f. The administration
of the empire was in the hands of men totally unfit to be trusted with
it, and there he thought the reform must commence. He threw himself on
the people, he was chosen tribune in 123, ten years exactly after
Tiberius. He had studied the disposition of parties. He had seen his
brother fall because the Equites and the senators, the great commoners
and the nobles, were combined against him. He revived the Agrarian law
as a matter of course, but he disarmed the opposition to it by throwing
an apple of discord between the two superior orders. The high judicial
functions in the commonwealth had been hitherto a senatorial monopoly.
All cases of importance, civil or criminal, came before courts of sixty
or seventy jurymen, who, as the law stood, must be necessarily senators.
The privilege had been extremely lucrative. The corruption of justice
was already notorious, though it had not yet reached the level of infamy
which it attained in another generation. It was no secret that in
ordinary causes jurymen had sold their verdicts, and, far short of
taking bribes in the direct sense of the word, there were many ways in
which they could let themselves be approached, and their favor
purchased. A monopoly of privileges is always invidious. A monopoly in
the sale of justice is alike hateful to those who abhor iniquity on
principle, and to those who would like to share the profits of it. But
this was not the worst. The governors of the provinces, being chosen
from those who had been consuls or praetors, were necessarily members of
the Senate. Peculation and extortion in these high functions were
offences, in theory, of the gravest kind; but the offender could only be
tried before a limited number of his peers, and a governor who had
plundered a subject state, sold justice, pillaged temples, and stolen
all that he could lay hands on, was safe from punishment if he returned
to Rome a millionnaire and would admit others to a share in his spoils.
The provincials might send deputations to complain, but these complaints
came before men who had themselves governed provinces, or else aspired
to govern them. It had been proved in too many instances that the law
which professed to protect them was a mere mockery.

Caius Gracchus secured the affections of the knights to himself, and
some slightly increased chance of an improvement in the provincial
administration, by carrying a law in the Assembly disabling the senators
from