of all,
the extension of the bounds of Rome deprived her primary assembly of
its true basis. As an assembly of the freeholders of the community,
it formerly might very well meet in sufficiently full numbers, and
might very well know its own wishes, even without discussion; but the
Roman burgess-body had now become less a civic community than a state.
The fact that those dwelling together voted also with each other, no
doubt, introduced into the Roman comitia, at least when the voting
was by tribes, a sort of inward connection and into the voting now
and then energy and independence; but under ordinary circumstances
the composition of the comitia and their decision were left dependent
on the person who presided or on accident, or were committed to the
hands of the burgesses domiciled in the capital. It is, therefore,
quite easy to understand how the assemblies of the burgesses, which
had great practical importance during the first two centuries of
the republic, gradually became a mere instrument in the hands of
the presiding magistrate, and in truth a very dangerous instrument,
because the magistrates called to preside were so numerous, and
every resolution of the community was regarded as the ultimate legal
expression of the will of the people. But the enlargement of the
constitutional rights of the burgesses was not of much moment,
inasmuch as these were less than formerly capable of a will and action
of their own, and there was as yet no demagogism, in the proper sense
of that term, in Rome. Had any such demagogic spirit existed, it
would have attempted not to extend the powers of the burgesses, but to
remove the restrictions on political debate in their presence; whereas
throughout this whole period there was undeviating acquiescence in the
old maxims, that the magistrate alone could convoke the burgesses,
and that he was entitled to exclude all debate and all proposal
of amendments. At the time this incipient breaking up of the
constitution made itself felt chiefly in the circumstance that
the primary assemblies assumed an essentially passive attitude,
and did not on the whole interfere in government either to help
or to hinder it.

The Magistrates. Partition and Weakening of the Consular Powers

As regards the power of the magistrates, its diminution, although not
the direct design of the struggles between the old and new burgesses,
was doubtless one of their most important results. At the beginning
of th