n of Rome
was thus in some measure constitutional monarchy inverted. In
that form of government the king is regarded as the possessor and
vehicle of the plenary power of the state, and accordingly acts of
grace, for example, proceed solely from him, while the administration
of the state belongs to the representatives of the people and to
the executive responsible to them. In the Roman constitution the
community of the people exercised very much the same functions as
belong to the king in England: the right of pardon, which in England
is a prerogative of the crown, was in Rome a prerogative of the
community; while all government was vested in the president of the
state.

If, in conclusion, we inquire as to the relation of the state itself
to its individual members, we find the Roman polity equally remote
from the laxity of a mere defensive combination and from the
modern idea of an absolute omnipotence of the state. The community
doubtless exercised power over the person of the burgess in the
imposition of public burdens, and in the punishment of offences and
crimes; but any special law inflicting, or threatening to inflict,
punishment on an individual on account of acts not universally
recognized as penal always appeared to the Romans, even when there
was no flaw in point of form, an arbitrary and unjust proceeding.
Far more restricted still was the power of the community in respect
of the rights of property and the rights of family which were
coincident, rather than merely connected, with these; in Rome the
household was not absolutely annihilated and the community aggrandized
at its expense, as was the case in the police organization of
Lycurgus. It was one of the most undeniable as well as one of the
most remarkable principles of the primitive constitution of Rome,
that the state might imprison or hang the burgess, but might not take
away from him his son or his field or even lay permanent taxation
on him. In these and similar things the community itself was
restricted from encroaching on the burgess, nor was this restriction
merely ideal; it found its expression and its practical application
in the constitutional veto of the senate, which was certainly entitled
and bound to annul any resolution of the community contravening
such an original right. No community was so all-powerful within
its own sphere as the Roman; but in no community did the burgess
who conducted himself un-blameably live in an equally abso