ning
patriciate, so did the burgesses in relation to the non-burgesses;
the plebeiate, which had become great through the liberality of
its institutions, now wrapped itself up in the rigid maxims of
patricianism. The abolition of the passive burgesses cannot in itself
be censured, and, so far as concerned the motive which led to it,
belongs presumably to another connection to be discussed afterwards;
but through its abolition an intermediate link was lost. Far more
fraught with peril, however, was the disappearance of the distinction
between the Latin and the other Italian communities. The privileged
position of the Latin nation within Italy was the foundation of the
Roman power; that foundation gave way, when the Latin towns began to
feel that they were no longer privileged partakers in the dominion of
the powerful cognate community, but substantially subjects of Rome
like the rest, and when all the Italians began to find their position
equally intolerable. It is true, that there were still distinctions:
the Bruttians and their companions in misery were already treated
exactly like slaves and conducted themselves accordingly, deserting,
for instance, from the fleet in which they served as galley-slaves,
whenever they could, and gladly taking service against Rome; and the
Celtic, and above all the transmarine, subjects formed by the side of
the Italians a class still more oppressed and intentionally abandoned
by the government to contempt and maltreatment at the hands of the
Italians. But such distinctions, while implying a gradation of
classes among the subjects, could not withal afford even a remote
compensation for the earlier contrast between the cognate, and the
alien, Italian subjects. A profound dissatisfaction prevailed through
the whole Italian confederacy, and fear alone prevented it from
finding loud expression. The proposal made in the senate after the
battle at Cannae, to give the Roman franchise and a seat in the senate
to two men from each Latin community, was made at an unseasonable
time, and was rightly rejected; but it shows the apprehension with
which men in the ruling community even then viewed the relations
between Latium and Rome. Had a second Hannibal now carried the war to
Italy, it may be doubted whether he would have again been thwarted by
the steadfast resistance of the Latin name to a foreign domination.

The Provinces

But by far the most important institution which this epoch intr