Page:Montesquieu - The spirit of laws.djvu/294

242 for it Was necessary that the augurs should be consulted who were under the direction of the patricians; and no proposal could be made there to the people unless it had been previously laid before the senate and approved of by a senatus-consultum. But in the division into tribes they had nothing to do either with the augurs or with the decrees of the senate; and the patricians were excluded.

Now the people endeavoured constantly to have those meetings by curia's which had been customary by centuries; and by tribes, those they used to have before by curia's; by which means the direction of public affairs loon devolved from the patricians to the plebeians.

Thus, when the plebeians obtained the power of judging the patricians, a power which commenced in the affair of Coriolanus, the plebeians insisted upon judging them by assemblies in tribes , and not in centuries: and when the new magistracies of tribunes and Ædiles were established in favour of the people, the latter obtained that they should meet by curia's in order to nominate them; and after their power was quire settled, they gained so far their point as to assemble by tribes to proceed to this nomination.

N the heat of the contests between the patricians and the plebeians, the latter insisted upon Rh