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