even hazarded a conjecture 20. At the consecration of this temple, no city had as yet acquired the Hegemony, the right to which in presence of the Gods the Roman priest secured to his own country by stratagem. He induced the stranger to leave the huge animal destined for sacrifice, (whose gigantic horns remained nailed to the temple gates till a very late period), and while he was purifying himself in the stream of the Tiber, the Roman offered up the victim by himself, in order to accomplish the full intent of the oracle, viz. that "the nation, whose citizens should offer this ox to Diana, should have the supremacy." "In this temple, the table of the league was affixed and preserved, containing a list of the confederates, and the nations entitled to a participation in the sanctuary.

20 Gellius, XIII. c. 14.

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE CODE OF SERVIUS TULLIUS.

THE admission of Rome into the Latin league, as the chief city of the confederation, prepared the way for the powerful reign of the last king. This greatness however was transitory; it expired together with the monarchy. That Rome regained this position and after sanguinary struggles became the centre of universal empire, is owing to the constitutional code which posterity ascribed to Servius; and which, though probably in the strictness of history it cannot be ascribed to that monarch, yet, as the progress of a code which is a palpable innovation, it must at least have been first enacted about that time. These are the laws which instituted the Plebeian Tribus and by which the whole nation, divided into the assembly of the people and that of the Curiæ, were combined in the Comitia Centuriata.

It is true that these alterations were not voluntarily conceded by that part of the nation on whom by hereditary right, and the existing constitution the decision upon any limitation of its powers devolved.True, that, on the contrary, they were forced into

acquiescence. The story proves it, and blinded as the noblest minds become in matters where rank is concerned, the contrary would argue an elevation of soul, incredible without the most positive testimony. It would be unreasonable to expect it, and where it appears, it must be classed with the most splendid wonders of history. Yet the king could not doubt the equity, and therefore the expediency of his regulations-their salutary effects not merely for the moment, and in reference to existing circumstances, but for the growing relations of futurity. There came a time, when the manes of those haughty patricians, by whom he was abhorred, were constrained to acknowledge their error; when they contemplated that unsolicited greatness which shed a lustre on their descendants, and the happiness of their country resulting from those hated laws; if indeed that country were ever really dear to their hearts!

But Servius did not contemplate the introduction of despotism under the masque of equality, nor of the latter by the number of heads; neither did he compel the citizens of the first class to renounce forms which were hereditarily and peculiarly their own. This plebeian prince, exasperated by the patricians, was no legislator like the high-born Clisthenes, who detesting his fellow-nobles, established an equality which terminated in a furious democracy, while some inconceivable good fortune averted tyranny from Athens. The object of Servius was to form that multitude which had been adopted into the community, and which morally and individually considered

as equally free with the Patricians, into an order in the state similar to the Patriciate, to constitute like them a free power. For as the perfection of animal life is proportioned to the multiplicity of its functions, so that state is the most excellent in which the original and marked diversities, mutually combined according to their various species into one centre of vitality, constitute a perfect whole. The rage for apparent symmetry never induced Rome to raze the edifice of the constitution as being too confined, and to deprive herself of shelter in the hope of constructing it anew; or to hazard the experiment of commencing the works from the roof, while the substruction had fallen into ruins. She never rooted up a fair and fruitful plantation because a few trees were stunted and decayed; nor was the inclosure within which it flourished confined, in order that a wider area might be sought for its enlargement.

Servius adopted the model which he found in the constitution of the curiæ, for that of the Plebeians; even to its number. It was no arbitrary system, but the application of a form, transmitted by ancient usage, to a novel case. It is no injury to the creature already in existence, if another awakens into life, it was none to the Patricians, that Servius formed the freemen into an order-as little as the elevation of the cities into corporate bodies affected the right of the barons towards the latter part of the middle ages; in both cases it engendered a secure and uniform liberty. Rome is indebted for her greatness to the formation of a Plebeian order, and the union of both orders in the centuries; retarded

indeed by the unworthy spirit which induced the senate to struggle for the abolition of the laws of Servius, or check their developement. Else would she never have been able to raise herself from a state of childhood; or she would previously have perished in that confusion, which ultimately involved in ruin those real blessings, freedom and inherited peculiarities. It may be counted amongst the highest favours of that fortune which presided over Rome, that at the critical moment when the internal state of society began to mature and unfold itself in new forms, external circumstances so far from counteracting, favoured that evolution; while other nations, by the same causes, were partly held in eternal infancy, partly sunk into premature decrepitude and decay. Had not Servius Tullius terminated the insecurity of the Plebeians, by imparting freedom and a constitution, the Patricians would probably have depressed them to a state of clientela. The infantry, which constituted the strength of Rome, could not have been formed, no more than in Etruria, because, especially after the abolition of the monarchy, arms would not have been entrusted to the people. The wars would have been nothing more than hasty incursions of cavalry and a half-armed mob of plunderers, the necessary war-system in every oligarchy of ancient times; while the power of the Samnites, founded on their excellent infantry, would have continually encroached upor Rome, and overpowered her before she could join battle. In the interior, despotism would have fortified itself, and the people in their wrath would have favoured the oppression of the