as taken that their influence, especially
that of those who had once been slaves and who were for the most part
without property in land, should be subjected to that check which
is unfortunately, in a state allowing slavery, an indispensable
necessity. A peculiar moral jurisdiction, moreover, which gradually
came to be associated with the census and the making up of the
burgess-roll, excluded from the burgess-body all individuals
notoriously unworthy, and guarded the full moral and political
purity of citizenship.

Increasing Powers of the Burgesses

The powers of the comitia exhibited during this period a tendency to
enlarge their range, but in a manner very gradual. The increase in
the number of magistrates to be elected by the people falls, to some
extent, under this head; it is an especially significant fact that
from 392 the military tribunes of one legion, and from 443 four
tribunes in each of the first four legions respectively, were
nominated no longer by the general, but by the burgesses. During this
period the burgesses did not on the whole interfere in administration;
only their right of declaring war was, as was reasonable, emphatically
maintained, and held to extend also to cases in which a prolonged
armistice concluded instead of a peace expired and what was not in
law but in fact a new war began (327). In other instances a question
of administration was hardly submitted to the people except when the
governing authorities fell into collision and one of them referred
the matter to the people--as when the leaders of the moderate party
among the nobility, Lucius Valerius and Marcus Horatius, in 305, and
the first plebeian dictator, Gaius Marcius Rutilus, in 398, were not
allowed by the senate to receive the triumphs they had earned; when
the consuls of 459 could not agree as to their respective provinces of
jurisdiction; and when the senate, in 364, resolved to give up to the
Gauls an ambassador who had forgotten his duty, and a consular tribune
carried the matter to the community. This was the first occasion on
which a decree of the senate was annulled by the people; and heavily
the community atoned for it. Sometimes in difficult cases the
government left the decision to the people, as first, when Caere sued
for peace, after the people had declared war against it but before
war had actually begun (401); and at a subsequent period, when the
senate hesitated to reject unceremoniously the humble entreat