THE INSTITUTION OF ROMAN POLITICAL SOCIETY.
THE POPULUS.—THE PLEBEIANS.—THE CLIENTS.—THE
PATRICIANS.—LIMITS OF THE ORDER.—LEGISLATION OF SERVIUS
TULLIUS.—INSTITUTION OF PROPERTY CLASSES.—OF THE
CENTURIES.—UNEQUAL SUFFRAGE.—COMITIA CENTURIATA.—SUPERSEDES
COMITIA CURIATA.—CLASSES SUPERSEDE THE GENTES.—THE
CENSUS.—PLEBEIANS MADE CITIZENS.—INSTITUTION OF CITY
WARDS.—OF COUNTRY TOWNSHIPS.—TRIBES INCREASED TO FOUR.—MADE
LOCAL INSTEAD OF CONSANGUINE.—CHARACTER OF NEW POLITICAL
SYSTEM.—DECLINE AND DISAPPEARANCE OF GENTILE ORGANIZATION.—THE
WORK IT ACCOMPLISHED.
Servius Tullius, the sixth chief of the Roman military democracy, came
to the succession about one hundred and thirty-three years after the
death of Romulus, as near as the date can be ascertained.[358] This
would place his accession about 576 B. C. To this remarkable man the
Romans were chiefly indebted for the establishment of their political
system. It will be sufficient to indicate its main features, together
with some of the reasons which led to its adoption.
From the time of Romulus to that of Servius Tullius the Romans
consisted of two distinct classes, the _populus_ and the _plebeians_.
Both were personally free, and both entered the ranks of the army;
but the former alone were organized in gentes, curiæ and tribes, and
held the powers of the government. The plebeians, on the other hand,
did not belong to any gens, curia or tribe, and consequently were
without the government.[359] They were excluded from office, from the
_comitia curiata_, and from the sacred rites of the gentes. In the
time of Servius they had become nearly if not quite as numerous as the
_populus_. They were in the anomalous position of being subject to
the military service, and of possessing families and property, which
identified them with the interests of Rome, without being in any sense
connected with the government. Under gentile institutions, as we have
seen, there could be no connection with the government except through
a recognized gens, and the plebeians had no gentes. Such a state of
things, affecting so large a portion of the people, was dangerous to
the commonwealth. Admitting of no remedy under gentile institutions,
it must have furnished one of the prominent reasons for attempting the
overthrow of gentile society, and the substitution of political. The
Roman fabric would, in all probability, have fallen in pieces if a
remedy had not been devised. It was commenced in the time of Romulus,
renewed by Numa Pompilius, and completed by Servius Tullius.
The origin both of the plebeians and of the patricians, and their
subsequent relations to each other, have been fruitful themes of
discussion and of disagreement. A few suggestions may be ventured upon
each of these questions.
A person was a plebeian because he was not a member of a gens,
organized with other gentes in a curia and tribe. It is easy to
understand how large numbers of persons would have become detached
from the gentes of their birth in the unsettled times which preceded
and followed the founding of Rome. The adventurers who flocked to the
new city from the surrounding tribes, the captives taken in their wars
and afterwards set free, and the unattached persons mingled with the
gentes transplanted to Rome, would rapidly furnish such a class. It
might also well happen that in filling up the hundred gentes of each
tribe, fragments of gentes, and gentes having less than a prescribed
number of persons, were excluded. These unattached persons, with the
fragments of gentes thus excluded from recognition and organization
in a curia, would soon become, with their children and descendants,
a great and increasing class. Such were the Roman plebeians, who,
as such, were not members of the Roman gentile society. It seems to
be a fair inference from the epithet applied to the senators of the
Luceres, the third Roman tribe admitted, who were styled “Fathers of
the Lesser Gentes,” that the old gentes were reluctant to acknowledge
their entire equality. For a stronger reason they debarred the
plebeians from all participation in the government. When the third
tribe was filled up with the prescribed number of gentes, the last
avenue of admission was closed, after which the number in the plebeian
class would increase with greater rapidity. Niebuhr remarks that the
existence of the plebeian class may be traced to the time of Ancus,
thus implying that they made their first appearance at that time.[360]
He also denies that the clients were a part of the plebeian body;[361]
in both of which positions he differs from Dionysius,[362] and from
Plutarch.[363] The institution of the relation of patron and client is
ascribed by the authors last named to Romulus, and it is recognized by
Suetonius as existing in the time of Romulus.[364] A necessity for such
an institution existed in the presence of a class without a gentile
status, and without religious rites, who would avail themselves of this
relation for the protection of their persons and property, and for the
access it gave them to religious privileges. Members of a gens would
not be without this protection or these privileges; neither would it
befit the dignity or accord with the obligations of a gens to allow
one of its members to accept a patron in another gens. The unattached
class, or, in other words, the plebeians, were the only persons who
would naturally seek patrons and become their clients. The clients
formed no part of the _populus_ for the reasons stated. It seems plain,
notwithstanding the weight of Niebuhr’s authority on Roman questions,
that the clients were a part of the plebeian body.
The next question is one of extreme difficulty, namely: the origin
and extent of the patrician class—whether it originated with the
institution of the Roman Senate, and was limited to the senators, and
to their children and descendants; or included the entire _populus_,
as distinguished from the plebeians. It is claimed by the most eminent
modern authorities that the entire _populus_ were patricians. Niebuhr,
who is certainly the first on Roman questions, adopts this view,[365]
to which Long, Schmitz, and others have given their concurrence.[366]
But the reasons assigned are not conclusive. The existence of the
patrician class, and of the plebeian class as well, may be traced, as
stated, to the time of Romulus.[367] If the _populus_, who were the
entire body of the people organized in gentes, were all patricians
at this early day, the distinction would have been nominal, as the
plebeian class was then unimportant. Moreover, the plain statements
of Cicero and of Livy are not reconcilable with this conclusion.
Dionysius, it is true, speaks of the institution of the patrician class
as occurring before that of the senate, and as composed of a limited
number of persons distinguished for their birth, their virtue, and
their wealth; thus excluding the poor and obscure in birth, although
they belonged to the historical gentes.[368] Admitting a class of
patricians without senatorial connection, there was still a large
class remaining in the several gentes who were not patricians. Cicero
has left a plain statement that the senators and their children were
patricians, and without referring to the existence of any patrician
class beyond their number. When that senate of Romulus, he remarks,
which was constituted of the best men, whom Romulus himself respected
so highly that he wished them to be called fathers, and their children
patricians, attempted,[369] etc. The meaning attached to the word
fathers (_patres_) as here used was a subject of disagreement among the
Romans themselves; but the word _patricii_, for the class is formed
upon _patres_, thus tending to show the necessary connection of the
patricians with the senatorial office. Since each senator at the outset
represented, in all probability, a gens, and the three hundred thus
represented all the recognized gentes, this fact could not of itself
make all the members of the gentes patricians, because the dignity was
limited to the senators, their children, and their posterity. Livy is
equally explicit. They were certainly called fathers, he remarks, on
account of their official dignity, and their posterity (_progenies_)
patricians.[370] Under the _reges_ and also under the republic,
individuals were created patricians by the government; but apart from
the senatorial office, and special creation by the government, the rank
could not be obtained. It is not improbable that a number of persons,
not admitted into the senate when it was instituted, were placed by
public act on the same level with the senators as to the new patrician
rank; but this would include a small number only of the members of
the three hundred gentes, all of whom were embraced in the _Populus
Romanus_.
It is not improbable that the chiefs of the gentes were called fathers
before the time of Romulus, to indicate the paternal character of the
office; and that the office may have conferred a species of recognized
rank upon their posterity. But we have no direct evidence of the fact.
Assuming it to have been the case, and further, that the senate at
its institution did not include all the principal chiefs, and further
still, that when vacancies in the senate were subsequently filled, the
selection was made on account of merit and not on account of gens,
a foundation for a patrician class might have previously existed
independently of the senate. These assumptions might be used to explain
the peculiar language of Cicero, namely that Romulus desired that the
senators might be called Fathers, possibly because this was already
the honored title of the chiefs of the gentes. In this way a limited
foundation for a patrician class may be found independent of the
senate; but it would not be broad enough to include all the recognized
gentes. It was in connection with the senators that the suggestion was
made that their children and descendants should be called patricians.
The same statement is repeated by Paterculus.[371]
It follows that there could be no patrician gens and no plebeian gens,
although particular families in one gens might be patricians, and in
another plebeians. There is some confusion also upon this point. All
the adult male members of the Fabian gens, to the number of three
hundred and six, were patricians.[372] It must be explained by the
supposition that all the families in this gens could trace their
descent from senators, or to some public act by which their ancestors
were raised to the patriciate. There were of course patrician families
in many gentes, and at a later day patrician and plebeian families
in the same gens. Thus the Claudii and Marcelli, before referred to
(_supra_ p. 287), were two families of the Claudian gens, but the
Claudii alone were patricians. It will be borne in mind, that prior
to the time of Servius Tullius the Romans were divided into two
classes, the _populus_ and the _plebeians_; but that after his time,
and particularly after the Licinian legislation (367 B. C.) by which
all the dignities of the state were opened to every citizen, the Roman
people, of the degree of freemen, fell into two political classes,
which may be distinguished as the aristocracy and the commonalty.
The former class consisted of the senators, and those descended from
senators, together with those who had held either of the three curule
offices, (consul, praetor, and curule ædile) and their descendants. The
commonalty were now Roman citizens. The gentile organization had fallen
into decadence, and the old division could no longer be maintained.
Persons, who in the first period as belonging to the _populus_, could
not be classed with the plebeians, would in the subsequent period
belong to the aristocracy without being patricians. The Claudii could
trace their descent from Appius Claudius who was made a senator in
the time of Romulus; but the Marcelli could not trace their descent
from him, nor from any other senator, although, as Niebuhr remarks,
“equal to the Appii in the splendor of the honors they attained to,
and incomparably more useful to the commonwealth.”[373] This is
a sufficient explanation of the position of the Marcelli without
resorting to the fanciful hypothesis of Niebuhr, that the Marcelli had
lost patrician rank through a marriage of disparagement.[374]
The patrician class were necessarily numerous, because the senators,
rarely less than three hundred, were chosen as often as vacancies
occurred, thus constantly including new families; and because it
conferred patrician rank on their posterity. Others were from time to
time made patricians by act of the state.[375] This distinction, at
first probably of little value, became of great importance with their
increase in wealth, numbers and power; and it changed the complexion
of Roman society. The full effect of introducing a privileged class in
Roman gentile society was not probably appreciated at the time; and
it is questionable whether this institution did not exercise a more
injurious than beneficial influence upon the subsequent career of the
Roman people.
When the gentes had ceased to be organizations for governmental
purposes under the new political system, the _populus_ no longer
remained as distinguished from the plebeians; but the shadow of the
old organization and of the old distinction remained far into the
republic.[376] The plebeians under the new system were Roman citizens,
but they were now the commonalty; the question of the connection or
non-connection with a gens not entering into the distinction.
From Romulus to Servius Tullius the Roman organization, as before
stated, was simply a gentile society, without relation to territory
or to property. All we find is a series of aggregates of persons, in
gentes, curiæ and tribes, by means of which the people were dealt with
by the government as groups of persons forming these several organic
unities. Their condition was precisely like that of the Athenians prior
to the time of Solon. But they had instituted a senate in the place of
the old council of chiefs, a _comitia curiata_ in the place of the old
assembly of the people, and had chosen a military commander, with the
additional functions of a priest and judge. With a government of three
powers, co-ordinated with reference to their principal necessities, and
with a coalescence of the three tribes, composed of an equal number of
gentes and curiæ, into one people, they possessed a higher and more
complete governmental organization than the Latin tribes had before
attained. A numerous class had gradually developed, however, who were
without the pale of the government, and without religious privileges,
excepting that portion who had passed into the relation of clients. If
not a dangerous class, their exclusion from citizenship, and from all
participation in the government, was detrimental to the commonwealth. A
municipality was growing up upon a scale of magnitude unknown in their
previous experience, requiring a special organization to conduct its
local affairs. A necessity for a change in the plan of government must
have forced itself more and more upon the attention of thoughtful men.
The increase of numbers and of wealth, and the difficulty of managing
their affairs, now complex from weight of numbers and diversity of
interests, began to reveal the fact, it must be supposed, that they
could not hold together under gentile institutions. A conclusion of
this kind is required to explain the several expedients which were
tried.
Numa, the successor of Romulus, made the first significant movement,
because it reveals the existence of an impression, that a great power
could not rest upon gentes as the basis of a system. He attempted
to traverse the gentes, as Theseus did, by dividing the people into
classes, some eight in number, according to their arts and trades.[377]
Plutarch, who is the chief authority for this statement, speaks of this
division of the people according to their vocations as the most admired
of Numa’s institutions; and remarks further, that it was designed to
take away the distinction between Latin and Sabine, both name and
thing, by mixing them together in a new distribution. But as he did not
invest the classes with the powers exercised by the gentes, the measure
failed, like the similar attempt of Theseus, and for the same reason.
Each guild, as we are assured by Plutarch, had its separate hall, court
and religious observances. These records, though traditionary, of
the same experiment in Attica and at Rome, made for the same object,
for similar reasons, and by the same instrumentalities, render the
inference reasonable that the experiment as stated was actually tried
in each case.
Servius Tullius instituted the new system, and placed it upon a
foundation where it remained to the close of the republic, although
changes were afterwards made in the nature of improvements. His period
(about 576-533 B. C.) follows closely that of Solon (596 B. C.), and
precedes that of Cleisthenes (509 B. C.). The legislation ascribed
to him, and which was obviously modeled upon that of Solon, may be
accepted as having occurred as early as the time named, because the
system was in practical operation when the republic was established
509 B. C., within the historical period. Moreover, the new political
system may as properly be ascribed to him as great measures have been
attributed to other men, although in both cases the legislator does
little more than formulate what experience had already suggested and
pressed upon his attention. The three principal changes which set aside
the gentes and inaugurated political society based upon territory
and upon property, were: first, the substitution of classes, formed
upon the measure of individual wealth, in the place of the gentes;
second, the institution of the _comitia centuriata_, as the new popular
assembly, in the place of the _comitia curiata_, the assembly of the
gentes, with a transfer of the substantial powers of the latter to the
former; and third, the creation of four city wards, in the nature of
townships, circumscribed by metes and bounds and named as territorial
areas, in which the residents of each ward were required to enroll
their names and register their property.
Imitating Solon, with whose plan of government he was doubtless
familiar, Servius divided the people into five classes, according to
the value of their property, the effect of which was to concentrate
in one class the wealthiest men of the several gentes.[378] Each
class was then subdivided into centuries, the number in each being
established arbitrarily without regard to the actual number of
persons it contained, and with one vote to each century in the
_comitia_. The amount of political power to be held by each class
was thus determined by the number of centuries given to each. Thus,
the first class consisted of eighty centuries, with eighty votes
in the _comitia centuriata_; the second class of twenty centuries,
to which two centuries of artisans were attached, with twenty-two
votes; the third class of twenty centuries, with twenty votes; the
fourth class of twenty, to which two centuries of horn-blowers and
trumpeters were attached, with twenty-two votes; and the fifth class
of thirty centuries, with thirty votes. In addition to these, the
equites consisted of eighteen centuries, with eighteen votes. To these
classes Dionysius adds a sixth class, consisting of one century, with
one vote. It was composed of those who had no property, or less than
the amount required for admission into the fifth class. They neither
paid taxes, nor served in war.[379] The whole number of centuries in
the six classes with the equites added, made a total of one hundred
and ninety-three, according to Dionysius.[380] Livy, agreeing with
the former as to the number of regular centuries in the five classes,
differs from him by excluding the sixth class, the persons being formed
into one century with one vote, and included in or attached to the
fifth class. He also makes three centuries of horn-blowers instead of
two, and the whole number of centuries one more than Dionysius.[381]
Cicero remarks that ninety-six centuries were a minority, which would
be equally true under either statement.[382] The centuries of each
class were divided into seniors and juniors, of which the senior
centuries were composed of such persons as were above the age of
fifty-five years, and were charged with the duty, as soldiers, of
defending the city; while the junior centuries consisted of those
persons who were below this age and above seventeen, and were charged
with external military enterprises.[383] The armature of each class was
prescribed and made different for each.[384]
It will be noticed that the control of the government, so far as the
assembly of the people could influence its action, was placed in
the hands of the first class, and the equites. They held together
ninety-eight votes, a majority of the whole. Each century agreed
upon its vote separately when assembled in the _comitia centuriata_,
precisely as each curia had been accustomed to do in the _comitia
curiata_. In taking a vote upon any public question, the equites were
called first, and then the first class.[385] If they agreed in their
votes it decided the question, and the remaining centuries were not
called upon to vote; but if they disagreed, the second class was
called, and so on to the last, unless a majority sooner appeared.
The powers formerly exercised by the _comitia curiata_, now transferred
to the _comitia centuriata_, were enlarged in some slight particulars
in the subsequent period. It elected all officers and magistrates on
the nomination of the senate; it enacted or rejected laws proposed
by the senate, no measure becoming a law without its sanction; it
repealed existing laws on the proposition of the same body, if they
chose to do so; and it declared war on the same recommendation. But
the senate concluded peace without consulting the assembly. An appeal
in all cases involving life could be taken to this assembly as the
highest judicial tribunal of the state. These powers were substantial,
but limited—control over the finances being excluded. A majority
of the votes, however, were lodged with the first class, including
the equites, which embraced the body of the patricians, as must be
supposed, and the wealthiest citizens. Property and not numbers
controlled the government. They were able, however, to create a body
of laws in the course of time which afforded equal protection to all,
and thus tended to redeem the worst effects of the inequalities of the
system.
The meetings of the _comitia_ were held in the Campus Martius annually
for the election of magistrates and officers, and at other times when
the public necessities required. The people assembled by centuries, and
by classes under their officers, organized as an army (_exercitus_);
for the centuries and classes were designed to subserve all the
purposes of a military as well as a civil organization. At the first
muster under Servius Tullius, eighty thousand citizen soldiers appeared
in the Campus Martius under arms, each man in his proper century, each
century in its class, and each class by itself.[386] Every member of a
century was now a citizen of Rome, which was the most important fruit
of the new political system. In the time of the republic the consuls,
and in their absence, the praetor, had power to convene the _comitia_,
which was presided over by the person who caused it to assemble.
Such a government appears to us, in the light of our more advanced
experience, both rude and clumsy; but it was a sensible improvement
upon the previous gentile government, defective and illiberal as it
appears. Under it, Rome became mistress of the world. The element
of property, now rising into commanding importance, determined its
character. It had brought aristocracy and privilege into prominence,
which seized the opportunity to withdraw the control of the government
in a great measure from the hands of the people, and bestow it upon the
men of property. It was a movement in the opposite direction from that
to which the democratic principles inherited from the gentes naturally
tended. Against the new elements of aristocracy and privilege now
incorporated in their governmental institutions, the Roman plebeians
contended throughout the period of the republic, and at times with some
measure of success. But patrician rank and property possessed by the
higher classes, were too powerful for the wiser and grander doctrines
of equal rights and equal privileges represented by the plebeians.
It was even then far too heavy a tax upon Roman society to carry a
privileged class.
Cicero, patriot and noble Roman as he was, approved and commended
this gradation of the people into classes, with the bestowment of a
controlling influence in the government upon the minority of citizens.
Servius Tullius, he remarks, “having created a large number of equites
from the common mass of the people, divided the remainder into five
classes, distinguishing between the seniors and juniors, which he
so constituted as to place the suffrages, not in the hands of the
multitude, but of the men of property; taking care to make it a rule
of ours, as it ought to be in every government, that the greatest
number should not have the greatest weight.”[387] In the light of
the experience of the intervening two thousand years, it may well be
observed that the inequality of privileges, and the denial of the right
of self-government here commended, created and developed that mass of
ignorance and corruption which ultimately destroyed both government
and people. The human race is gradually learning the simple lesson,
that the people as a whole are wiser for the public good and the
public prosperity, than any privileged class of men, however refined
and cultivated, have ever been, or, by any possibility, can ever
become. Governments over societies the most advanced are still in a
transitional stage; and they are necessarily and logically moving, as
President Grant, not without reason, intimated in his last inaugural
address, in the direction of democracy; that form of self-government
which represents and expresses the average intelligence and virtue of a
free and educated people.
The property classes subserved the useful purpose of breaking up the
gentes, as the basis of a governmental system, by transferring their
powers to a different body. It was evidently the principal object of
the Servian legislation to obtain a deliverance from the gentes, which
were close corporations, and to give the new government a basis wide
enough to include all the inhabitants of Rome, with the exception of
the slaves. After the classes had accomplished this work, it might have
been expected that they would have died out as they did at Athens;
and that city wards and country townships, with their inhabitants
organized as bodies politic, would have become the basis of the new
political system, as they rightfully and logically should. But the
municipal organization of Rome prevented this consummation. It gained
at the outset, and maintained to the end the central position in the
government, to which all areas without were made subordinate. It
presents the anomaly of a great central municipal government expanded,
in effect, first over Italy, and finally over the conquered provinces
of three continents. The five classes, with some modifications of the
manner of voting, remained to the end of the republic. The creation of
a new assembly of the people to take the place of the old, discloses
the radical character of the Servian constitution. These classes would
never have acquired vitality without a newly constituted assembly,
investing them with political powers. With the increase of wealth and
population the duties and responsibilities of this assembly were much
increased. It was evidently the intention of Servius Tullius that it
should extinguish the _comitia curiata_, and with it the power of the
gentes.
This legislator is said to have instituted the _comitia tributa_,
a separate assembly of each local tribe or ward, whose chief
duties related to the assessment and collection of taxes, and to
furnishing contingents of troops. At a later day this assembly
elected the tribunes of the people. The ward was the natural unit of
their political system, and the centre where local self-government
should have been established had the Roman people wished to create
a democratic state. But the senate and the property classes had
forestalled them from that career.
One of the first acts ascribed to Servius was the institution of the
census. Livy pronounces the census a most salutary measure for an
empire about to become so great, according to which the duties of
peace and of war were to be performed, not individually as before,
but according to the measure of personal wealth.[388] Each person
was required to enroll himself in the ward of his residence, with a
statement of the amount of his property. It was done in the presence
of the censor; and the lists when completed furnished the basis upon
which the classes were formed.[389] This was accompanied by a very
remarkable act for the period, the creation of four city wards,
circumscribed by boundaries, and distinguished by appropriate names.
In point of time it was earlier than the institution of the Attic deme
by Cleisthenes; but the two were quite different in their relations
to the government. The Attic deme, as has been shown, was organized
as a body politic with a similar registry of citizens and of their
property, and having besides a complete local self-government, with
an elective magistracy, judiciary and priesthood. On the other hand,
the Roman ward was a geographical area, with a registry of citizens
and of their property, with a local organization, a tribune and other
elective offices, and with an assembly. For a limited number of special
objects the inhabitants of the wards were dealt with by the government
through their territorial relations. But the government of the ward
did not possess the solid attributes of that of the Attic deme. It was
a nearer copy of the previous Athenian naucrary, which not unlikely
furnished the model, as the Solonian classes did of the Servian.
Dionysius remarks, that after Servius Tullius had inclosed the seven
hills with one wall he divided the city into four parts, and gave
the names of the hills to the re-divisions: to the first, Palatina,
to the second, Suburra, to the third, Collina, and to the fourth,
Esquilina; and made the city consist of four parts, which before
consisted of three; and he ordered the people who dwelt in each of the
four regions, like villagers, not to take any other dwelling, nor to
pay taxes elsewhere, nor give in their names as soldiers elsewhere,
nor pay their assessments for military purposes and other needs, which
each must furnish for the common welfare; for these things were no
longer to be done according to the three consanguine tribes (φυλὰς
τὰς γενικὰς), but according to the four local tribes (φυλὰς τὰς
τοπικὰς), which last had been arranged by himself; and he appointed
commanders over each tribe, as phylarchs or comarchs, whom he directed
to note what house each inhabited.[390] Mommsen observes that “each of
these four levy-districts had to furnish the fourth part not only of
the force as a whole, but of each of its military subdivisions, so that
each legion and each century numbered an equal proportion of conscripts
from each region; evidently for the purpose of merging all distinctions
of a gentile and local nature in one common levy of the community, and
especially of binding, through the powerful leveling influence of the
military spirit, the _meteoci_ and the burgesses into one people.”[391]
In like manner, the surrounding country under the government of Rome
was organized in townships (_tribus rusticae_), the number of which
is stated at twenty-six by some writers, and at thirty-one by others;
making, with the four city wards, a total of thirty in one case, and
of thirty-five in the other.[392] The total number was never increased
beyond thirty-five. These townships did not become integral in the
sense of participating in the administration of the government.
As finally established under the Servian constitution, the government
was cast in the form in which it remained during the existence of
the republic; the consuls taking the place of the previous military
commanders. It was not based upon territory in the exclusive sense
of the Athenian government, or in the modern sense; ascending from
the township or ward, the unit of organization, to the county or
arrondissement, and from the latter to the state, each organized and
invested with governmental functions as constituents of a whole. The
central government overshadowed and atrophied the parts. It rested
more upon property than upon territory, this being made the commanding
element, as is shown by the lodgment of the controlling power of the
government in the highest property classes. It had, nevertheless, a
territorial basis as well, since it recognized and used territorial
subdivisions for citizenship, and for financial and military objects,
in which the citizen was dealt with through his territorial relations.
The Romans were now carried fairly out of gentile society into and
under the second great plan of government, founded upon territory
and upon property. They had left gentilism and barbarism behind
them, and entered upon a new career of civilization. Henceforth the
creation and protection of property became the primary objects of the
government, with a superadded career of conquest for domination over
distant tribes and nations. This great change of institutions, creating
political society as distinguished from gentile society, was simply
the introduction of the new elements of territory and property, making
the latter a power in the government, which before had been simply an
influence. Had the wards and rustic townships been organized with full
powers of local self-government, and the senate been made elective
by these local constituencies without distinction of classes, the
resulting government would have been a democracy, like the Athenian;
for these local governments would have moulded the state into their
own likeness. The senate, with the hereditary rank it conferred, and
the property basis qualifying the voting power in the assembly of
the people, turned the scale against democratical institutions, and
produced a mixed government, partly aristocratic and partly democratic;
eminently calculated to engender perpetual animosity between the two
classes of citizens thus deliberately and unnecessarily created by
affirmative legislation. It is plain, I think, that the people were
circumvented by the Servian constitution, and had a government put upon
them which the majority would have rejected had they fully comprehended
its probable results. The evidence is conclusive of the antecedent
democratical principles of the gentes, which, however exclusive as
against all persons not in their communion, were carried out fully
among themselves. The evidence of this free spirit and of their free
institutions is so decisive that the proposition elsewhere stated, that
gentilism is incompatible with monarchy, seems to be incontrovertible.
As a whole, the Roman government was anomalous. The overshadowing
municipality of Rome, made the centre of the state in its plan of
government, was one of the producing causes of its novel character.
The primary organization of the people into an army with the military
spirit it fostered created the cohesive force which held the republic
together, and afterwards the empire. With a selective senate holding
office for life, and possessing substantial powers; with a personal
rank passing to their children and descendants; with an elective
magistracy graded to the needs of a central metropolis; with an
assembly of the people organized into property classes, possessing
an unequal suffrage, but holding both an affirmative and a negative
upon all legislation; and with an elaborate military organization,
no other government strictly analogous has appeared among men. It
was artificial, illogical, approaching a monstrosity; but capable of
wonderful achievements, because of its military spirit, and because
the Romans were endowed with remarkable powers for organizing and
managing affairs. The patchwork in its composition was the product
of the superior craft of the wealthy classes who intended to seize
the substance of power while they pretended to respect the rights and
interests of all.
When the new political system became established, the old one did not
immediately disappear. The functions of the senate and of the military
commander remained as before; but the property classes took the place
of the gentes, and the assembly of the classes took the place of the
assembly of the gentes. Radical as the changes were, they were limited,
in the main, to these particulars, and came in without friction or
violence. The old assembly (_comitia curiata_) was allowed to retain a
portion of its powers, which kept alive for a long period of time the
organizations of the gentes, curiæ and consanguine tribes. It still
conferred the _imperium_ upon all the higher magistrates after their
election was completed, though in time it became a matter of form
merely; it inaugurated certain priests, and regulated the religious
observances of the curiæ. This state of things continued down to the
time of the first Punic war, after which the _comitia curiata_ lost its
importance and soon fell into oblivion. Both the assembly and the curiæ
were superseded rather than abolished, and died out from inanition;
but the gentes remained far into the empire, not as an organization,
for that also died out in time, but as a pedigree and a lineage. Thus
the transition from gentile into political society was gradually but
effectually accomplished, and the second great plan of human government
was substituted by the Romans in the place of the first which had
prevailed from time immemorial.
After an immensely protracted duration, running back of the separate
existence of the Aryan family, and received by the Latin tribes from
their remote ancestors, the gentile organization finally surrendered
its existence, among the Romans, to the demands of civilization.
It had held exclusive possession of society through these several
ethnical periods, and until it had won by experience all the elements
of civilization, which it then proved unable to manage. Mankind
owe a debt of gratitude to their savage ancestors for devising an
institution able to carry the advancing portion of the human race
out of savagery into barbarism, and through the successive stages
of the latter into civilization. It also accumulated by experience
the intelligence and knowledge necessary to devise political society
while the institution yet remained. It holds a position on the great
chart of human progress second to none in its influence, in its
achievements and in its history. As a plan of government, the gentile
organization was unequal to the wants of civilized man; but it is
something to be said in its remembrance that it developed from the
germ the principal governmental institutions of modern civilized
states. Among others, as before stated, out of the ancient council
of chiefs came the modern senate; out of the ancient assembly of the
people came the modern representative assembly, the two together
constituting the modern legislature; out of the ancient general
military commander came the modern chief magistrate, whether a feudal
or constitutional king, an emperor or a president, the latter being
the natural and logical result; and out of the ancient _custos urbis_,
by a circuitous derivation, came the Roman praetor and the modern
judge. Equal rights and privileges, personal freedom and the cardinal
principles of democracy were also inherited from the gentes. When
property had become created in masses, and its influence and power
began to be felt in society, slavery came in; an institution violative
of all these principles, but sustained by the selfish and delusive
consideration that the person made a slave was a stranger in blood and
a captive enemy. With property also came in gradually the principle
of aristocracy, striving for the creation of privileged classes. The
element of property, which has controlled society to a great extent
during the comparatively short period of civilization, has given
mankind despotism, imperialism, monarchy, privileged classes, and
finally representative democracy. It has also made the career of the
civilized nations essentially a property-making career. But when the
intelligence of mankind rises to the height of the great question of
the abstract rights of property,—including the relations of property to
the state, as well as the rights of persons to property,—a modification
of the present order of things may be expected. The nature of the
coming changes it may be impossible to conceive; but it seems probable
that democracy, once universal in a rudimentary form and repressed
in many civilized states, is destined to become again universal and
supreme.
An American, educated in the principles of democracy, and profoundly
impressed with the dignity and grandeur of those great conceptions
which recognize the liberty, equality and fraternity of mankind, may
give free expression to a preference for self-government and free
institutions. At the same time the equal rights of every other person
must be recognized to accept and approve any form of government,
whether imperial or monarchical, that satisfies his preferences.