litary manner, on a number of those who still adhered to the former mode of government, and even upon his own children, taught the people what they had to expect for the future, if they presumed to oppose the power of those whom they had thus unwarily made their

masters.

Among the oppressive laws or usages which the senate, after the expulsion of the kings, had permitted to continue, what were most complained of by the people, were those by which such citizens as could not pay their debts, with the interest (which at Rome was enormous), at the appointed time, became slaves to their creditors, and were delivered over to them bound with cords: hence the word nexi, by which slaves of that kind were denominated. The cruelties exercised by creditors on those unfortunate men, whom the private calamities, caused by the frequent wars in which Rome was engaged, rendered very numerous, at last roused the body of the people: they abandoned both the city and their inhuman fellowcitizens, and retreated to the other side of the river Anio.

But this second revolution, like the former, only procured the advancement of particular persons. A new office was created, called the

Y

tribuneship.

Those whom the people had placed at their head, when they left the city, were raised to it. Their duty, it was agreed, was, for the future, to protect the citizens: and they were invested with a certain number of prerogatives for that purpose. This institution, it must, however, be confessed, would have in the issue, proved very beneficial to the people, at least for a long course of time, if certain precautions had been taken with respect to it, which would have much lessened the future personal importance of the new tribunes: but these precautions the latter did not think proper to suggest; and in regard to those abuses themselves, which had at first given rise to the complaints of the people, no farther mention was made of them.†

As the senate and patricians in the early ages of the commonwealth, kept themselves closely united, the tribunes, for all their personal privileges, were not able, during the first times after their creation, to gain an ad

• Their number, which was only ten, ought to have been much greater; and they never ought to have accepted the power left to each of them, of stopping, by his single opposition, the proceedings of all the rest.

+ Many other seditions were afterwards raised upon

the same account.

mittance either to the consulship, or into the senate, and thereby to separate their condition any farther from that of the people. This situation of theirs, in which it was to be wished they might always have been kept, produced at first excellent effects, and caused their conduct to answer, in a great measure, the expectation of the people. The tribunes.complained loudly of the exorbitancy of the powers possessed by the senate and consuls: and here we must observe that the power exercised by the latter over the lives of the citizens, had never been yet subjected (which will probably surprise the reader) to any known laws, though sixty years had already elapsed since the expulsion of the kings. The tribunes therefore insisted that laws should be made in that respect, which the consuls should thenceforward be bound to follow, and that they should no longer be left, in the exercise of their power over the lives of the citizens, to their own caprice and wantonness.*

Equitable as these demands were, the senate and patricians opposed them with great warmth, and, either by naming dictators, or calling in

*"Quod populus in se jus dederit, eo consulem usu"rum; non ipsos libidinem ac licentiam suam pro lege "habituros."-Tit. Liv. lib. iii. § 9.

the assistance of the priests, or other means, they defeated, for nine years together, all the endeavours of the tribunes. However, as the latter were at that time in earnest, the senate was at length obliged to comply; and the Lex Terentilla was passed, by which it enacted, that a general code of laws should be made.

was

These beginnings seemed to promise great success to the cause of the people. But, unfortunately for them, the senate found means to have it agreed, that the office of tribune should be set aside during the whole time that the code should be framing. They, moreover, obtained that the ten men called decemvirs, to whom the charge of composing this code was to be given, should be taken from the body of the patricians. The same causes, therefore, produced again the same effects; and the power of the senate and consul was left in the new code or laws of the Twelve As to the Tables, as undefined as before. laws above-mentioned, concerning debtors, which never had ceased to be bitterly complained of by the people, and in regard to which some satisfaction ought, in common justice, to have been given them, they were confirmed, and a new terror added to them

from the manner in which they were expressed.

The true motive of the senate, when they thus trusted the framing of the new laws to a new kind of magistrates, called decemvirs, was, that, by suspending the ancient office of consul, they might have a fair pretence for suspending also the office of tribune, and thereby rid themselves of the people, during the time that the important business of framing the code should be carrying on: they even, in order the better to secure that point, placed the whole power of the republic in the hands of these new magistrates. But the senate and patricians experienced then, in their turn, the danger of intrusting men with an uncontrolled authority. As they themselves had formerly betrayed the trust which the people had placed in them, so did the decemvirs, on this occasion, likewise deceive them. They retained by their own private authority the unlimited power that had been conferred on them, and at last exercised it on the patricians as well as the plebeians. Both parties therefore united against them, and the decemvirs were expelled from the city.

The former dignities of the republic were restored, and with them the office of tribune,