Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 2.djvu/367

Rh whose consent he was chosen, elected a hundred senators out of the commons, whose number, with former additions, was now amounted to three hundred.

The people having once discovered their own strength, did soon take occasion to exert it, and that by very great degrees. For at this king's death, who was murdered by the sons of a former, being at a loss for a successor, Servius Tullius, a stranger, and of mean extraction, was chosen protector of the kingdom by the people, without the consent of the senate; at which the nobles being displeased, he wholly applied himself to gratify the commons, and was by them declared and confirmed no longer protector, but king.

This prince first introduced the custom of giving freedom to servants, so as to become citizens of equal privileges with the rest, which very much contributed to increase the power of the people.

Thus in a very few years the commons proceeded so far, as to wrest even the power of choosing a king entirely out of the hands of the nobles; which was so great a leap, and caused such a convulsion and struggle in the state, that the constitution could not bear it; but civil dissensions arose, which immediately were followed by the tyranny of a single person, as this was, by the utter subversion of the regal government, and by a settlement upon a new foundation. For, the nobles, spited at this indignity done them by the commons, firmly united in a body, deposed this prince by plain force, and chose Tarquin the Proud; who, running into all the forms and methods of tyranny, after a cruel reign, was expelled by a universal concurrence of nobles and people,