There was so great a mixture of monarchical power in the Roman commonwealth,that Livy dates the original of liberty from the expulsion of the Tarquins,rather because the consular dignity was made annual,than because the regal power had suffered any diminution in that change.The dictatorial power,the most absolute that can be imagined,was introduced in eight,or at farthest in eleven years afterwards,and may therefore be reckoned coeval with the commonwealth;and whatever diminution either this or the consular power might suffer,the axes and the rods were terrible to the last,especially when they were carried before a dictator,for whom the tribunes of the people were not a match,as they were for the consuls.But though there were three sorts of power exercised,there were but two orders,or estates established in this commonwealth,the patricians and the plebeians,and the supreme power was divided accordingly between the senate and the collective,nor a representative,body of the people.These two orders or estates had frequent contests,and well they might,since they had very opposite interests.Agrarian laws,for instance,began to be promulgated within three and twenty years,and continued to the end of the commonwealth to produce the same disorders.How inconsistent,indeed,was that plan of government,which required so much hard service of the people;and which,leaving them so much power in the distribution of power,left them so little property in the distribution of property?Such an inequality of property,and of the means of acquiring it,cannot subsist in an equal commonwealth;and I much apprehend that any near approaches to a monopoly of property,would not be long endured even in a monarchy.--But I return to my first observation.
Though the Romans made frequent experience of the cruel mischiefs,and even extreme danger to liberty,which attended almost every variance of the two estates,yet did they never fall upon any safe or effectual method of preventing these disputes,or of reconciling them without violence.The old expedients alone subsisted;and surely they were not only violent,but extra-constitutional.
When the senate was inflexible,the people had immediate recourse to sedition.
When the people was refractory,the senate had recourse to a dictator.The latter had an approbation which could not be given to the former,and was a legal institution;notwithstanding which I make no scruple of saying that it was at least as inconsistent with a free constitution of government as the former.Sedition was temporary anarchy.A dictator was a tyrant for six months,unless he thought fit to abdicate sooner.The constitution was suspended,and endangered by both.It might have been destroyed by the excesses of one.
It was destroyed by the bare duration of the other.If the Romans had annually elected out of their tribes a certain number of men to represent the people instead of depending on their tribunes;(a sort of bullying magistracy,and often a very corrupt one)and if this representative body had been one estate,and had acted as such,the consuls might very well have supplied the place of a third estate,and have been safely trusted,even more independently of the senate than they were,with the executive power.But the want of a third estate in the Roman system of government,and of a representative body,to act for the collective body,maintained one perpetual ferment,which often increased into a storm,but never subsided into a calm.The state of Rome,and of the greatest men in that commonwealth,would have deserved pity rather than envy,even in the best times,if their defective constitution had not made such a state of trouble and tumult the price they paid for the maintenance of their liberty.But this was not the whole price.Whilst Rome advanced triumphantly in conquering the world,as her orators,poets and historians have expressed themselves;that is,a few nations round the Mediterranean sea,and little more;her citizens turned against one another those weapons,which were put into their hands against the enemies of Rome.Mutual proions and bloody massacres followed;each party triumphed in its turn;they were more animated and better disciplined by their contests;both grew stronger;the commonwealth alone grew weaker;and Pompey and Caesar finished the last tragical scene,which Marius and Sulla began.In fine,the Roman commonwealth would have been dissolved much sooner than it was,by the defects I have mentioned,which many circumstances concurred to aggravate,if such a spirit of wisdom,as well as courage,and such an enthusiasm for the grandeur,the majesty,and the duration of their empire had not possessed this people,as never possessed any other.When this spirit decayed,when this enthusiasm cooled,the constitution could not help,nay,worked against itself.That dictatorial power,on which the senate had always depended for preserving it,completed the ruin of it,in the hands of Caesar;and that tribunitial power,to which the people had always trusted the defence of their liberty,confirmed their slavery in the hands of Augustus.
I am,sir,etc.
