At first the
patricians fought them, and, failing to subdue them by force,
effected a compromise, and bought up their leaders. The
concession which followed of the tribunitial veto was only a
further development. By that veto the plebeians gained no
initiative, no positive power, indeed, but their tribunes, by
interposing it, could stop the proceedings of the government.
They could not propose the measures they liked, but they could
prevent the legal adoption of measures they disliked--a faculty
Mr. Calhoun asserted for the several States of the American Union
in his doctrine of nullification, or State veto, as he called it.
It was simply an obstructive power.
But from a power to obstruct legislative action to the power to
originate or propose it, and force the senate to adopt it through
fear of the veto of measures the patricians had at heart, was
only a still further development. This gained, the exclusively
patrician constitution had disappeared, and Marius, the head of a
great plebeian house, could be elected consul and the plebeians
in turn threaten to become predominant, which Sylla or Sulla, as
dictator, seeing, tried in vain to prevent. The dictator was
provided for in the original constitution. Retain the
dictatorship for a time, strengthen the plebeian element by
ruthless proscriptions of patricians and by recruits from the
provinces, unite the tribunitial, pontifical, and military powers
in the imperator designated by the army, all elements existing in
the constitution from an early day, and already developed in the
Roman state, and you have the imperial constitution, which
retained to the last the senate and consuls, though with less and
less practical power.
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