ng security for freedom. The plebs
obtained self-government and an equal sovereignty, by the aid of the
tribunes of the people, the peculiar, salient, and decisive invention of
Roman statecraft. The powers conferred on the tribunes, that they might
be the guardians of the weak, were ill defined, but practically were
irresistible. They could not govern, but they could arrest all
government. The first and the last step of plebeian progress was gained
neither by violence nor persuasion, but by seceding; and, in like
manner, the tribunes overcame all the authorities of the State by the
weapon of obstruction. It was by stopping public business for five years
that Licinius established democratic equality. The safeguard against
abuse was the right of each tribune to veto the acts of his colleagues.
As they were independent of their electors, and as there could hardly
fail to be one wise and honest man among the ten, this was the most
effective instrument for the defence of minorities ever devised by man.
After the Hortensian law, which in the year 286 gave to the plebeian
assembly co-ordinate legislative authority, the tribunes ceased to
represent the cause of a minority, and their work was done.

A scheme less plausible or less hopeful than one which created two
sovereign legislatures side by side in the same community would be hard
to find. Yet it effectually closed the conflict of centuries, and gave
to Rome an epoch of constant prosperity and greatness. No real division
subsisted in the people, corresponding to the artificial division in the
State. Fifty years passed away before the popular assembly made use of
its prerogative, and passed a law in opposition to the senate. Polybius
could not detect a flaw in the structure as it stood. The harmony seemed
to be complete, and he judged that a more perfect example of composite
government could not exist. But during those happy years the cause which
wrought the ruin of Roman freedom was in full activity; for it was the
condition of perpetual war that brought about the three great changes
which were the beginning of the end--the reforms of the Gracchi, the
arming of the paupers, and the gift of the Roman suffrage to the people
of Italy.

Before the Romans began their career of foreign conquest they possessed
an army of 770,000 men; and from that time the consumption of citizens
in war was incessant. Regions once crowded with the small freeholds of
four or five acres, which were