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showed that a serious divergence existed between theory and practice, and that if constitutional law, as it stood, were carried out, the rule of the nobility would be swept away to be replaced by a democratic government. But the rupture did not now go deeper. The dreadful Hannibalic war, which broke out immediately after, occupied the entire attention of Italy, silenced all internal disputes, and united the whole strength of the nation to ward off the common enemy. Even if C. Flaminius had not been one of the first to perish in that bloody war, his success as a demagogue would nevertheless have been brought to a speedy end.' The calamities of the great war were then followed by a series of magnificent conquests, which, like all victories in antiquity, brought in their train booty and profit to high and low, and silenced for a time the desire for reforms, until at last successors to Flaminius were found in the Gracchi.

CHAP.

I.

tion of new citizens in

If we consider the prominent position which the Incorporaassembly of tribes occupied in the political life of the Roman republic as the embodiment of the sovereignty of the tribes. the people, we cannot be surprised that the form and constitution of this assembly should be the subject of frequent political agitation. In fact, the internal struggles which affected the constitution of the republic were intimately connected with the peculiar organisation of the tribes. We hear a good deal of their periodical reform, whilst not a trace is perceptible of any agitation for the reform of the centuriate comitia. This is a sufficient proof that the latter formed no longer the centre of political life. From the time of the censor Appius Claudius Cæcus, 312 B.C.,' the question was repeatedly agitated, whether new citizens accruing from the emancipation of

law) εἰσηγησαμένου καὶ πολιτείαν, ἣν δὴ καὶ 'Ρωμαίοις, ὡς ἔπος εἰπεῖν, φατέον ἀρχηγὸν μὲν γενέσθαι τῆς ἐπὶ τὸ χεῖρον τοῦ δήμου διαστροφῆς.

A similar postponement of reform took place in England in consequence of the wars with the French Republic. William Pitt occupied a much more domineering position in the councils of England than C. Flaminius did at Rome, and yet he dropped all ideas of reform in the stress of war.

2 Vol. i. p. 433.

BOOK

VI.

slaves or otherwise should be enrolled in the four city tribes, or in the country tribes. The question was never fully set at rest, until at last all restrictions which separated Romans from non-Romans gave way, and the whole flood of the Italian allies was poured into the narrow limits of the thirty-five tribes. The policy of Appius Claudius has already been explained.' As the republic increased in power and importance, the population of Rome also grew larger, and the new inhabitants, whether descended from freedmen, allies, or foreigners, were in every respect, social as well as economical, on an equal footing with the privileged citizens, without, however, enjoying the rights of citizenship, and therefore without being liable to perform the duties of citizens. It was impossible to turn these people out of Rome, and it was unwise to let them remain in the state as a perfectly strange element. In one way or another they had to be incorporated with the state. The prejudice against strangers, who were regarded as a meaner and inferior race, had to be overcome: they had in some way to be recognised as citizens. If the comitia of centuries had been the only popular assembly, it is probable that no difficulty would have arisen. The new citizens would have been distributed according to their property among the five classes, and they could hardly have gained any preponderance over the old citizens or even a disproportionate influence. But the greatest power was in the hands of the comitia tributa, and, as in the tribes votes were counted by heads, it was a serious risk to receive a number of strangers dwelling in the town in such a manner among the citizens that they should be inscribed as voters among all the tribes. Of the members of the

1 Vol. i. p. 435.

It should be borne in mind that, though the division of the people into tribes was originally based upon actual residence, so that each tribe was made up of the inhabitants of a certain district, change of residence did not involve a change of tribe, and that accordingly in course of time the tribes lost the character of local divisions, and the same quarter of the town might contain members of each of the thirty-five tribes.

country tribes, a small number only lived near enough to the town to attend the frequent political meetings. The inhabitants of the more distant villages, if they had not abundant leisure-i.e. if they were not wealthy-were mostly unable to avail themselves of their right of citizenship in the comitia. If, therefore, the numerous inmates of the city, without changing their domicile, had been entitled to act as voters in all the tribes, it is obvious that the scanty voices of the country population would have had little or no influence in forming a majority in each tribe. The shopkeepers, tradesmen, and artisans of the city, would in fact have represented the Roman people in the thirty-five tribes, and their votes would have outnumbered those of the peasantry, the true backbone of the nation.

CHAP.

I.

tration of Fabius.

This result was surely not desirable,' and we cannot The regisblame as obstinate aristocrats those statesmen who urged that the less respectable portion of the citizens, which was recruited from strangers and freedmen, and knew nothing of agriculture, should be restricted in their votes in order that the original character of the people depending mainly upon agriculture might be preserved. This object Quintus Fabius gained in 304 B.C., as we have seen above,2 by limiting the new citizens to the tribes within the town. In spite of their preponderance in numbers, they had therefore only four out of thirty-one tribal votes at their

In England the constitution does not give to the population of London and the other large towns a number of representatives corresponding to their numerical importance. In the continental constitutions which have not grown up gradually, but been made artificially, representation is regulated entirely by numbers, so that Paris and Berlin send more deputies than large country districts. Whatever one may think of the fairness of the democratic demand that the large towns should have a share in the legislation proportionate to their population, there can be no doubt that if the Roman system of direct voting in national comitia of the whole people could ever be introduced again nobody would propose that the vote of the different divisions of a country should be given by members of these divisions residing in the capital. Such a mode of voting would make the capital really absolute mistress of the whole nation, and so it was in Rome under the regulation which allotted the freedmen as new citizens to all the tribes.

2 Vol. i. p. 436.

BOOK

VI.

Political importance of the

comitia of

tribes.

disposal,' and as the influence of the rich was always very great in the country, and as those living at a distance could not take part in the political life unless they were rich, the Roman tribes became more and more aristocratic in their practical working, although in principle their organisation was thoroughly democratic. This circum

stance explains to a certain extent the good understanding between the tribes and the ruling nobility. There was no opposition and no jealousy. Year after year the tribes, under the influence of the nobility, appointed for tribunes of the people men who were acceptable to the nobility, and these tribunes were the agents through whom the senate laid their propositions for laws and administrative measures before the people to be approved or rejected by them. A certain rule and practice was thus worked out convenient to both parties. Where there is no opposition based on principles, there is no violent excitement in political life. The assemblies for elections and laws were rarely numerously attended. It would seldom happen that out of nearly three hundred thousand citizens, a few thousand attended the meetings; on ordinary occasions a few hundred would represent the whole people, and this was sufficient so long as the people were convinced that the senate and the magistrates would take measures of which the public opinion approved.2

A clear proof of the diminished influence of the comitia of centuries is the fact that the Roman historians have not thought necessary to detail or even to refer to the nature of the changes which in course of time must necessarily have taken place in their organisation and which, according to Livy and Dionysius,3 actually did take place. This proof becomes still stronger when the same historians inform us that the reforms of the tribes

The number of tribes was at that time thirty-one.

2 According to Cicero, Pro Sestio, 51, 109, it happened sometimes that hardly five citizens in a tribe appeared to give their vote: Leges sæpe videmus ferri multas. Omitto eas, quæ feruntur ita vix ut quini, et hi ex alia tribu, qui suffragium ferant, reperiantur.

3 Above, p. 13.

occasioned repeated and violent struggles, which, as we shall see hereafter, became more violent after the time of the Gracchi, and led to a complete transformation of the whole of Italy into one single community of Roman citizens. We see, then, in these facts a confirmation of the old law of development-namely this, that from the very first secession of the plebeians it was this part of the Roman people, organised in the comitia tributa, and acting under the tribunes of the people, to which the development of the constitution is principally due.

CHAP.

I.

comitia of

voters.

It is quite characteristic of this assembly of the tribes The that the question was never raised whether the patricians tribes and should be admitted to them. It never occurred to the nonRomans that it was legally possible or even conceivable for a patrician to vote in these plebeian assemblies, any more than for patricians to be elected tribunes of the people. The assemblies of tribes have always been purely plebeian.' But if the patricians were excluded from them without ever demanding admission, this was not the case with another class of the population who were not, like the patricians, doomed to die out, but who on the contrary threatened to grow more numerous than the genuine Romans. This class consisted of those citizens who did not enjoy the full civic rights (cives sine suffragio), a class in which the old contrast between plebeian and patrician citizens was renewed on a larger scale, and whose struggle for equal rights clearly shows that in the development of the republic the same principles were at work at later periods which we can observe in the first.

and

A jealous exclusion of foreigners from the rights of Citizens citizenship was quite in agreement with the religious foreigners. groundwork of the ancient state. Foreigners could not participate in the national worship, and were therefore legally incapable of taking any share in the civil government of

Attempts have been made by Niebuhr, Göttling, and others to fix the time when the patricians were received as members into the plebeian tribes, which reception was assumed to be an undoubted fact. Compare the author's paper, Die Entwickelung der Tributcomitien,' in the Rheinische Museum, 1873.

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