tion of the orders, served as a powerful weapon in the hands
of the plebeians when these soon afterwards desired admission to the
offices of state. But this was not the real design of the tribunate.
It was a concession wrung not from the politically privileged order,
but from the rich landlords and capitalists; it was designed to ensure
to the commons equitable administration of law, and to promote a more
judicious administration of finance. This design it did not, and
could not, fulfil. The tribune might put a stop to particular
iniquities, to individual instances of crying hardship; but the fault
lay not in the unfair working of a righteous law, but in a law which
was itself unrighteous, and how could the tribune regularly obstruct
the ordinary course of justice? Could he have done so, it would have
served little to remedy the evil, unless the sources of impoverishment
were stopped--the perverse taxation, the wretched system of credit,
and the pernicious occupation of the domain-lands. But such measures
were not attempted, evidently because the wealthy plebeians themselves
had no less interest in these abuses than the patricians. So this
singular magistracy was instituted, which presented to the commons an
obvious and available aid, and yet could not possibly carry out the
necessary economic reform. It was no proof of political wisdom, but a
wretched compromise between the wealthy aristocracy and the leaderless
multitude. It has been affirmed that the tribunate of the people
preserved Rome from tyranny. Were it true, it would be of little
moment: a change in the form of the state is not in itself an evil
for a people; on the contrary, it was a misfortune for the Romans
that monarchy was introduced too late, after the physical and mental
energies of the nation were exhausted. But the assertion is not
even correct; as is shown by the circumstance that the Italian states
remained as regularly free from tyrants as the Hellenic states
regularly witnessed their emergence. The reason lies simply in the
fact that tyranny is everywhere the result of universal suffrage,
and that the Italians excluded the burgesses who had no land from
their public assemblies longer than the Greeks did: when Rome departed
from this course, monarchy did not fail to emerge, and was in fact
associated with this very tribunician orifice. That the tribunate had
its use, in pointing out legitimate paths of opposition and averting
many a wro