and other early historians express themselves so frequently in both ways. But what is most conclusive, none of the historians have denied the authenticity of these narratives, which state that the people elected the senators, and point out the particular manner of electing the first hundred, which they would have done, if they had supposed that these narratives contradicted their own account of these transactions.

WE are therefore to suppose, that the Roman historians understood these expressions, that the king, consul, or censor, nominated senators, as implying, that it was done either with the actual votes, or with the concurrence of the people. That the power of the people in that matter was so well known, that the mode of expression could not be misunderstood; as English historians, for the same reason, frequently call an act of parliament, an act of the king or his minister.

After

THE disputes which took place between the patricians and the plebeians, after the expulsion of Tarquin, were occasioned by the abuse of the powers, which the method of taking the votes by centuries, had, indirectly, put into the hands of the former over the latter. many violent altercations, and being frequently on the brink of civil war, the patricians were obliged to yield up all the exclusive privileges which they had usurped, when settling the consular office, and which they acquired by the new method of voting, to allow the poorest Roman an equal vote with the richest, in enacting laws, and to be equally eligible to of fices, as had been the constant practice in Rome, from the building of the city until the method of taking the votes by centuries was established. The lower classes recovered their right of having equal votes in enacting laws, in the 304th year of Rome, by the establishment of the comitia by tribes; and the exclusive right

C

of the patricians to the high offices, was finally annulled by the law of Licinius, in the year of Rome 385, which brought the constitution to its original form. No alteration was afterwards made, until the murder of Tiberius Gracchus, in the 620th year of Rome.

SECTION II.

On the nature and tendency of the powers intrusted to public agents by the Romans.

By the Roman constitution, as restored to its primitive principles by the law of Licinius, any Roman, upon being elected to the office of questor, was entitled to a seat in the senate for life. And no person could be elected to the higher offices of edile, pretor, consul, or censor, until he had officiated in each inferior office. All the executive officers were elected annually, by the people; consequently, supposing the consuls to live twenty years at a medium after being elected, as there were, with few exceptions, two new ones every year, there would be in general about forty consulars in the senate.

THE number of questors, ediles, and pretors, being gradually increased with the increase of

business, there would probably be about a hundred of these different officers in the senate at this period, who had not arrived at the consulate. And that assembly was filled up at each census to its usual number of three hundred, from the inferior offices, by the censors, not in private, but in the public assemblies of the people, by a general nomination. But whether that nomination required the confirmation of the people, is not determined by historians.

THESE senators, however, had all acquired considerable offices from the people, by their talents and character.

THE Roman senate was thus formed of men who were elected by the society to the public offices, as possessing the greatest talents, and having the greatest experience in business.But its office and powers were totally different from those of any modern senate.