Beacon Lights of History, Volume 03 | Page 6

nor could he often have held a great office unless he
were a senator. Thus it would seem that the Roman constitution for
three hundred years after the expulsion of the kings was essentially
aristocratic. The plebs had but small consideration till the time of the
Gracchi.
But after the institution of tribunes a change in the constitution
gradually took place, so that it was neither aristocratic nor popular
exclusively, but was composed of both elements, and was a system of
balance of power between the various classes. The more complete the
balance of power, the closer is the resemblance to a constitutional
government. When one class acted as a check against another class, as
gradually came to pass, until the subversion of liberties by successful
generals, the senate, the magistrates, and the people in their assemblies
shared between them the political power, but the senate had a
preponderating influence. The judicial, the legislative, and the
executive authority was as well defined in Roman legislation as it is in
English or American. No person was above the authority of the laws;
no one class could subvert the liberties and prerogatives of another
class,--even the senate could not override the constitution. The consuls,
elected by the centuries, presided over the senate and over the
assemblies of the people. There was no absolute power exercised at
Rome until the subversion of the constitution, except by dictators
chosen by the senate in times of imminent danger. Nor could senators
elect members of their own body; the censors alone had the right of
electing from the ex-magistrates, and of excluding such as were
unworthy. The consuls could remain in office but a year, and could be
called to account when their terms of office had expired. The tribunes
of the people ultimately could prevent a consul from convening the
senate, could seize a consul and imprison him, and could veto an
ordinance of the senate itself. The nobles had no exclusive privilege
like the feudal aristocracy of mediaeval Europe, although it was their
aim to secure the high magistracies to the members of their own body.
The term nobilitas implied that some one of a man's ancestors had

filled a curule magistracy. A patrician, long before the reforms of the
Gracchi, had become a man of secondary importance, but the nobles
were aristocrats to the close of the republic, and continued to secure the
highest offices; they prevented their own extinction by admitting into
their ranks those who distinguished themselves,--that is, exercising
their influence in the popular elections to secure the magistracies from
among themselves.
The Roman constitution then, as gradually developed by the necessities
and crises that arose, which I have not space to mention, was a
wonderful monument of human wisdom. The nobility were very
powerful from their wealth and influence, but the people were not
ground down. There were no oppressive laws to reduce them to
practical slavery; what rights they gained they retained. They
constantly extorted new privileges, until they were sufficiently
powerful to be courted by demagogues. It was the demagogues,
generally aristocratic ones, like Catiline and Caesar, who subverted the
liberties of the people by buying votes. But for nearly five hundred
years not a man arose whom the Roman people feared, and the proud
symbol "SPQR," on the standards of the armies of the republic, bore
the name of the Roman Senate and People to the ends of the earth.
When, however, the senate came to be made up of men whom the great
generals selected; when the tribunes played into the hands of the very
men they were created to oppose; when the high-priest of a people,
originally religious, was chosen politically and without regard to moral
or religious consideration; when aristocratic nobles left their own ranks
to steal the few offices which the people controlled,--then the
constitution, under which the Romans had advanced to the conquest of
the world, became subverted, and the empire was a consolidated
despotism.
Under the emperors there was no constitution, since they combined in
their own persons all the great offices of state, and controlled the senate,
the army, the tribunals of the law, the distant provinces, the city itself,
and regulated taxes and imposed burdens as they pleased. The senate
lost its independence, the courts their justice, the army its spirit, and the

people their hopes. And yet the old forms remained; the senate met as
in the days of the Gracchi, and there were consuls and praetors as
before.
However much we may deplore the subversion of the Roman
constitution and the absolute reign of the emperors, in which most
historians see a political necessity, there was yet under these emperors,
whether good or bad, the reign of law, the bequest of five hundred
years' experience. The emperors reigned despotically,