Probably the tribune was raised to his office because he had shown the determination to use its powers for the good of his order and of his country.  Licinius and Sextius together brought forward the three bills bearing the name of Licinius as their author.  One, says the historian, ran concerning debts.  It provided that, the interest already[2] paid being deducted from the principal, the remainder should be discharged in equal installments within three years.  The statutes against excessive rates of interest, as well as those against arbitrary measures of exacting the principal of a debt, had utterly failed.  It was plain, therefore, to any one who thought upon the matter,—­in which effort of thought the power of all reformers begins,—­that the step to prevent the sacrifice of the debtor to the creditor was still to be taken.  Many of the creditors themselves would have acknowledged that this was desirable.  The next bill of the three related to the public lands.  It prohibited any one from occupying more than five hundred jugera, about 300 acres; at the same time it reclaimed all above that limit from the present occupiers, with the object of making suitable apportionments among the people[3] at large.  Two further clauses followed, one ordering that a certain number of freemen should be employed on every estate; another forbidding any single citizen[4] to send out more than a hundred of the larger, or five hundred of the smaller cattle to graze upon the public pastures.  These latter details are important, not so much in relation to the bill itself as to the simultaneous increase of wealth and slavery which they plainly signify.  As the first bill undertook to prohibit the bondage springing from too much poverty, so the second aimed at preventing the oppression springing from too great opulence.  A third bill declared the office of military tribune with consular power to be at an end.  In its place the consulate was restored with full[5] provision that one of the two consuls should be taken from the plebeians.  The argument produced in favor of this bill appears to have been the urgent want of the plebeians to possess a greater share in the government than was vested in their tribunes, aediles, and quaestors.  Otherwise, said Licinius and his colleague, there will be no security that our debts will be settled or that our lands will be obtained.[6] It would be difficult to frame three bills, even in our time, reaching to a further, or fulfilling a larger reform.  “Everything was pointed against the power of the patricians[7] in order to provide for the comfort of the plebeians.”  This to a certain degree was true.  It was chiefly from the patrician that the bill concerning debts detracted the usurious gains which had been counted upon.  It was chiefly from him that the lands indicated in the second bill were to be withdrawn.  It was altogether from him that the honors of the consulship were to be derogated.  On the other hand the plebeians,