 | 16. Of the legislative Power in the Roman Republic. The Spirit of the Laws |  |
11.16. 16. Of the legislative Power in the Roman Republic.
There were no rights to contest under the decemvirs: but upon the restoration of liberty, jealousies revived; and so long as the patricians had any privileges left, they were sure to be stripped of them by the plebeians.
The mischief would not have been so great had the plebeians been satisfied with this success; but they also injured the patricians as citizens. When the people assembled by curi or centuries, they were composed of senators, patricians, and plebeians; in their disputes the plebeians gained this point, [41] that they alone without patricians or senate should enact the laws called Plebiscita; and the assemblies in which they were made had the name of comitia by tribes. Thus there were cases in which the patricians [42] had no share in the legislative power, but [43] were subject to the legislation of another body of the state. This was the extravagance of liberty. The people, to establish a democracy, acted against the very principles of that government. One would have imagined that so exorbitant a power must have destroyed the authority of the senate. But Rome had admirable institutions. Two of these were especially remarkable: one by which the legislative power of the people was established, and the other by which it was limited.
The censors, and before them the consuls, modelled [44] and created, as it were, every five years the body of the people; they exercised the legislation on the very part that was possessed of the legislative power. "Tiberius Gracchus," says Cicero, "caused the freedmen to be admitted into the tribes, not by the force of his eloquence, but by a word, by a gesture; which had he not effected, the republic, whose drooping head we are at present scarcely able to uphold, would not even exist."
On the other hand, the senate had the power of rescuing, as it were, the republic out of the hands of the people, by creating a dictator, before whom the sovereign bowed his head, and the most popular laws were silent. [45]
Footnotes
By the sacred laws, the plebeians had the power of making the plebiscita by themselves, without admitting the patricians into their assembly — Ibid., Book vi, p. 410; Book vii, p. 430.
By the law enacted after the expulsion of the decemvirs, the patricians were made subject to the plebiscita, though they had not a right of voting there. Livy, Book iii, p. 55, and Dionysius Halicarnassus, Book xi, p. 725. This law was confirmed by that of Publius Philo the dictator, in the year of Rome 416. Livy, Book viii. 12.
| 16. Of the legislative Power in the Roman Republic. The Spirit of the Laws | |