While in jurisdiction they stood from the beginning on an equality
with the consuls and in the early stages of the conflicts between the
orders acquired like the consuls the right of initiating legislation,
they now received--we know not exactly when, but presumably at or soon
after the final equalization of the orders--a position of equality
with the consuls as confronting the practically governing authority,
the senate. Hitherto they had been present at the proceedings of the
senate, sitting on a bench at the door; now they obtained, like the
other magistrates and by their side, a place in the senate itself and
the right to interpose their word in its discussions. If they were
precluded from the right of voting, this was simply an application of
the general principle of Roman state-law, that those only should give
counsel who were not called to act; in accordance with which the whole
of the acting magistrates possessed during their year of office only a
seat, not a vote, in the council of the state.(17) But concession did
not rest here. The tribunes received the distinctive prerogative of
supreme magistracy, which among the ordinary magistrates belonged
only to the consuls and praetors besides--the right of convoking the
senate, of consulting it, and of procuring decrees from it.(18) This
was only as it should be; the heads of the plebeian aristocracy
could not but be placed on an equality with those of the patrician
aristocracy in the senate, when once the government had passed
from the clan-nobility to the united aristocracy. Now that this
opposition-college, originally excluded from all share in the public
administration, became--particularly with reference to strictly urban
affairs--a second supreme executive and one of the most usual and most
serviceable instruments of the government, or in other words of the
senate, for managing the burgesses and especially for checking the
excesses of the magistrates, it was certainly, as respected its
original character, absorbed and politically annihilated; but this
course was really enjoined by necessity. Clearly as the defects of
the Roman aristocracy were apparent, and decidedly as the steady
growth of aristocratic ascendency was connected with the practical
setting aside of the tribunate, none can fail to see that government
could not be long carried on with an authority which was not only
aimless and virtually calculated to put off the suffering proletariate
with a