Page:Montesquieu - The spirit of laws.djvu/302

250 stripped of all forms of justice, were rather exertions of violence than legal judgments.

This gave rise to the Valerian law, by which it was made lawful to appeal to the people from every ordinance of the consuls that endangered the life of a citizen. The consuls after this had no longer a power of pronouncing sentence in capital cases against a Roman citizen without the content of the people.

We see in the first conspiracy for the restoration of the Tarquins, that the criminals were tried by Brutus the consul; in the second the senate and comitia were assembled to try them.

The laws distinguished by the name of Sacred, allowed the plebeians the privilege of chusing tribunes; by this means a body was formed, whose pretensions at first were immense. It is hard to determine which was greater, the insolence of the plebeians in demanding, or the condescension of the senate in granting. The Valerian law allowed of appeals to the people, that is, to the people composed of senators, patricians, and plebeians. The plebeians made a law that appeals should be brought before themselves. A question was soon after started, whether the plebeians had a right to judge a patrician; this was the subject of a dispute which the affair of Coriolanus gave rise to, and which ended with that affair. When Coriolanus was accused by the tribunes before the people, he insisted, contrary to the spirit of the Valerian law, that as he was a patrician, none but the consuls had a power Rh