ption
of the consul, or to any private person, unless authorized by a previous
decree of the senate. In the management, however, of current affairs
and in the details of judicial and military administration the supreme
governing corporation did not interfere; the Roman aristocracy had too
much political judgment and tact to desire to convert the control of
the commonwealth into a guardianship over the individual official,
or to turn the instrument into a machine.

That this new government of the senate amidst all its retention
of existing forms involved a complete revolutionizing of the old
commonwealth, is clear. That the free action of the burgesses should
be arrested and benumbed; that the magistrates should be reduced to
be the presidents of its sittings and its executive commissioners;
that a corporation for the mere tendering of advice should seize the
inheritance of both the authorities sanctioned by the constitution
and should become, although under very modest forms, the central
government of the state--these were steps of revolution and
usurpation. Nevertheless, if any revolution or any usurpation appears
justified before the bar of history by exclusive ability to govern,
even its rigorous judgment must acknowledge that this corporation
timeously comprehended and worthily fulfilled its great task. Called
to power not by the empty accident of birth, but substantially by the
free choice of the nation; confirmed every fifth year by the stern
moral judgment of the worthiest men; holding office for life, and so
not dependent on the expiration of its commission or on the varying
opinion of the people; having its ranks close and united ever after
the equalization of the orders; embracing in it all the political
intelligence and practical statesmanship that the people possessed;
absolute in dealing with all financial questions and in the guidance
of foreign policy; having complete power over the executive by virtue
of its brief duration and of the tribunician intercession which was
at the service of the senate after the termination of the quarrels
between the orders--the Roman senate was the noblest organ of the
nation, and in consistency and political sagacity, in unanimity and
patriotism, in grasp of power and unwavering courage, the foremost
political corporation of all times--still even now an "assembly of
kings," which knew well how to combine despotic energy with republican
self-devotion. Never was a state