The tribunician movements appear to have mainly originated in social
rather than political discontent, and there is good reason to suppose
that some of the wealthy plebeians admitted to the senate were no
less opposed to these movements than the patricians. For they too
benefited by the privileges against which the agitation was mainly
directed; and although in other respects they found themselves treated
as inferior, it probably seemed to them by no means an appropriate
time for asserting their claim to participate in the magistracies,
when the exclusive financial power of the whole senate was assailed.
This explains why during the first fifty years of the republic no step
was taken aiming directly at the political equalization of the orders.

But this league between the patricians and the wealthy plebeians by no
means bore within itself any guarantee of permanence. Beyond doubt
from the very first a portion of the leading plebeian families had
attached themselves to the movement-party, partly from a sense of what
was due to the fellow-members of their order, partly in consequence
of the natural bond which unites all who are treated as inferior,
and partly because they perceived that concessions to the multitude
were inevitable in the issue, and that, if turned to due account,
they would result in the abrogation of the exclusive rights of
the patriciate and would thereby give to the plebeian aristocracy a
decisive preponderance in the state. Should this conviction become
--as was inevitable--more and more prevalent, and should the plebeian
aristocracy at the head of its order take up the struggle with the
patrician nobility, it would wield in the tribunate a legalized
instrument of civil warfare, and it might, with the weapon of social
distress, so fight its battles as to dictate to the nobility the terms
of peace and, in the position of mediator between the two parties,