But what was gained by a measure which broke up the unity of the state; which subjected the magistrates to a controlling authority unsteady in its action and dependent on all the passions of the moment; which in the hour of peril might have brought the administration to a dead-lock at the bidding of any one of the opposition chiefs elevated to the rival throne; and which, by investing all the magistrates with co-ordinate jurisdiction in the administration of criminal law, as it were formally transferred that administration from the domain of law to that of politics and corrupted it for all time coming?  It is true indeed that the tribunate, if it did not directly contribute to the political equalization of the orders, served as a powerful weapon in the hands of the plebeians when these soon afterwards desired admission to the offices of state.  But this was not the real design of the tribunate.  It was a concession wrung not from the politically privileged order, but from the rich landlords and capitalists; it was designed to ensure to the commons equitable administration of law, and to promote a more judicious administration of finance.  This design it did not, and could not, fulfil.  The tribune might put a stop to particular iniquities, to individual instances of crying hardship; but the fault lay not in the unfair working of a righteous law, but in a law which was itself unrighteous, and how could the tribune regularly obstruct the ordinary course of justice?  Could he have done so, it would have served little to remedy the evil, unless the sources of impoverishment were stopped—­the perverse taxation, the wretched system of credit, and the pernicious occupation of the domain-lands.  But such measures were not attempted, evidently because the wealthy plebeians themselves had no less interest in these abuses than the patricians.  So this singular magistracy was instituted, which presented to the commons an obvious and available aid, and yet could not possibly carry out the necessary economic reform.  It was no proof of political wisdom, but a wretched compromise between the wealthy aristocracy and the leaderless multitude.  It has been affirmed that the tribunate of the people preserved Rome from tyranny.  Were it true, it would be of little moment:  a change in the form of the state is not in itself an evil for a people; on the contrary, it was a misfortune for the Romans that monarchy was introduced too late, after the physical and mental energies of the nation were exhausted.  But the assertion is not even correct; as is shown by the circumstance that the Italian states remained as regularly free from tyrants as the Hellenic states regularly witnessed their emergence.  The reason lies simply in the fact that tyranny is everywhere the result of universal suffrage, and that the Italians excluded the burgesses who had no land from their public assemblies longer than the Greeks did:  when Rome departed from this course, monarchy did not fail to emerge, and was in fact associated