d the foundations of
the constitution with so reckless an audacity, as this conservative
reformer. But if we look at the substance instead of the form, we
reach very different results. Revolutions have nowhere ended, and
least of all in Rome, without demanding a certain number of victims,
who under forms more or less borrowed from justice atone for the fault
of being vanquished as though it were a crime. Any one who recalls
the succession of prosecutions carried on by the victorious party
after the fall of the Gracchi and Saturninus(27) will be inclined
to yield to the victor of the Esquiline market the praise of candour
and comparative moderation, in so far as, first he without ceremony
accepted as war what was really such and proscribed the men who were
defeated as enemies beyond the pale of the law, and, secondly, he
limited as far as possible the number of victims and allowed at least
no offensive outbreak of fury against inferior persons. A similar
moderation appears in the political arrangements. The innovation as
respects legislation--the most important and apparently the most
comprehensive--in fact only brought the letter of the constitution
into harmony with its spirit. The Roman legislation, under which
any consul, praetor, or tribune could propose to the burgesses any
measure at pleasure and bring it to the vote without debate, had from
the first been, irrational and had become daily more so with the
growing nullity of the comitia; it was only tolerated, because in
practice the senate had claimed for itself the right of previous
deliberation and regularly crushed any proposal, if put to the vote
without such previous deliberation, by means of the political or
religious veto.(28) The revolution hadswept away thesebarriers;
andin consequence that absurd system now began fully to develop its
results, and to put it in the power of any petulant knave to overthrow
the state in due form of law. What was under such circumstances more
natural, more necessary, more truly conservative, than now to recognize
formally and expressly the legislation of the senate to which effect
had been hitherto given by a circuitous process? Something similar
may be said of the renewal of the electoral census. The earlier
constitution was throughout based on it; even the reform of 513 had
merely restricted the privileges of the men of wealth. But since that
year there had occurred an immense financial revolution, which might
wel