free burgess-body gave to itself rulers and laws; which was governed by these well-advised rulers within these legal limits with kingly freedom; and around which the Italian confederacy, as an aggregate of free urban communities essentially homogeneous and cognate with the Roman, and the body of extra-Italian allies, as an aggregate of Greek free cities and barbaric peoples and principalities—­both more superintended, than domineered over, by the community of Rome—­formed a double circle.  It was the final result of the revolution—­and both parties, the nominally conservative as well as the democratic party, had co-operated towards it and concurred in it—­that of this venerable structure, which at the beginning of the present epoch, though full of chinks and tottering, still stood erect, not one stone was at its close left upon another.  The holder of sovereign power was now either a single man, or a close oligarchy—­now of rank, now of riches.  The burgesses had lost all legitimate share in the government.  The magistrates were instruments without independence in the hands of the holder of power for the time being.  The urban community of Rome had broken down by its unnatural enlargement.  The Italian confederacy had been merged in the urban community.  The body of extra-Italian allies was in full course of being converted into a body of subjects.  The whole organic classification of the Roman commonwealth had gone to wreck, and nothing was left but a crude mass of more or less disparate elements.

The Prospect

The state of matters threatened to end in utter anarchy and in the inward and outward dissolution of the state.  The political movement tended thoroughly towards the goal of despotism; the only point still in dispute was whether the close circle of the families of rank, or the senate of capitalists, or a monarch was to be the despot.  The political movement followed thoroughly the paths that led to despotism; the fundamental principle of a free commonwealth—­ that the contending powers should reciprocally confine themselves to indirect coercion—­had become effete in the eyes of all parties alike, and on both sides the fight for power began to be carried on first by the bludgeon, and soon by the sword.  The revolution, at an end in so far as the old constitution was recognized by both sides as finally set aside and the aim and method of the new political development were clearly settled, had yet up to this time discovered nothing but provisional solutions for this problem of the reorganization of the state; neither the Gracchan nor the Sullan constitution of the community bore the stamp of finality.  But the bitterest feature of this bitter time was that even hope and effort failed the clear-seeing patriot.  The sun of freedom with all its endless store of blessings was constantly drawing nearer to its setting, and the twilight was settling over the very world that was still so brilliant.  It was no accidental catastrophe which patriotism