Page:Cicero And The Fall Of The Roman Republic.djvu/42

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as their own the majestic policy which the Senate announced by word and deed.

During the latter half of the second century the Nobility shows in a less favourable light. It failed to deal with the complicated questions which presented themselves as the result of conquest, especially the agrarian question and the question of the Italian allies. Thus the statesmen who undertook to solve these problems naturally drifted into opposition, and from opposition into revolution. The Roman constitution gave fatal facilities for such a development. It had the theory of popular sovereignty without any machinery for realising that sovereignty in fact. The power of the people was nullified by the dangerous fiction that the whole nation could assemble in the Forum, and that an affirmative answer to the question put by a magistrate to such a casual gathering made the proposal into law, absolute and indefeasible. The machinery, like that of the French plébiscite, was fitted not to express the popular will, but to give opportunities for a despotism. Unlimited power would be lodged in the hands of any magistrate who could organise the city rabble, if only he were unchecked in his right of initiating proposals. To avoid this consequence, the Romans gave the legal power of initiative, not to one man or to any body of men collectively, but to each one of a number of annual magistrates, consuls, prætors, and tribunes, and they further gave to each of them singly an absolute right of veto over the action of any or of all his colleagues. The result was to throw