and the enemy's borders so close at hand, that any night the
stout yeoman might find himself reduced to beggary, by seeing his crops
destroyed, his cattle driven away, and his homestead burnt in a sudden
foray. The patricians and rich plebeians were, it is true, exposed to
the same contingencies. But wealth will always provide some defence; and
it is reasonable to think that the larger proprietors provided places of
refuge, into which they could drive their cattle and secure much of
their property, such as the peel-towers common in our own border
counties. Thus the patricians and their clients might escape the storm
which destroyed the isolated yeoman.

To this must be added that the public land seems to have been mostly in
pasturage, and therefore the property of the patricians must have
chiefly consisted in cattle, which was more easily saved from
depredation than the crops of the plebeian. Lastly, the profit derived
from the trades and business of their clients, being secured by the
walls of the city, gave to the patricians the command of all the capital
that could exist in a state of society so simple and crude, and afforded
at once a means of repairing their own losses, and also of obtaining a
dominion over the poor yeoman.

For some time after the expulsion of the Tarquins it was necessary for
the patricians to treat the plebeians with liberality. The institutions
of "the Commons' King," King Servius, suspended by Tarquin, were,
partially at least, restored: it is said even that one of the first
consuls was a plebeian, and that he chose several of the leading
plebeians into the senate. But after the death of Porsenna, and when the
fear of the Tarquins ceased, all these flattering signs disappeared. The
consuls seem still to have been elected by the Centuriate Assembly, but
the Curiate Assembly retained in their own hands the right of conferring
the _Imperium_, which amounted to a positive veto on the election by the
larger body. All the names of the early consuls, except in the first
year of the Republic, are patrician. But if by chance a consul displayed
popular tendencies, it was in the power of the senate and patricians to
suspend his power by the appointment of a dictator. Thus, practically,
the patrician burgesses again became the _Populus_, or body politic of
Rome.

It must not here be forgotten that this dominant body was an exclusive
caste; that is, it consisted of a limited number of noble families, wh