ot cure. The internal government of the nobility
continued to follow the direction once given to it; and the decay of
the administration and of the financial system--paving the way for
future revolutions and usurpations--steadily pursued its course,
if not unnoticed, yet unchecked.

The Opposition

If the new nobility was less sharply defined than the old aristocracy
of the clans, and if the encroachment on the other burgesses as
respected the joint enjoyment of political rights was in the one
case -de jure-, in the other only -de facto-, the second form of
inferiority was for that very reason worse to bear and worse to throw
off than the first. Attempts to throw it off were, as a matter of
course, not wanting. The opposition rested on the support of the
public assembly, as the nobility did on the senate: in order to
understand the opposition, we must first describe the Roman burgess-
body during this period as regards its spirit and its position in the
commonwealth.

Character of the Roman Burgess-Body

Whatever could be demanded of an assembly of burgesses like the Roman,
which was not the moving spring, but the firm foundation, of the whole
machinery--a sure perception of the common good, a sagacious deference
towards the right leader, a steadfast spirit in prosperous and evil
days, and, above all, the capacity of sacrificing the individual for
the general welfare and the comfort of the present for the advantage
of the future--all these qualities the Roman community exhibited in so
high a degree that, when we look to its conduct as a whole, all
censure is lost in reverent admiration. Even now good sense and
discretion still thoroughly predominated. The whole conduct of
the burgesses with reference to the government as well as to the
opposition shows quite clearly that the same mighty patriotism before
which even the genius of Hannibal had to quit the field prevailed also
in the Roman comitia. No doubt they often erred; but their errors
originated not in the mischievous impulses of a rabble, but in the
narrow views of burgesses and farmers. The machinery, however, by
means of which the burgesses intervened in the course of public
affairs became certainly more and more unwieldy, and the circumstances
in which they were placed through their own great deeds far outgrew
their power to deal with them. We have already stated, that in the
course of this epoch most of the former communities of passive
burgesses,