10.  Still more remarkable was the institution of the census, and the distribution of the people into classes and centuries proportionate to their wealth.  The census was a periodical valuation of all the property possessed by the citizens, and an enumeration of all the subjects of the state:  there were five classes, ranged according to the estimated value of their possessions, and the taxes they consequently paid.  The first class contained eighty centuries out of the hundred and seventy; the sixth class, in which those were included who were too poor to be taxed, counted but for one.  We shall, hereafter have occasion to see that this arrangement was also used for military purposes; it is only necessary to say here, that the sixth class were deprived of the use of arms, and exempt from serving in war.

11.  The people voted in the comitia centuriata by centuries; that is, the vote of each century was taken separately and counted only as one.  By this arrangement a just influence was secured to property; and the clients of the patricians in the sixth class prevented from out-numbering the free citizens.

12.  Ser’vius Tul’lius undoubtedly intended that the comitia centuriata should form the third estate of the realm, and during his reign they probably held that rank; but when, by an aristocratic insurrection he was slain in the senate-house, the power conceded to the people was again usurped by the patricians, and the comitio centuriata did not recover the right[8] of legislation before the laws[9] of the twelve tables were established.

13.  The law which made the debtor a slave to his creditor was repealed by Ser’vius, and re-enacted by his successor; the patricians preserved this abominable custom during several ages, and did not resign it until the state had been brought to the very brink of ruin.

14.  During the reign of Ser’vius, Rome was placed at the head of the Latin confederacy, and acknowledged to be the metropolitan city.  It was deprived of this supremacy after the war with Porsen’na, but soon recovered its former greatness.

15.  The equestrian rank was an order in the Roman state from the very beginning.  It was at first confined to the nobility, and none but the patricians had the privilege of serving on horseback.  But in the later ages, it became a political dignity, and persons were raised to the equestrian rank by the amount of their possessions.

16.  The next great change took place after the expulsion of the kings; annual magistrates, called consuls, were elected in the comitia centuriata, but none but patricians could hold this office. 17.  The liberties of the people were soon after extended and secured by certain laws, traditionally attributed to Vale’rius Public’ola, of which the most important was that which allowed[10] an appeal to a general assembly of the people from the sentence of a magistrate. 18.  To deprive the plebeians of this privilege was the darling object of the patricians,