save the few proprietors and creditors among them, gained by every measure that had been proposed.  The poor man saw himself snatched from bondage and endowed with an estate.  He who was above the reach of debt saw himself in the highest office of the state.  Plebeians with reason exulted.  Licinius evidently designed reuniting the divided members of the plebeian body.  Not one of them, whether rich or poor, but seems called back by these bills to stand with his own order from that time on.  If this supposition was true, then Licinius was the greatest leader whom the plebeians ever had up to the time of Caesar.  But[8] from the first he was disappointed.  The plebeians who most wanted relief cared so little for having the consulship opened to the richer men of their estate that they would readily have dropped the bill concerning it, lest a demand should endanger their own desires.  In the same temper the more eminent men of the order, themselves among the creditors of the poor and the tenants of the domain, would have quashed the proceedings of the tribunes respecting the discharge of debt and the distribution of land, so that they carried the third bill only, which would make them consuls without disturbing their possessions.  While the plebeians continued severed from one another, the patricians drew together in resistance to the bills.  Licinius stood forth demanding, at once, all that it had cost his predecessors their utmost energy to demand, singly and at long intervals, from the patricians.  Nothing was to be done but to unite in overwhelming him and his supporters.  “Great things were those that he claimed and not to be secured without the greatest contention."[9] The very comprehensiveness of his measures proved the safeguard of Licinius.  Had he preferred but one of these demands, he would have been unhesitatingly opposed by the great majority of the patricians.  On the other hand he would have had comparatively doubtful support from the plebs.  If the interests of the poorer plebeians alone had been consulted, they would not have been much more active or able in backing their tribunes, while the richer men would have gone over in a body to the other side with the public tenants and the private creditors among the patricians.  Or, supposing the case reversed and the bill relating to the consulship brought forward alone, the debtors and the homeless citizens would have given the bill too little help with hands or hearts to secure its passage as a law.  The great encouragement therefore to Licinius and Sextius must have been their conviction that they had devised their reform on a sufficiently expanded scale.  As soon as the bills were brought forward every one of their eight colleagues vetoed their reading.  Nothing could be done by the two tribunes except to be resolute and watch for an opportunity for retaliation.  At the election of the military tribunes during that year, Licinius and Sextius interposed[10] their vetoes and prevented a vote being taken.  No magistrates