and the rest of the people, who had no share in it, "husbandmen." Romulus appointed the patricians to be priests, magistrates, and judges. The institution by which every plebeian was allowed to choose any patrician for his patron,1 introduced an intercourse of good offices between these orders, made the patricians emulate each other in acts of civility and humanity to their clients, and contributed to preserve the peace and harmony of Rome in so remarkable a manner, that, in all the contests which happened for six hundred and twenty years, they never proceeded to bloodshed.

The king, according to the institution of Romulus, had several important functions, namely, - 1. Supremacy in religion, ceremonies, sacrifices, and worship. 2. The guardianship of the laws, and administration of justice, in all cases, whether founded on the law of nature, or the civil law; he was to take cognizance of the greatest crimes in person, leaving the lesser to the senate; and to observe that no errors were committed in their judgments; he was to assemble both the senate and the people; to deliver his opinion first, and pursue the resolutions of the majority. Romulus, however, wisely avoided that remarkable Spartan absurdity of two kings.

The senate were to deliberate and determine, by a majority of votes, all questions which the king should propose to them. This institution, also, Romulus took from the constitution of the Lacedæmonians. The kings, in both constitutions, were so far from being absolute, that they had not the whole executive power, nor any negative upon the legislature; in short, the whole power of the government was vested in the senate.