plebeians had established their claim to equal rights. The English
reader will easily understand the difference, if he considers that the
patricians were precisely similar to the members of a close
corporation, and the plebeians to the other inhabitants of a city. In
London, for example, the common council may represent the senate, the
livery answer for the populus, patricians, or comitia curiata, and the
general body of other inhabitants will correspond with the plebs.

[7] There were certain sacrifices which the Romans believed could only
be offered by a king; after the abolition of royalty, a priest, named
the petty sacrificing king, (rex sacrificulus,) was elected to perform
this duty.

[8] Perhaps it would be more accurate to say the _exclusive_ right of
legislation; for it appears that the comitia centuriata were sometimes
summoned to give their sanction to laws which had been previously
enacted by the curiæ.

[9] See Chap. XII.

[10] The Romans were previously acquainted with that great principle
of justice, the right of trial by a person's peers. In the earliest
ages the patricians had a right of appeal to the curiæ; the Valerian
laws extended the same right to the plebeians.

[11] The senators were called conscript fathers, (patres conscripti,)
either from their being enrolled on the censor's list, or more
probably from the addition made to their numbers after the expulsion
of the kings, in order to supply the places of those who had been
murdered by Tarquin. The new senators were at first called conscript,