CHAPTER II - THE TRIBUNATE OF THE PLEBS AND THE DECEMVIRATE

Summary

Material interests.

Under the new organization of the commonwealth the old burgesses had attained by legal means full possession of political power. Governing through the magistracy which had now been reduced to subserve their ends, preponderating in the senate, in sole possession of all high offices and priesthoods, armed with exclusive cognizance of things human and divine and familiar with the whole routine of political procedure, taking the lead in the voting of the great electoral assembly and influential in the commons through the number of devoted adherents attached to the various families, and, lastly, entitled to examine and to reject every decree of the community, —the patricians might long have preserved their practical power, for the very reason that they had at the right time abandoned their claim to be the sole holders of legal authority. It is true that the plebeians could not but be painfully sensible of their political disabilities; but undoubtedly in the first instance the nobility had not much to fear from a purely political opposition, if it understood the art of keeping the multitude, which desired nothing but equitable administration and protection of its material interests, aloof from political strife. In fact, during the first period after the expulsion of the kings, we meet with various measures which were intended, or at any rate seem to have been intended, to gain the favour of the commons for the government of the nobility, especially on economic grounds.