he very latest period. One
immediate result was that the Comitia continued to exercise criminal
jurisdiction by way of bill of pains and penalties, long after the
Quaestiones had been established. Though the legislature had consented
to delegate its powers for the sake of convenience to bodies external
to itself, it did not follow that it surrendered them. The Comitia and
the Quaestiones went on trying and punishing offenders side by side;
and any unusual outburst of popular indignation was sure, until the
extinction of the Republic, to call down upon its object an indictment
before the Assembly of the Tribes.

One of the most remarkable peculiarities of the institutions of the
Republic is also traceable to this dependance of the Quaestiones on the
Comitia. The disappearance of the punishment of Death from the penal
system of Republican Rome used to be a very favourite topic with the
writers of the last century, who were perpetually using it to point
some theory of the Roman character or of modern social economy. The
reason which can be confidently assigned for it stamps it as purely
fortuitous. Of the three forms which the Roman legislature
successively assumed, one, it is well known--the Comitia
Centuriata--was exclusively taken to represent the State as embodied
for military operations. The Assembly of the Centuries, therefore, had
all powers which may be supposed to be properly lodged with a General
commanding an army, and, among them, it had authority to subject all
offenders to the same correction to which a soldier rendered himself
liable by breaches of discipline. The Comitia Centuriata could
therefore inflict capital punishment. Not so, however, the Comitia
Curiata or Comitia Tributa. They were fettered on this point by the
sacredness with which the person of a Roman citizen, inside the walls
of the city, was invested by religion and law; and, with respect to
the last of them, the Comitia Tributa, we know for certain that it
became a fixed principle that the Assembly of the Tribes could at most
impose a fine. So long as criminal jurisdiction was confined to the
legislature, and so long as the assemblies of the centuries and of the
Tribes continued to exercise co-ordinate powers, it was easy to prefer
indictments for graver crimes before the legislative body which
dispensed the heavier penalties; but then it happened that the more
democratic assembly, that of the Tribes, almost entirely superseded
the others, a