embodiment of the community did not
seem to have lost much, they had in other respects decidedly gained.
The king, it is true, was a patrician as well as the consul, and the
right of nominating the members of the senate belonged to the latter as
to the former; but while his exceptional position raised the former no
less above the patricians than above the plebeians, and while cases
might easily occur in which he would be obliged to lean upon the
support of the multitude even against the nobility, the consul--ruling
for a brief term, but before and after that term simply one of the
nobility, and obeying to-morrow the noble fellow-burgess whom he had
commanded to-day--by no means occupied a position aloof from his
order, and the spirit of the noble in him must have been far more
powerful than that of the magistrate. Indeed, if at any time by
way of exception a patrician disinclined to the rule of the nobility
was called to the government, his official authority was paralyzed
partly by the priestly colleges, which were pervaded by an intense
aristocratic spirit, partly by his colleague, and was easily suspended
by the dictatorship; and, what was of still more moment, he wanted
the first element of political power, time. The president of a
commonwealth, whatever plenary authority may be conceded to him,
will never gain possession of political power, if he does not continue
for some considerable time at the head of affairs; for a necessary
condition of every dominion is duration. Consequently the senate
appointed for life inevitably acquired--and that by virtue chiefly
of its title to advise the magistrate in all points, so that we speak
not of the narrower patrician, but of the enlarged patricio-plebeian,
senate--so great an influence as contrasted with the annual rulers,
that their legal relations became precisely inverted; the senate
substantially assumed to itself the powers of government, and
the former ruler sank into a president acting as its chairman and
executing its decrees. In the case of every proposal to be submitted
to the community for acceptance or rejection the practice of
previously consulting the whole senate and obtaining its approval,
while not constitutionally necessary, was consecrated by use and wont;
and it was not lightly or willingly departed from. The same course
was followed in the case of important state-treaties, of the
management and distribution of the public lands, and generally of
eve