ssed debtors nothing seems to have been done, except
that the rules as to the maximum of interest were enforced;(24)
directions moreover were given for the sending out of a number of
colonies. The senate which had been greatly thinned by the battles
and prosecutions of the Social war was filled up by the admission of
300 new senators, who were naturally selected in the interest of the
Optimates. Lastly, material changes were adopted in respect to the
mode of election and the initiative of legislation. The old Servian
arrangement for voting in the centuriate comitia, under which the
first class, with an estate of 100,000 sesterces (1000 pounds) or
upwards, alone possessed almost half of the votes, again took the
place of the arrangements introduced in 513 to mitigate the
preponderance of the first class.(25) Practically there was thus
introduced for the election of consuls, praetors, and censors, a
census which really excluded the non-wealthy from exercising the
suffrage. The legislative initiative in the case of the tribunes
of the people was restricted by the rule, that every proposal had
henceforth to be submitted by them in the first instance to
the senate and could only come before the people in the event
of the senate approving it.

These enactments which were called forth by the Sulpician attempt at
revolution from the man who then came forward as the shield and sword
of the constitutional party--the consul Sulla--bear an altogether
peculiar character. Sulla ventured, without consulting the burgesses
or jurymen, to pronounce sentence of death on twelve of the most
distinguished men, including magistrates actually in office and
the most famous general of his time, and publicly to defend these
proscriptions; a violation of the venerable and sacred laws of appeal,
which met with severe censure even from very conservative men, such
as Quintus Scaevola. He ventured to overthrow an arrangement as to
the elections which had subsisted for a century and a half, and to
re-establish the electoral census which had been long obsolete and
proscribed. He ventured practically to withdraw the right of
legislation from its two primitive factors, the magistrates and the
comitia, and to transfer it to a board which had at no time possessed
formally any other privilege in this respect than that of being asked
for its advice.(26) Hardly had any democrat ever exercised justice
in forms so tyrannical, or disturbed and remodelle