could not but be placed on an equality with those of the patrician aristocracy in the senate, when once the government had passed from the clan-nobility to the united aristocracy.  Now that this opposition-college, originally excluded from all share in the public administration, became—­particularly with reference to strictly urban affairs—­a second supreme executive and one of the most usual and most serviceable instruments of the government, or in other words of the senate, for managing the burgesses and especially for checking the excesses of the magistrates, it was certainly, as respected its original character, absorbed and politically annihilated; but this course was really enjoined by necessity.  Clearly as the defects of the Roman aristocracy were apparent, and decidedly as the steady growth of aristocratic ascendency was connected with the practical setting aside of the tribunate, none can fail to see that government could not be long carried on with an authority which was not only aimless and virtually calculated to put off the suffering proletariate with a deceitful prospect of relief, but was at the same time decidedly revolutionary and possessed of a—­strictly speaking —­anarchical prerogative of obstruction to the authority of the magistrates and even of the state itself.  But that faith in an ideal, which is the foundation of all the power and of all the impotence of democracy, had come to be closely associated in the minds of the Romans with the tribunate of the plebs; and we do not need to recall the case of Cola Rienzi in order to perceive that, however unsubstantial might be the advantage thence arising to the multitude, it could not be abolished without a formidable convulsion of the state.  Accordingly with genuine political prudence they contented themselves with reducing it to a nullity under forms that should attract as little attention as possible.  The mere name of this essentially revolutionary magistracy was still retained within the aristocratically governed commonwealth—­an incongruity for the present, and for the future, in the hands of a coming revolutionary party, a sharp and dangerous weapon.  For the moment, however, and for a long time to come the aristocracy was so absolutely powerful and so completely possessed control over the tribunate, that no trace at all is to be met with of a collegiate opposition on the part of the tribunes to the senate; and the government overcame the forlorn movements of opposition that now and then proceeded from individual tribunes, always without difficulty, and ordinarily by means of the tribunate itself.

The Senate.  Its Composition

In reality it was the senate that governed the commonwealth, and did so almost without opposition after the equalization of the orders.  Its very composition had undergone a change.  The free prerogative of the chief magistrates in this matter, as it had been exercised after the setting aside of the old clan-representation,(19) had been already subjected to very material restrictions on the abolition of the presidency for life.(20)