territory, swelled their own acquisitions, while allotments of land to the citizens were rarely and grudgingly made. It is true that colonies were established on the frontiers of conquered countries, in which the citizens were offered lands that cost them perhaps their lives to defend—while the patricians enjoyed in safety the greater portion reserved to themselves. But the people possessed an inherent energy that carried them onwards, and by the union of the several classes, they gained ground on the aristocratic order. At this epoch of their history, a remarkable person was called from his rural retirement to be invested with supreme authority. This was Cincinnatus-who left with reluctance his mattock and his plough, to assume the baton of power. He had to quell intestine commotion, and repel foreign invasion; he succeeded in both, and then retired to his farm. In times of imminent danger, the people can be ruined or saved only by one of themselves :-they are safe in their own union and confidence in each other-or they may be betrayed by some renegade from their ranks.

About this period, the people, by their intelligence, effected a great reform by the promulgation of a written body of laws, compiled into the celebrated Code of the Twelve Tables: but as a lesson to the Roman, and every other people, the ten men who had been appointed to form these laws, set themselves above all law, and usurped the most despotic powers over their countrymen, who at length were happy enough to get them expelled from Rome.

The patrician order had been so exclusive and haughty in their bearing to the great body of the people, that intermarriages had been forbidden, but the citizens, through means of their tribunes, compelled the removal of this badge of inequality, and the law concerning marriages between

the popular and aristocratic orders was passed by the

senate.

This change was in its consequences a great social and political revolution-the patricians were constrained to increased exertion in the public service, and the popular party were incited to imitate them; the latter practised frugality and industry, in order to rival the aristocrats in wealth. From this period commenced the advance of Rome to supreme power over Italy; for in war perfect union prevailed against the foreign enemy.

Tranquillity was disturbed by one Spurius Mælius, a wealthy knight, attempting to possess himself of sovereign power. During a famine he purchased all the corn that he could procure, and distributed it along with arms to the poorer classes. But his designs were discovered, and he himself was destroyed by an officer of the dictator Cincinnatus.

Fifty years after the event referred to, the Gauls under Brennus, tempted by the climate and fruits of Italy, invaded the country and sacked Rome, but were driven back and almost entirely destroyed by Camillus the Roman general, who roused the people to rebuild the city, laid waste by the barbarians. This invasion was effected by a surprise, and it put the Romans afterwards more upon their guard.

The struggles between the two great orders in the state, continued after the expulsion of the Gauls. The circumstance that gave peculiar weight to the influence exercised by the patrician body was the possession of the priestly office:-to political power was added the terrors of superstition over the minds of the people. The union of magistrate and priest was preserved to the time of the empire, and Julius Cæsar in his decrees began, "I Julius Cæsar,

imperator, and high priest, have made this decree with the approbation of the Senate."*

The devastation of the country, and the destruction of the city of Rome, by the barbarians of Gaul, reduced the Roman people to great distress. Property was destroyed, and at this period of public calamity the rapacity and tyrannical proceedings of the aristocratic party appeared to increase with the misery of the people. Hatred, pride, and avarice leagued the patricians for mastery over the Roman citizens. The spirit of the people was sunk by the enormous weight of calamity, and it was verging into the gloom and stupor of despair.

The Roman people and the Roman name were about to be extinguished; and in the present age, it is impossible for the mind of man to conceive what would now have been the state of the world, had the virtue and the energy of that extraordinary race not surmounted the difficulties of their situation, and enabled them to curb and depress the power of the aristocratic order.

But an intelligent people, true to themselves, who resolutely demand their rights of a domestic tyrant, or defend them against a foreign foe, need never despair; and at this period of Roman history, two men arose, who raised their countrymen from a state of great abasement, to one of prosperity, power, and grandeur. These two men, Licinius

The Christian British union of "Church and State," is in principle analogous with the “union of magistrate and priest," among the Romans. Political power and theocratic influence are centered in the same individual. The holy Father in God,' the bishop, sits as a lay legislator, to tax the subsistence of the citizens. The agricultural labourer, who poaches a hare, has his sentence passed on him by the same individual, who perhaps read on the Sunday before, in the parish church,—“The gleanings of thy harvest thou shalt leave them unto the poor and to the stranger."

and Servius, were tribunes of the people, who, with great strength of purpose, ability, and unconquerable perseverance, and without violence, succeeded in getting a measure passed into law, which saved their country from ruin.— This law was the famous statute known as the Licinian Rogations. It decided three most important questions. First. It diminished the political power of the aristocratic party, and increased that of the people, by dividing the consular authority equally between consuls appointed from the Patricians and Plebeians. Secondly. It struck at the root of illegal and usurped power, by reclaiming for the republic, all lands which had been violently seized and occupied by individuals of the aristocratic order; and it restored to the Roman citizens the command of subsistence, by allotting them, according to circumstances, a portion of the public lands in possession, on payment of a land-tax, of the tenth bushel from arable lands, and a fifth of the produce from plantations and vineyards: the use of pasture lands was allowed at certain rates for every head of cattle, sheep, and other animals. A maximum of land was fixed, as no person was allowed to possess more of the public lands, than a section of about 350 acres of arable or plantation land, or to feed more than 100 head of black cattle, or 500 of small cattle, on the public pastures; those parts of the public lands, at the time of the passing of the law, in possession of individuals, exceeding 350 acres each, were to be assigned to the poorer citizens, in property, in lots of about four acres and a half each; it contained an important clause, binding the assignees of the public lands to employ freemen as labourers, in proportion to the extent of their possessions. This salutary regulation was, however, evaded by the patricians, and to such an extent did they introduce slaves, to the exclusion of the free population, that at a

future period the very existence of the nation was threatened by a general insurrection of the slaves, under the energetic command of Spartacus. The third question settled by the Licinian Rogations was, the adjustment of private debts, and the regulation of the rate of the interest of money.Without an intimate acquaintance with the domestic state of the ancient Romans, it is impossible to form correct ideas of the nature of this section of the celebrated laws of Licinius: the object of the usury law was, to protect the debtor against the rapacity of the money-lender; and the portion of the law, which decided the time and mode of settling private debts, appeared to have been analogous with insolvent debtors' and bankrupt laws of modern commercial nations.

In order to form a correct estimate of the importance of the Licinian laws, and of the talent, courage, and perseverance, displayed by the authors of them, it is necessary to recapitulate the circumstances which conduced to the enormous power possessed at this time by the aristocratic party.

The political power of the patrician order was based and maintained on the subsistence of the great body of citizens: in this case, the control of subsistence constituted political and military power. The public domains, which consisted of lands, the property of the state, had been, ever since the expulsion of Tarquin, illegally seized by the aristocracy, and divided among themselves, to the exclusion of the bulk of the people. From that event to the Agrarian law of Licinius, a space of about 140 years, a continued struggle had been carried on by the people to recover their rights. The patricians not only usurped the possession of the public lands, but they very soon even evaded the payment of the land- tax, or rent, for the use of the lands so