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7] and first magistrate of the realm; he administered justice in person every ninth day, but an appeal lay from his sentence, in criminal cases, to the general assemblies of the people. The pontiffs and augurs, however, were in some measure independent of the sovereign, and assumed the uncontrolled direction of the religion of the state. 9. The entire constitution was remodelled by Ser'vius Tul'lius, and a more liberal form of government introduced. His first and greatest achievement was the formation of the plebeians into an organized order of the state, invested with political rights. He divided them into four cities and twenty-six rustic tribes, and thus made the number of tribes the same as that of the curiae. This was strictly a geographical division, analagous to our parishes, and had no connection with families, like that of the Jewish tribes. 10. Still more remarkable was the institution of the census, and the distribution of the people into classes and centuries proportionate to their wealth. The census was a periodical valuation of all the property possessed by the citizens, and an enumeration of all the subjects of the state: there were five classes, ranged according to the estimated value of their possessions, and the taxes they consequently paid. The first class contained eighty centuries out of the hundred and seventy; the sixth class, in which those were included who were too poor to be taxed, counted but for one. We shall, hereafter have occasion to see that this arrangement was also used for military purposes; it is only necessary to say here, that the sixth class were deprived of the use of arms, and exempt from serving in war. 11. The people voted in the comitia centuriata by centuries; that is, the vote of each century was taken separately and counted only as one. By this arrangement a just influence was secured to property; and the clients of the patricians in the sixth class prevented from out-numbering the free citizens. 12. Ser'vius Tul'lius undoubtedly intended that the comitia centuriata should form the third estate of the realm, and during his reign they probably held that rank; but when, by an aristocratic insurrection he was slain in the senate-house, the power conceded to the people was again usurped by the patricians, and the comitio centuriata did not recover the right[8] of legislation before the laws[9] of the twelve tables were established. 13. The law which made the debtor
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