beian magistrates; secondly, for jurisdiction in cases where these
magistrates had been injured; thirdly, for presenting petitions on
behalf of the plebs through the consuls to the _comitia centuriata_.
This right of petitioning developed into a power of legislation. The
stages of the process (marked by the Valerio-Horatian laws of 449 B.C.,
the Publilian law of 339 B.C., and the Hortensian law of 287 B.C.) are
unknown; but it is probable that the two first of the laws progressively
weakened the discretionary power of senate and consuls in admitting such
petitions; and that the Hortensian law fully recognized the right of
resolutions of the plebs (_plebiscita_) to bind the whole community. The
plebeian assembly, which had perhaps originally met by _curiae_, was
organized on the basis of the territorial tribes in 471 B.C. This change
suggested a renewed organization of the whole people for comitial
purposes. The _comitia tributa populi_ was the result. This assembly
seems to have been already in existence at the epoch of the Twelve
Tables in 451 B.C., its electoral activity is perhaps attested in 447
B.C., and it appears as a legislative body in 357 B.C.

In spite of the formal differences of these four assemblies and the real
distinction springing from the fact that patricians were not members of
the plebeian bodies, the view which is appropriate to the developed
Roman constitution is that the people expressed its will equally through
all, although the mode of expression varied with the channel. This will
was in theory unlimited. It was restricted only by the conservatism of
the Roman, by the condition that the initiative must always be taken by
a magistrate, by the _de facto_ authority of the senate, and by the
magisterial veto which the senate often had at its command (see SENATE).
There were no limitations on the legislative powers of the _comitia_
except such as they chose to respect or which they themselves created
and might repeal. They never during the Republican period lost the right
of criminal jurisdiction, in spite of the fact that so many spheres of
this jurisdiction had been assigned in perpetuity to standing
commissions (_quaestiones perpetuae_). This power of judging exercised
by the assemblies had in the main developed from the use of the right of
appeal (_provocatio_) against the judgments of the magistrates. But it
is probable that, in the developed procedure, where it was known that
the judgment pronou