s inviolable,
only for a year. But the younger Gracchus was re-elected. The nobles
accused him of aiming at the crown. A tribune who should be practically
irremovable, as well as legally irresistible, was little less than an
emperor. The senate carried on the conflict as men do who fight, not for
public interests but for their own existence. They rescinded the
agrarian laws. They murdered the popular leaders. They abandoned the
constitution to save themselves, and invested Sylla with a power beyond
all monarchs, to exterminate their foes. The ghastly conception of a
magistrate legally proclaimed superior to all the laws was familiar to
the stern spirit of the Romans. The decemvirs had enjoyed that arbitrary
authority; but practically they were restrained by the two provisions
which alone were deemed efficacious in Rome, the short duration of
office, and its distribution among several colleagues. But the
appointment of Sylla was neither limited nor divided. It was to last as
long as he chose. Whatever he might do was right; and he was empowered
to put whomsoever he pleased to death, without trial or accusation. All
the victims who were butchered by his satellites suffered with the full
sanction of the law.

When at last the democracy conquered, the Augustan monarchy, by which
they perpetuated their triumph, was moderate in comparison with the
licensed tyranny of the aristocratic chief. The Emperor was the
constitutional head of the Republic, armed with all the powers requisite
to master the senate. The instrument which had served to cast down the
patricians was efficient against the new aristocracy of wealth and
office. The tribunician power, conferred in perpetuity, made it
unnecessary to create a king or a dictator. Thrice the senate proposed
to Augustus the supreme power of making laws. He declared that the power
of the tribunes already supplied him with all that he required. It
enabled him to preserve the forms of a simulated republic. The most
popular of all the magistracies of Rome furnished the marrow of
Imperialism. For the Empire was created, not by usurpation, but by the
legal act of a jubilant people, eager to close the era of bloodshed and
to secure the largess of grain and coin, which amounted, at last, to
900,000 pounds a year. The people transferred to the Emperor the
plenitude of their own sovereignty. To limit his delegated power was to
challenge their omnipotence, to renew the issue between the many and