of the old
commonwealth, is clear. That the free action of the burgesses should
be arrested and benumbed; that the magistrates should be reduced to
be the presidents of its sittings and its executive commissioners;
that a corporation for the mere tendering of advice should seize the
inheritance of both the authorities sanctioned by the constitution
and should become, although under very modest forms, the central
government of the state--these were steps of revolution and
usurpation. Nevertheless, if any revolution or any usurpation appears
justified before the bar of history by exclusive ability to govern,
even its rigorous judgment must acknowledge that this corporation
timeously comprehended and worthily fulfilled its great task. Called
to power not by the empty accident of birth, but substantially by the
free choice of the nation; confirmed every fifth year by the stern
moral judgment of the worthiest men; holding office for life, and so
not dependent on the expiration of its commission or on the varying
opinion of the people; having its ranks close and united ever after
the equalization of the orders; embracing in it all the political
intelligence and practical statesmanship that the people possessed;
absolute in dealing with all financial questions and in the guidance
of foreign policy; having complete power over the executive by virtue
of its brief duration and of the tribunician intercession which was
at the service of the senate after the termination of the quarrels
between the orders--the Roman senate was the noblest organ of the
nation, and in consistency and political sagacity, in unanimity and
patriotism, in grasp of power and unwavering courage, the foremost
political corporation of all times--still even now an "assembly of
kings," which knew well how to combine despotic energy with republican
self-devotion. Never was a state represented in its external
relations more firmly and worthily than Rome in its best times by
its senate. In matters of internal administration it certainly
cannot be concealed that the moneyed and landed aristocracy, which
was especially represented in the senate, acted with partiality in
affairs that bore upon its peculiar interests, and that the sagacity
and energy of the body were often in such cases employed far from
beneficially to the state. Nevertheless the great principle
established amidst severe conflicts, that all Roman burgesses were
equal in the eye of the law as re