political
rights only where he was enrolled as a burgess; but on the other
hand it was implied in an equality of private rights, that any Latin
could take up his abode in any place within the Latin bounds; or,
to use the phraseology of the present day, there existed, side by
side with the special burgess-rights of the individual communities,
a general right of settlement co-extensive with the confederacy;
and, after the plebeian was acknowledged in Rome as a burgess,
this right became converted as regards Rome into full freedom of
settlement. It is easy to understand how this should have turned
materially to the advantage of the capital, which alone in Latium
offered the means of urban intercourse, urban acquisition, and urban
enjoyments; and how the number of --metoeci-- in Rome should have
increased with remarkable rapidity, after the Latin land came to
live in perpetual peace with Rome.

In constitution and administration the several communities not
only remained independent and sovereign, so far as the federal
obligations did not interfere, but, what was of more importance,
the league of the thirty communities as such retained its autonomy
in contradistinction to Rome. When we are assured that the position
of Alba towards the federal communities was a position superior
to that of Rome, and that on the fall of Alba these communities
attained autonomy, this may well have been the case, in so far as
Alba was essentially a member of the league, while Rome from the
first had rather the position of a separate state confronting the
league than of a member included in it; but, just as the states
of the confederation of the Rhine were formally sovereign, while
those of the German empire had a master, the presidency of Alba may
have been in reality an honorary right(9) like that of the German
emperors, and the protectorate of Rome from the first a supremacy
like that of Napoleon. In fact Alba appears to have exercised the
right of presiding in the federal council, while Rome allowed the
Latin deputies to hold their consultations by themselves under the
guidance, as it appears, of a president selected from their own
number, and contented herself with the honorary presidency at the
federal festival where sacrifice was offered for Rome and Latium,
and with the erection of a second federal sanctuary in Rome--the
temple of Diana on the Aventine--so that thenceforth sacrifice was
offered both on Roman soil for Rome and Latium,