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
[41]
Ibid., Book xi, p. 725.
[42]
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.
[43]
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.
[44]
In the year 312 of Rome the consuls performed still the business
of surveying the people and their estates, as appears by Dionysius
Halicarnassus, Book xi.
[45]
Such as those by which it was allowed to appeal from the
decisions of all the magistrates to the people.
