Page:Roman Constitutional History, 753-44 B.C..djvu/101

Rh The Rights of Citizens. — At the end of the second period every citizen was legally safer than before from the caprice and violence of a magistrate. Within the mile limit he was not subject to corporal punishment, and he had a right to appeal to the people in all criminal cases involving life or citizenship (caput), or a fine exceeding $166, or one-half of his property (cf. pp. 30, 51). But the repeated enactment of laws guaranteeing appeal indicates that violations of this privilege were not infrequent; and, in addition, a summary police procedure against the common people was tolerated. When tried on appeal, a defendant could not feel sure that justice would prevail against partisanship and political interests in the popular assembly; and the administration of justice in criminal cases continued to be one of the most defective and inadequate branches of the Roman government.

The plebeians, that is, the great majority of the people, had gained a far larger share in the government than before. They were eligible to nearly all the offices of state, had magistrates and an assembly of their own, and were well represented in the senate. They had each at least a formal right of suffrage in the centuriate assembly, and all members voted on an equality in the assemblies based on districts (concilium plebis and comitia tributa).

The Powers of the Assemblies. — Since 367 the assemblies elected annually not only consuls, but a praetor, plebeian tribunes, aediles, quaestors, and other officials, and every few years also censors; and they decided a larger number of cases on appeal than at the beginning of the second period. They passed laws in far greater number and of wider scope than in earlier times. Far the larger share of the new powers fell to the democratic assemblies. Besides, the centuriate assembly was no longer hampered by the patrician right of sanction (patrum auctaritas, p. 85); and the plebeian