considerably less noble. The land question he perceived was but one of
many questions. The true source of the disorders of the Commonwealth was
the Senate itself. The administration of the Empire was in the hands of
men totally unfit to be trusted with it, and there he thought the reform
must commence. He threw himself on the people. He was chosen tribune in
123, ten years exactly after Tiberius. He had studied the disposition of
parties. He had seen his brother fall because the equites and the
senators, the great commoners and the nobles, were combined against him.
He revived the agrarian law as a matter of course, but he disarmed the
opposition to it by throwing an apple of discord between the two superior
orders. The high judicial functions in the Commonwealth had been hitherto
a senatorial monopoly. All cases of importance, civil or criminal, came
before courts of sixty or seventy jurymen, who, as the law stood, must be
necessarily senators. The privilege had been extremely lucrative. The
corruption of justice was already notorious, though it had not yet reached
the level of infamy which it attained in another generation. It was no
secret that in ordinary causes jurymen had sold their verdicts; and, far
short of taking bribes in the direct sense of the word, there were many
ways in which they could let themselves be approached and their favor
purchased. A monopoly of privileges is always invidious. A monopoly in the
sale of justice is alike hateful to those who abhor iniquity on principle
and to those who would like to share the profits of it. But this was not
the worst. The governors of the provinces, being chosen from those who had
been consuls or praetors, were necessarily members of the Senate.
Peculation and extortion in these high functions were offences in theory
of the gravest kind; but the offender could only be tried before a limited
number of his peers, and a governor who had plundered a subject state,
sold justice, pillaged temples, and stolen all that he could lay hands on,
was safe from punishment if he returned to Rome a millionaire and would
admit others to a share in his spoils. The provincials might send