, and without requiring
to apply force for the attainment of his ends. The order of sequence
in which these measures were carried can no longer be recognized in
the confused accounts handed down to us, and various questions that
suggest themselves have to remain unanswered. But it does not seem
as if, in what is missing, many elements of material importance have
escaped us; for as to the principal matters we have quite trustworthy
information, and Gaius was by no means, like his brother, urged on
further and further by the current of events, but evidently had a well-
considered and comprehensive plan, the substance of which he fully
embodied in a series of special laws. Now the Sempronian constitution
itself shows very clearly to every one who is able and willing to
see, that Gaius Gracchus did not at all, as many good-natured
people in ancient and modern times have supposed, wish to place
the Roman republic on new democratic bases, but that on the contrary
he wished to abolish it and to introduce in its stead a -tyrannis---
that is, in modern language, a monarchy not of the feudal or of the
theocratic, but of the Napoleonic absolute, type--in the form of a
magistracy continued for life by regular re-election and rendered
absolute by an unconditional control over the formally sovereign
comitia, an unlimited tribuneship of the people for life. In fact
if Gracchus, as his words and still more his works plainly testify,
aimed at the overthrow of the government of the senate, what other
political organization but the -tyrannis- remained possible, after
overthrowing the aristocratic government, in a commonwealth which
had outgrown primary assemblies and for which parliamentary government
did not exist? Dreamers such as was his predecessor, and knaves such
as after-times produced, might call this in question; but Gaius
Gracchus was a statesman, and though the formal shape, which that great
man had inwardly projected for his great work, has not been handed
down to us and may be conceived of very variously, yet he was beyond
doubt aware of what he was doing. Little as the intention of
usurping monarchical power can be mistaken, as little will those
who survey the whole circumstances on this account blame Gracchus.
An absolute monarchy is a great misfortune for a nation, but it is
a less misfortune than an absolute oligarchy; and history cannot
censure one who imposes on a nation the lesser suffering instead
of the greater,