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CHAPTER

A lean, muscular hand fell lightly upon his shoulder and he was jerked back promptly

Quinnion was down and shooting, with but ten steps . . . between him and the man whom he sought to kill

"You'll find your work cut out for you."

Judith of Blue Lake Ranch

BUD LEE WANTS TO KNOW

Bud Lee, horse foreman of the Blue Lake Ranch, sat upon the gate of the home corral, builded a cigarette with slow brown fingers, and stared across the broken fields of the upper valley to the rosy glow above the pine-timbered ridge where the sun was coming up. His customary gravity was unusually pronounced.

"If a man's got the hunch an egg is bad," he mused, "is that a real good and sufficient reason why he should go poking his finger inside the shell? I want to know!"

Tommy Burkitt, the youngest wage-earner of the outfit and a profound admirer of all that taciturnity, good-humor, and quick capability which went into the make-up of Bud Lee, approached from the ranch-house on the knoll. "Hi, Bud!" he called. "Trevors wants you. On the jump."

Lee watched Tommy coming on with that wide, rocking gait of a man used to much riding and little walking. The deep gravity in the foreman's eyes was touched with a little twinkle by way of greeting.

Burkitt stopped at the gate, looking up at Lee. "On the jump, Trevors said," he repeated.

"The hell he did," said Lee pleasantly. "How old are you this morning, Tommy?"

Burkitt blushed. "Aw, quit it, Bud," he grinned. Involuntarily the boy's big square hand rose to the tender growth upon lip and chin which, like the flush in the eastern sky, was but a vague promise of a greater glory to be.

"A hair for each year," continued the quiet-voiced man. "Ten on one side, nine on the other."

"Ain't you going to do what Trevors says?" demanded Tommy.

For a moment Lee sat still, his cigarette unlighted, his broad black hat far back upon his close-cropped hair, his eyes serenely contemplative upon the pink of the sky above the pines. Then he slipped from his place and, though each single movement gave an impression of great leisureliness, it was but a flash of time until he stood beside Burkitt.

"Stick around a wee bit, laddie," he said gently, a lean brown hand resting lightly on the boy's square shoulder. "A man can't see what is on the cards until they're tipped, but it's always a fair gamble that between dawn and dusk I'll gather up my string of colts and crowd on. If I do, you'll want to come along?"

He smiled at young Burkitt's eagerness and turned away toward the ranch-house and Bayne Trevors, thus putting an early end to an enthusiastic acquiescence. Tommy watched the tall man moving swiftly away through the brightening dawn.

"They ain't no more men ever foaled like him," meditated Tommy, in an approval so profound as to be little less than out-and-out devotion.

And, indeed, one might ride up and down the world for many a day and not find a man who was Bud Lee's superior in "the things that count." As tall as most, with sufficient shoulders, a slender body, narrow-hipped, he carried himself as perhaps his forebears walked in a day when open forests or sheltered caverns housed them, with a lithe gracefulness born of the perfect play of superb physical development. His muscles, even in the slightest movement, flowed liquidly; he had slipped from his place on the corral gate less like a man than like some great, splendid cat. The skin of hands, face, throat, was very dark, whether by inheritance or because of long exposure to sun and wind, it would have been difficult to say. The eyes were dark, very keen, and yet reminiscently grave. From under their black brows they had the habit of appearing to be reluctantly withdrawn from some great distance to come to rest, steady and calm, upon the man with whom he chanced to be speaking. Such are the serene, dispassionate eyes of one who for many months of the year goes companionless, save for what communion he may find in the silent passes of the mountains, in the wide sweep of the meadvilization than we are, but the Romans had not only to civilize and govern the stubborn tribes of Gaul and Spain, but also to make their authority respected in the Greek East, among peoples who could boast of a civilization far higher and older than their own. That a city-state with the old and narrow local social and political traditions which Rome had could adapt herself to the government of a world-empire composed of such diverse elements as made up the Roman Empire is one of the marvels of history, and a study of the methods which she followed can not fail to throw light on political questions which we have to meet today. The range of social and economic conditions through which Rome went is equally wide. The Romans come on the stage of history as a primitive pastoral people with strongholds on the hills. In course of time they build cities all over the world whose beauty and magnificence have perhaps never been equalled. Their government had to keep pace with these social and economic changes, and consequently had to adapt itself to almost every conceivable state of society.

In spite of all these facts one may be inclined to raise the question whether our civilization can have much in common with one so far removed from it in point of time, and whether the study of such an ancient society will have more than an intellectual or historical interest for us. This would be true perhaps if we were studying the political system of almost any other people of antiquity. It is hard for us to understand or sympathize with the social or political ideas of the Egyptians, the Assyrians, or the Persians. Perhaps it is not easy to find much even in the political experiences of the Greeks which will be of practical service to us. But with the Romans it is different. If an immigrant from ancient Rome of the first century before our era should disembark in New York tomorrow, he would need less training in understanding our political machinery than many of our contemporary immigrants do, because the Anglo-Saxon and the Roman show the same characteristics in their political life. Both peoples are opportunists. Both peoples are inclined to meet a new situation by making as little change as possible in the old machinery. Both have a great deal of practical common sense, and no high regard for formal logic or consistency. The Romans had the institution of slavery, and we have developed a complex industrial system through the application of steam and electricity, and steam and electricity have changed the external aspects of our lives. But these differences have not affected deeply the political thinking of the two peoples. We have little in common with any other peoples of antiquity. We have still less with those of the Middle Ages. The ideals of chivalry, of feudalism, of the medieval church, and the submergence of the individual in society, are altogether foreign to our way of thinking. Perhaps it is the incomprehensible nature of these fifteen hundred years of medieval civilization that separate our times from those of the Romans which has prevented us from recognizing our political kinship to the Romans. From this resemblance between Roman civilization and our own, and between the Roman character and our own, it does not necessarily follow that their system of government was closely akin to ours, or that we have inherited many political institutions directly from them. It would, however, naturally mean that many of their political problems would be like ours, and that their method of approaching them would be similar to ours. In some cases they solved these problems with more or less success; in others, they failed. The legacy which they have handed down to us, then, is the practical demonstration in their political life of the merits of certain forms of government and of certain methods of dealing with political and social questions, and the weakness of others. The points of resemblance between the ancient and the modern, and the large extent of our direct and indirect inheritance will be defined later.

The natural political entity in antiquity was the city, with a small outlying territory about it. This state of things the Romans clearly recognized in fixing the status of conquered territory in Italy and across the sea. Thus, after the conquest of Sicily, Rome made her arrangements for ruling the island, not with a government representing all Sicily, but with the sixty-eight individual cities and towns of the island, and the citizens of Syracuse or of Agrigentum derived such rights as they had, not from the fact that they were Sicilians, but from their residence in the one or the other of these two cities. This political system, based on the independent life of a small community, is familiar enough to us in the history of such Italian cities as Venice, Florence, and Siena in the Middle Ages, and pre?minently in the story of Geneva under Calvin. In fact the political institution of antiquity which has had the longest life and which has enjoyed an unbroken history up to our own day is that of the city-state. Hundreds of inscriptions from various parts of the world show us the form of government which these municipalities had in Roman times. The control of affairs rested in the hands of an executive, of a small assembly of chosen men, and of the whole body of citizens. The comparative strength of these three elements differed in different cities, and varied from period to period in the history of each city. This was the government which we find in the city of Rome in early days. Continuity was given to it by the senate, or assembly of elders of the resident clans, who, on the death of the king, appointed one of their number to choose the king's successor, whose assumption of office was dependent on the approval of the senate and the people.

Through an aristocratic revolution the kingdom was overthrown, and the king gave place to two annually elected magistrates, called later consuls, who had the right of veto on each other's actions. The consuls were chosen from the ranks of the patricians, or ruling families, and at the end of a year became patricians again. They must therefore have been largely governed in their action by class prejudice. Consequently the position of the classes which lacked political privileges became intolerable. Another element in the situation aggravated the difficulty. Being located in the centre of Italy and on a navigable river, and being far enough from the mouth of the river to be safe from pirates, Rome grew rapidly, and the coming of a large number of immigrants to the city had a profound effect on its political history. The newcomers did not enjoy the same civil and political rights as the members of the original clans, and they were at an economic and social disadvantage.

The constitutional history of Rome for several centuries centres about the struggle of these people and of the other members of the lower classes to remove the limitations which were put on their rights in these four respects. The natural method of guarding the civil rights of the commons against the arbitrary action of the patrician consul was to limit his powers by law. But the Romans did not adopt this method. They chose class representatives, called tribunes, who were authorized to intervene in person when a plebeian was being treated unjustly and prevent the chief magistrate from carrying out his purpose. It is characteristic of the Roman, as we shall see in other cases, to take this concrete, personal way of bringing about a constitutional reform. The plebeians were at a disadvantage also, because they were kept ignorant of legal procedure and could not maintain their rights before a magistrate. The details of the law, or the accepted custom, were known only to the patrician priests and were handed down by word of mouth from one generation to another. About the middle of the fifth century, after a long struggle, this law was codified and was engraved on twelve bronze tablets, and the tablets were hung up in the Forum where they might be read by any one. These Twelve Tables were regarded by the Romans as the basis of their civil liberty, and may well be placed by the side of the Mosaic Code, the laws of Hammurabi, the Gortynian Code, and Magna Charta. As we shall see later, they contained no formulation of general rights, but stated clearly and minutely the procedure to be followed in civil and criminal actions. If we may accept tradition, both these battles with the patricians were won by the very modern method of Direct Action.

This conquest of civil rights brought the plebeians a larger measure of political rights than they had enjoyed before. It was necessary for them now to organize a popular assembly of their own, in order to elect the tribunes; the tribune became their political leader, and within the next century, under his leadership, the plebeians forced the patricians to admit them to the consulship, and in consequence to the other important magistracies.

The fourth point about which the struggles in the early period centred was the land question. It was the age-old battle between the great landowner on the one hand and the peasant proprietor, the tenant, and the free laborer on the other. As Rome came into possession of new territory in central Italy by conquest or otherwise, the great landed proprietors managed to get most of it from the state at a nominal rental. The constant wars in which Rome was engaged during her early history called both rich and poor to the front, but the rich man's slaves and dependents kept his land under cultivation, while the peasant's holdings, left without anyone to till them, steadily deteriorated. The peasant found it hard, too, to compete with the great landowner who farmed on a large scale and used slave labor, while the free laborer was crushed in competition with the slave. A solution of these difficulties was sought in the Licinian laws of the fourth century and in later legislation. But this legislation did not reach the root of the trouble, and the land question came up in one form or the other for many generations to plague the Romans. The Licinian laws, perhaps supplemented by later legislation, limited the number of acres of state land to be occupied by an individual, stipulated that interest already paid on debts should be deducted from the principal, and fixed the proportional number of free laborers and slaves to be employed on an estate. The first and second provisions were intended to protect the peasant proprietor and to prevent the growth of large estates at his expense. If these three measures could have accomplished their purpose, that drift from the country to the city which ultimately wrecked the Roman Empire, and which is one of the dangerous tendencies today, might never have taken place.

The rapid growth of Rome and her conquest of adjacent territory not only brought to the surface the economic questions which we have just been discussing, but also necessitated an increase in the number of magistrates to manage the larger population and to meet the more complex conditions which had arisen. In the early Republican period the only important officials with positive powers were the two consuls. They presided over the meetings of the senate and of the assemblies which were made up of the whole people, and they were the chief executives and the judicial and financial officials of the community. They supervised the conquered districts of Italy, represented the city in its dealings with foreign states, and commanded the army. These manifold duties, and in particular the absence of the consuls from the city in carrying on war, made it necessary to relieve them of some of their civil functions. The first step taken in this direction was to increase the importance of a minor police official, the aedile. To this official was assigned the duty of keeping order in public places, of supervising commercial transactions, and later, as a natural development of these two functions, of taking charge of the public games and of providing a supply of grain for the city. The financial duties of the consul were turned over to the censor. First and foremost, of course, among these, were the collection of taxes and the expenditure of public moneys. In order that he might draw up a correct list of taxable property, the censor required every citizen to appear before him every five years and make a statement concerning his property, his business, and the main facts of his life. Consequently the censors not only knew the financial status of every Roman, but were also familiar with his occupation and his moral standing in the community. Now the value of a citizen's vote in the principal popular assembly depended on the amount of property which he held, and certain occupations were regarded as beneath the dignity of a senator or likely to interfere with the disinterested performance of his duty. In later times, too, inclusion in the new social order of the knighthood depended on the possession of a certain amount of property. It was natural therefore that the censors, having all the necessary information before them, should assume responsibility for assigning citizens to their proper places in the centuriate assembly, and for revising every five years the lists of senators and knights. This attempt to supervise the morals of the community is one of the most interesting experiments in government which the Romans ever made. It reached certain social evils, like extravagance and cowardice, of which the courts could not readily take cognizance, and the penalties imposed, of loss of voting importance in the assembly or of exclusion from the list of senators or knights, were severe. It may well indicate a gradual growth of wealth in the community and a threatened disappearance of the simple life and the simple virtues of the olden time. What the censors tried to do was to maintain the moral and social standards of earlier days. While the censor's office flourished, deviations from those standards were not defined by law, but were determined by officials, from whose decisions there was no appeal. Perhaps no official in Roman history enjoyed such absolute power within the limits fixed by the penalties which could be imposed. The institution played an important r?le for many decades, but towards the close of the second century before our era, the population had become so large that an examination of the business and the life of every citizen became impossible. One of the objects which the Romans had tried to accomplish by the establishment of the censorship, they attempted later to attain by the passage of sumptuary laws.

The growth of Rome and the consequent increase of public business led the Romans to take his judicial functions from the consul in 367, just as they had previously relieved him of police duties and of financial business. Henceforth a new magistrate, the praetor, took his place in the courts. To no other institution in the Roman political system does the modern world owe so much as it owes to the praetor's office. At first there was only one incumbent of the office, and since his duties confined him to the city he was called the urban praetor. A hundred years later when a second praetor was added, to deal with cases in which one party or both parties to the case were foreigners, the new official was styled the peregrine praetor and in his courts the principles of the law of nations were developed. Sulla ultimately raised the number of praetors to eight. With the institution of the praetor's office our modern court system of judge and jury was firmly established, and a beginning was made in the development of Roman Law. On taking office the praetor published an edict containing the maxims of law and the forms of procedure which would govern him throughout his year of office. This document followed the edict of his predecessor, with such modifications and additions as his own judgment and the needs of the times required. The law in this way became a living thing and constantly adapted itself to the changing needs of society. The later history of the edict and certain additions to the praetor's duties we shall have occasion to notice in another connection.

The increase which the tribune's power underwent during this period almost made his office a new one. With their characteristic hesitation about introducing radical changes in the constitution, and with their tendency to take concrete action, the Romans at the outset had required the tribune to intervene in person when a citizen was being harshly treated. But their common sense showed them in course of time that it was far better to allow the tribune to record his opposition to a bill when it was under consideration than to have him prevent the execution of a law. This change placed a tremendous power in the hands of the tribune in his struggle with the senate and the nobility.

In the early period the senate had been composed of the representatives of the leading clans, but as public business became more complex, in making out the list of senators the censors gave a preference to ex-magistrates, who were already experienced in public affairs, and in course of time this practice was crystallized into law. The men who thus became senators by virtue of having held the praetorship, or consulship, for instance, were elected to a magistracy, to be sure, by the people, but the prestige of a candidate who could point to magistrates among his ancestors was so great that a "new man" had little or no chance of being elected against him. The results were twofold. A new nobility was established composed of ex-magistrates and their lineal descendants. In the second place the senate, being henceforth made up of men who had had experience in administration at home and abroad, easily gained supremacy both over the magistrates, who held office for a year only, and over the popular assemblies, which were unwieldy and ill-informed on important matters. For a century and a half, down to the time of the Gracchi , this nobility maintained itself, and Rome was ruled by a parliament. This state of things is the more astonishing in view of the fact that at the beginning of this period the democracy had won a complete victory, and the action of the popular assembly was accepted as final on all matters. The anomaly is easily explained by the fact that the senate controlled the magistrates; they only could bring bills before the assemblies, and they dared not submit measures of which the senate disapproved.

To provide for a new province outside Italy, the senate sent a commission of ten to co-operate with the Roman commander in drawing up a charter. In this document the province was divided into judicial circuits, and the status of each city was fixed either by separate treaty with Rome or by legislative action. Provincial cities were usually permitted to retain their senates, popular assemblies, local magistrates and courts. A few of them were "free cities," exempt from taxation, but most of them were required to pay a fixed sum in taxes, or to turn over to Rome a certain proportion of the annual return from the land. The rate of taxation was not high, but farming out the taxes to contractors, whose sole desire was to extort as much from the provincials as possible, made taxation in the provinces oppressive. Roman governors were often in league with the moneyed interests at Rome, and were themselves anxious to line their pockets during their year abroad. After a period of experimentation the Romans settled down to the practice of sending out ex-consuls and ex-praetors as provincial governors. These men had experience in public affairs, but their term of office was so short that they acquired little knowledge of local conditions and felt little sympathy with the provincials. Public sentiment at Rome could effect no change, because, like most democracies, the Roman democracy felt little interest in the welfare of the provincials.

To maintain its integrity an oligarchy must keep its numbers small and must prevent individuals from gaining too great eminence or popularity. The traditional acceptance by the masses of certain families as the only families qualified to furnish rulers for the state had kept the nobility a close corporation. To accomplish the second object, that is, to prevent an ambitious individual from rising too rapidly to power, from holding his authority too long a time, and from securing too strong and compact a following, the senate had hedged the magistracies about with a number of legal safeguards. The strict laws enacted before the time of the Gracchi against bribery and prescribing a secret ballot were passed to protect the nobility, and not in the interests of morality. Custom at first, and later, legislation, fixed minimum age requirements for most of the offices, established a certain order in which they must be held, and required an interval between the incumbency of two successive magistracies. The reactionary recasting of the constitution under Sulla illustrates well the aristocratic policy in these matters. In it the important magistracies stand in the order of quaestorship, aedileship, praetorship, and consulship, and a two-year interval was necessary between each two. The minimum age requirement for the consulship was forty-three years, and no one might be re?lected to a magistracy until a period of ten years had expired. This is essentially the system which had been gradually worked out during the flourishing period of the oligarchy. It had also always been a fundamental principle of the Republic that no magistrate should hold office for more than a year, except the censor, whose term was eighteen months. This provision of the constitution took from the magistrate his power and desire to initiate political action. He had been a senator for many years before becoming consul. In twelve months he would be a senator again. He did not lose class-consciousness during his short term of office. If he had wished to assert himself, it would have been impossible. The senate was a body of trained administrators, many of whom had a wider technical knowledge of the questions at issue than he had himself. It was a body of men bound together by mutual self-interest, which had a tradition of centuries behind it. The danger point in the system for the oligarchy lay in the fact that an army and unlimited authority had to be given to the governor of a province. The senate tried to minimize this danger by keeping a tight grip on the purse-strings when appropriating money and in voting troops for the provinces, and by requiring governors to submit their arrangements in the provinces to the senate for ratification, when their terms had expired.

The decline of parliamentarism in the century which lies between the Gracchi and Caesar may be traced in the loss of these safeguards, one after another. Disorders at home, the pressure of wars abroad and the dominance of the army led to their disregard. A case in point occurred toward the close of the second century before our era. The senatorial leaders had shown great incompetence and venality in their campaigns against the Numidian king Jugurtha, and the popular party forced the election to the consulship of Marius, a man of humble birth, and gave him command of the forces in Africa. His brilliant success in this war made the people turn to him in 104, when the Cimbri and Teutons swept down into Italy and overwhelmed the aristocratic leaders. Once more he succeeded, and was elected to the consulship year after year, until, in the year 100, he held this office for the sixth time. The popularity of Marius brought his son to the consulship before he had reached his twentieth year. Twenty-five years later the senate itself was forced to give up an important feature of its policy. Sertorius, a brilliant democratic leader, had established himself in Spain; he had formed an alliance with Mithridates, Rome's deadly enemy in the East, and threatened to return to Italy and restore the democracy to power. To avert this danger the senate made Pompey proconsul, although he had not yet held even the quaestorship, and sent him to Spain with 40,000 troops. A little later the Gabinian and Manilian laws, carried through by the democracy against the vigorous opposition of the oligarchy, entrusted him with extraordinary powers for a long term to carry on the wars against the Cilician pirates and against Mithridates. The dictatorship of Sulla in 82 B.C. and the sole consulship of Pompey in 52, both of which resulted from disorder in Rome, violated the principle of collegiality which was one of the most important safeguards of the oligarchy. Within one hundred years, then, of the time of the Gracchi all the bulwarks which the aristocracy had built up to protect its position were broken down. "New men" were put in the consulship. Popular favorites attained that office before reaching the minimum age required of candidates, and men were freely re?lected to it. The fixed "order of the offices" and the principle of collegiality were violated.

In its struggle for power, the democracy met a reverse in the suppression of the Catilinarian conspiracy in 63 B.C., so that when Pompey returned from his campaign against Mithridates in the following year, the senate ventured to postpone the ratification of his arrangements in Asia and the reward of his veterans. This forced him to make common cause with the democratic leader Caesar, and with Crassus, whose wealth and financial associates made him a man of great influence. In 60 B.C. these three political leaders formed the compact, known as the First Triumvirate, which directed the politics of Rome through its control of the popular assembly for a number of years. Caesar was given the consulship, and later an important command in Gaul. The death of Crassus in a campaign in Parthia left Caesar and Pompey face-to-face. Pompey who had staid in Rome ultimately threw in his lot with the senatorial party, and, when in 49 B.C. the senate tried to make Caesar give up his Gallic province and the Civil War broke out, Pompey was put in charge of the army operating against Caesar. Caesar's success in the war made him undisputed master of Rome, and before his death he became dictator for life. The liberators, as they called themselves, made a last stand for the old r?gime, but were defeated at Philippi, and the victors, Octavius, Antony and Lepidus, formed the Second Triumvirate, the members of which did not content themselves with the unofficial position of political bosses, as Caesar, Crassus, and Pompey had done, but secured a legal basis for their autocratic power through legislation in the popular assembly. Again the elimination of one member of the triumvirate, Lepidus, and the battle of Actium in 31 B.C. left Octavius, or Augustus as we know him in later life, in undisputed control of the state. The revolution was complete. The old machinery of government had broken down under the strain put upon it by the policy of imperialism. Parliamentarism and the narrow policy of a city-state were ill adapted to the government of an empire. The large armies and the long terms of office abroad which Marius and Sulla, Pompey and Caesar had held, had put at their disposal greater resources than the state could command, and the Roman citizens and provincials who had been taught to obey them implicitly in the field maintained their allegiance to their old commanders upon the return of the latter to Italy.

The problem which confronted Augustus in revising the constitution after the battle of Actium was not simple. He had to provide a just and efficient government for an empire, which included southern and central Europe, the Near East, and northern Africa, without breaking away too violently from the traditions of the city-state. Rome must continue to be the capital. Italy must hold her privileged position above the provinces, and the old organs of government and the old forms and titles must be kept. The political life of the Republic had been embodied in two institutions, the senate and the tribunate. One represented the aristocracy; the other, the aspirations of the democracy. These two organs of government formed the core of the system which Augustus finally adopted. In this arrangement therefore he adhered closely to the tradition of the old city-state. Other considerations reinforced in his mind the argument from tradition. The tribunician power, which he took for life, could be exercised in almost every field of administrative activity. Furthermore, the office was popular, because the tribune had from time immemorial been the champion of the masses and had protected the individual against the encroachments of the state. Probably Augustus also felt that the power of the office, from its nature and history, was capable of indefinite extension in all directions.

The provinces profited greatly by the changes which Augustus made in the method of governing them. The evils of the republican system come out in Cicero's orations against Verres, the governor of Sicily, and in the letters which he wrote while he was himself governor of Cilicia. Governors had been sent out to the provinces without paying much heed to their competence. They received no salary, and their terms were short. The governors whom Augustus sent out were chosen on the score of honesty and fitness. Their terms were long enough to enable them to become familiar with conditions in their provinces. They received a generous fixed salary, and those who were capable and honest might look forward to steady advancement. The older provinces were still under the control of the senate, but the excellence of government in the imperial provinces exercised a beneficial influence upon them also. Italians and provincials welcomed the firm and stable government which the principate of Augustus promised them in the same spirit in which the French accepted Louis Napoleon.

He materially strengthened his position by clearly marking off certain social classes from the rest of the population and by making their privileges dependent on his favor. No one could become a senator unless he had been elected to a magistracy, and success in an election required the support of the prince. He gave dignity to the knighthood and definiteness to its membership by making important appointments from its ranks, and by revising the list of knights at regular intervals. He even created an aristocracy among the freedmen in the municipalities.

No survey of Roman politics would be complete without some account of political life in these municipalities, for, as we have already noticed, the city was the organic political unit in antiquity. Several municipal charters, most of which have been found within the last fifty or seventy-five years, give us a clear idea of the municipal system in the West and of the efforts which were made in the early empire to improve it and make it uniform. In cities of the typical form there were two local chief magistrates corresponding to the early republican consuls, two minor magistrates who bore the title of aediles, a senate or common council of one hundred members, and a popular assembly. The system adopted was conservative, inasmuch as the control of local affairs rested largely with the local senate, and the magistrates were its ministers. Most cities were allowed to keep a large measure of self-government under the early empire, and this fact kept alive the sentiment of local pride and the local patriotism of the citizens. So long as the cities were free to manage their own affairs, the empire was prosperous. As the cities lost their sense of responsibility, or as the central government encroached on their rights, as it began to do in the second century of our era, the decline of the empire set in. It was to this halcyon period of municipal prosperity from the latter part of the first to the close of the second century that Gibbon pays his famous tribute in the third chapter of his history: "If a man were called to fix the period in the history of the world, during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous, he would, without hesitation, name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus." We need not stop to consider in this connection whether the decline of this prosperity caused the decay of self-government or was due to it. At all events the two processes were contemporaneous.

To return from this brief account of city-life to the story of imperial politics,--as we have noticed, under the system which Augustus set up, there were two recognized sources of authority in the state, the prince and the senate. We say "recognized sources of power," because in the background loomed up the sinister figure of the army, which was still capable of determining the fortunes of the state, as it had done in the times of Sulla and Marius, of Pompey and Caesar. Perhaps we may see the first step toward the intrusion of the army into politics again when Sejanus, the unscrupulous praetorian prefect of Tiberius, brought all the cohorts of the praetorian guard together in Rome. The control of these soldiers stationed in the capital put a powerful weapon in the hands of Sejanus, but, before he could strike, his designs were laid bare. The hereditary principle which Augustus had introduced, by adopting Tiberius and by conferring imperial honors upon him, a principle which was followed by his immediate successors, was for a time a safeguard for the succession. But when the Julian line became extinct on the murder of Nero, the field lay open to the imperial aspirant who was backed by the strongest army. After a year of struggle between four military leaders, Vespasian made good his claim to the prize, and in the year 69 founded a new dynasty, the Flavian. The precedent which Vespasian had set was not followed for a century, but from the close of the second century to the accession of Diocletian in 284 the praetorian guard and the army constituted the power which made and unmade the rulers of Rome. Within the period of seventy-three years which preceded the reign of Diocletian there were in fact twenty-three different emperors, almost all of whom owed their elevation to the throne to the force of arms, and kept their places on the throne so long as they could keep the favor of their armed supporters.

Vespasian, whose seizure of the imperial purple we noticed a moment ago, was not a native of the city of Rome, as all the members of the Julian line had been, nor did he belong to a noble family. These two facts might almost be taken as an omen of the great change which he and his successors were to bring about in the position of Rome and Italy in the Roman world and in the political standing of the senate. The exceptional position which Rome and Italy had held under the republic was taken from them in part by robbing them of their privileges and in part by raising the provinces to a higher political plane. Augustus had started the new movement by stationing troops in Italy and by taking the municipal departments in Rome under his control. Within a century the same fate befell other Italian municipalities which had befallen Rome, and they had to surrender to the emperor the control of their finances and their jurisdiction in all important civil and criminal cases. The privilege which at first Rome and later the Italian municipalities guarded most jealously was their exclusive right to Roman and Latin citizenship. Claudius turned from this tradition when he granted these privileges to certain Gallic cities, and the Flavian emperors violated it in a still more striking way by their generous treatment of many cities in Spain. The levelling down of Italy to the position of the provinces, so far as citizenship was concerned, was completed when Caracalla in 212 granted Roman citizenship to practically all freemen in the empire. In this connection may be mentioned a significant change which was made in the organization of the army. The legions from the time of Hadrian on were recruited in all parts of the empire, and officers were no longer drawn solely from the Western and Latin-speaking portion of the Roman world, but from the East also. The army therefore ceased to be the great Romanizing influence which it had been in the past, and what was still worse, a feeling of local solidarity grew up which was destined in the end to be fatal to the unity of the empire. It was this feeling which gave rise to the nationalist movement in the third century, and the Gallic kingdom of Postumus in the West in that century and the kingdom of Zenobia in Palmyra in the East were concrete manifestations of this feeling and at the same time premonitions of the future dissolution of the empire.

Before we take up for consideration certain points of resemblance and of difference between our political institutions and those of ancient Rome, it is interesting to stop for a moment to ask ourselves in what respects the tradition and the ideals of the Roman state have been perpetuated by the Church of Rome. In the first place the Church is the lineal successor of the Empire in the sense that she saved Europe from chaos when the political ties which bound its several component parts to Rome were severed, and she conserved with all her power through the Middle Ages the Roman elements which escaped being engulfed by the wave of barbarism. More than that, she kept alive the old tradition of world-empire, no longer of the flesh, but of the spirit. Like the old Empire her domain embraced diverse lands and peoples. She resembled and she resembles the Empire now in the fact that she follows law and tradition strictly. She requires implicit obedience from the individual, and the interests of the individual are subordinated to those of the organization. In all these characteristics she is the true spiritual daughter of the Roman Empire. We noticed a moment ago that the realm of the Church, like that of the Emperor, included many different lands. The territorial parallelism between the two systems goes beyond this general point of resemblance.

Let us pass now to consider the relation which our political theories and institutions bear to those of Rome. A wise government aims to strike a judicious balance between the rights of the individual and the safety and welfare of the community. This happy mean can best be determined by watching the play of the two principles in concrete cases. Such an opportunity is offered to us by the history of the ancient city-state which sets before us examples in which the two ideals of government mentioned above are combined in varying degrees. These instances range from Athens which favored the freedom of the citizen to Delphi or Sparta which exalted the importance of the commonwealth.

If we should try to set down the valuable contributions which the Romans have made to modern political theory, or the achievements of the Romans which we may study with profit, or the political qualities in them which we may imitate to advantage, or the important political principles or institutions which we have inherited from them, we should think of the doctrines of popular sovereignty, of the equality and brotherhood of man, of the practical proof which they have given us of the value of a flexible constitution, of their teachings concerning the theory of the state, and of their introduction of the historical method of studying political institutions. Of all these contributions to modern civilization we have already spoken. We should also think of their devotion to the state, of their regard for law and tradition, of their wise opportunism which made their political thinking practical and concrete, of their development of a marvellous body of civil law, of their careful observance of the principle of local self-government, with its acceptance of local institutions and practices, and of their success in promoting law and order and a feeling of social solidarity, in improving material conditions throughout the world, and in governing and civilizing backward peoples. This is a long list, but in all these respects the political acumen of the Romans was noteworthy, and their achievements either lie at the basis of modern civilization, as we shall see, or may furnish us guidance in our political development. In our discussion of the different branches of the government, and of various fields of political activity, we shall have occasion to take up in detail many of these points which have not yet been mentioned.

Up to the time of Tiberius Gracchus, near the close of the second century before Christ, Rome was under a parliamentary government, not unlike the government of France or Italy in its essential characteristics. Under the constitution of 1875, for instance, the chief executive of France is brought under the control of the legislative body, just as the Roman Consul was made subject to the Senate. All his acts of every kind, to be valid, must be countersigned by one of his ministers, and it is always within the power of the Chamber of Deputies to overthrow a ministry. In the absence of the two-party system in Rome, and the consequent lack of a compact party organization to support the Government, the Roman system was also like that which is common on the Continent. Of course the Roman system was pure parliamentary government in a higher degree than is the system in vogue in any modern state, because the internal and external policy of Rome was not thought of as the policy of Catulus or Messalla, but as that of the Senate, whereas today, with a certain measure of propriety, we speak of the policy of a Briand or of a Giolitti.

Probably no society has ever invented so many safeguards against Caesarism as the Roman oligarchy did. As we have already noticed, a candidate for a magistracy must have reached a specified age: he must hold the offices in a fixed order, and an interval of time must elapse before he can be re-elected to the highest office. His term was a short one, and during it his actions were always subject to the veto of his colleague. Another check upon him was furnished by the recall. This very new political device is as old as the tribunate of Tiberius Gracchus. It is an application of the doctrine of popular sovereignty in its extreme form, and grew out of earlier attempts to hold magistrates responsible for their conduct in office. The arguments which Gracchus used in support of his proposal to recall his colleague, Octavius, postulate the theory of popular sovereignty and sound surprisingly like the considerations which are urged by the supporters of the recall today. According to Plutarch, Gracchus said: "We esteem him to be legally chosen tribune who is elected only by the majority of votes; and is not therefore the same person much more lawfully degraded, when by the general consent of them all, they agree to depose him?" Perhaps we have not inherited the recall directly from antiquity, but our acceptance of the Roman doctrine of popular sovereignty has led logically to the development of the recall, as well as the initiative, and the referendum.

One of the characteristic features of a Roman magistracy was the right which an incumbent had to veto the action of a colleague; and the tribune had the right, which he freely exercised, to veto the action of any other official. In some respects the Romans used the veto power in a more practical way than we do. Our governors, presidents, and other chief executives may not interpose a veto until a measure has been adopted and laid before them for their signature. Often they are required to disapprove of long, important measures, which they would gladly see adopted, were it not for some slight defect. Under Roman practice a bill could be vetoed before action had been taken upon it, or a tribune would ask for a night's delay before action should be taken. This arrangement gave proponents of a bill an opportunity to change the objectionable features of it. In recent years various timid excursions have been made into certain fields of political activity, in which Roman magistrates exercised their power freely. We try to influence the morals of people by exercising some supervision over the stage and over the public press; and in time of war the government has fixed the price of certain foods and attempted to provide for their proper distribution. What the censor's office did in its palmy days to improve the morals of the people and to check extravagance and display has been discussed in the last chapter, and in the aedile's office the Romans had a permanent Food Administration.

One of the most extraordinary features of their judicial system was the fact that the Romans had no permanent public prosecutor. The bringing of criminal actions under the republic was left to private initiative, but there seem to have been enough ambitious politicians to prosecute cases, at least those cases which were likely to bring distinction to the successful prosecutor. Indeed on some occasions the praetor, before beginning a trial, was obliged to give a preliminary hearing to several lawyers who claimed the distinction of bringing the charge against the accused party. The merits and defects of such a system are obvious. Charges were likely to be pushed with vigor, because the reputation of an advocate depended on securing a conviction, and sometimes a patriotic citizen prosecuted a powerful politician when a public prosecutor would have hesitated to do so. But on the whole the plan did not work well. This was especially true when there was a political element in the case. In such circumstances the charge was usually brought by a political opponent, or what was worse still, a political supporter might put the defendant on trial and secure an acquittal, before a real prosecution could take place. Before being allowed to undertake the prosecution of Verres, the venal and tyrannical governor of Sicily, Cicero had to convince the presiding praetor that his claim to the right of conducting the case was better than that of Quintus Caecilius Niger, who had been quaestor of Verres, and hoped to secure the acquittal of his former superior. Such cases of collusion between the prosecutor and the defendant became so common, that a heavy penalty was imposed on those found guilty of it. Even under the empire, when the senate began to hear certain important cases, there was no permanent public prosecutor, but the senate designated members of its own body to conduct the prosecution and the defence. In these trials the senate functioned as a jury, and the presiding consul, as a judge. As the emperor gained a greater control of public affairs, it was not unnatural that he should take over criminal jurisdiction in important cases or delegate it to his prefects. When this point was reached, probably the prosecution of criminal actions was assumed more definitely by the state.

We frequently introduce "character witnesses" in our trials. The Romans went still further. A Roman defendant brought with him to the court as many prominent friends as he could to make a favorable impression on the jury. In important cases today in America, although attorneys for the prosecution and defence sometimes give the jury brief outlines of the case before the evidence is presented, their formal pleas are not made until the evidence is in. Our method is inductive. Formal pleas were usually made in a Roman court before the testimony was given. Much can be said for the Roman plan. Having the analyses of the case, as presented by the prosecution and defence, clearly in mind, the average juryman is perhaps better qualified to decide which theory is made more probable by the facts in the case and is in a better position to pick out the salient facts than he is when dealing with heterogeneous bits of evidence. The same looseness of procedure which characterized the meetings of the Roman Senate is found in the courts. The jury was not under careful surveillance; demonstrations of approval and disapproval occurred, violent discussions were not always stopped, the rules of evidence were less strict than they are with us, and technicalities played a less important part. In some of these particulars Continental courts have inherited Roman practices more fully than Anglo-Saxon courts have. In consequence of their elimination of technicalities, the Romans brought important criminal cases to an end much more quickly than we do, and justice was cheaper than it is with us. In Anglo-Saxon courts hearsay evidence, the opinions of witnesses, and facts irrelevant to the issue are excluded by the presiding judge. These rules of evidence were not applied in Roman courts, and when the Continental countries reintroduced the jury system, they went back to the Roman practices in this matter, as we noticed a few years ago in the famous trial at Viterbo.

In the fields of taxation and public finance we have not much to learn from the Romans, save by way of warning. Most of the revenue of the state came from the provinces, and for several centuries was collected by tax-farmers. We are familiar enough in more recent times with the exploitation of provinces, or colonies, as we call them, by the state or the great trading company, because most modern nations have followed Rome's policy of making their colonies subserve the interests of the mother country. In Sicily, the first overseas territory which the Romans acquired, they took over the system of taxation which they found in vogue there. That system rested on the Oriental theory that the land belonged to the sovereign, and that those who held the land paid rent for its use. This was the basis of taxation in all the later provinces also. Next in importance to the tribute were the customs duties. They brought in a large revenue, but were a great impediment to trade. Rome held almost all the civilized world. Consequently duties collected on the frontiers of the empire would not have amounted to much. What the Romans did was to divide the empire into tariff districts, and collect duties from those entering these districts. Trade suffered in consequence, as it did in France before the Revolution under similar conditions. The only other important tax in this connection was the five per cent inheritance tax imposed on property left to others than near relatives. It was instituted by Augustus, was levied on Roman citizens, and met with violent opposition. This system, taken in its entirety, relieved Italy from the burden of taxation.

The funds which came into the imperial treasury from the different sources mentioned above were spent mainly on the government of the provinces, on roads, bridges, and other public works, on religion, on the army and navy, and on the city of Rome. It is impossible to find out the size of these different items. It has been calculated that in the early part of the first century the army cost 160,000,000 sesterces a year, a sum which, with some hesitation, one may roughly estimate had the purchasing value of ,000,000. An imperial procurator in one of the provinces received an annual salary which ranged from ,000 to ,000. The expense of provincial government was tremendously increased from the second century on by the development of an elaborate bureaucratic system. The outgo for the city of Rome included expenditures for the construction and maintenance of public works, for religious purposes, and to provide food and amusement for the populace. We notice the absence from the list of charges of certain items like appropriations for education and charity which form an important part of a modern budget.

Under the republic the control of finances rested mainly with the senate; under the empire it was divided between the emperor and the senate. The republican system of financial administration would seem to us very loose, and surprising in the case of so practical a people as the Romans. Under it the senate appropriated money for a period of five years to be used by the censors in the construction of public works, and lump sums were voted for expenditure by the other civil magistrates, and itemized accounts were not required of them. As happened in so many other matters, with the empire a better system of financial administration came in. The government collected most of the taxes through its own agents. The supervision of receipts and expenditures was more thorough, and we hear of something approaching an itemized budget. The lion's share of the revenues went into the imperial fiscus. The funds at the emperor's disposal were also materially augmented by the development of crown property and of the emperor's private fortune. Many large private estates were confiscated by the emperor, and many legacies were left to him. Indeed it was often a hazardous thing for a rich man to pass over the emperor in his will. The hereditary principle of succession was never formally recognized in the Roman constitution, but it was practically followed from Augustus to Nero, so that the interesting distinction which we make today between crown property and the patrimony of the emperor was not adopted before the year 69.

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