Page:The history of Rome. Translated with the author's sanction and additions.djvu/90

70 warrior set over warriors. As the son absolutely obeyed his father and yet did not esteem himself inferior, so the burgess submitted to his ruler without exactly accounting him his better. This constituted the moral and practical check upon the regal power. The king might, it is true, do much that was inconsistent with equity, without exactly breaking the law of the land: he might diminish his fellow-combatants' share of the spoil; he might impose exorbitant task-works, or otherwise by his imposts unreasonably encroach upon the property of the burgess; but if he did so, he forgot that his plenary power came not from God, but, under God's consent, from the people, whose representative he was; and who was there to protect him if that people should in return forget the oath of allegiance which it had sworn? The legal check, again, upon the king's power lay in the principle that he was entitled only to execute the law, not to alter it: in reality, every deviation from the law had to receive the previous sanction of the assembly of the people; if it was not so sanctioned, it was a null and tyrannical act, carrying no legal effects. It thus appears that the power of the king in Rome was, both morally and legally, altogether different from the sovereignty of the present day. There is no counterpart in modern life either to the Roman household or to the Roman state.

The strongest outward check imposed by tradition and custom upon absolute power was expressed in the principle that it was not becoming either for the house-father or the king to decide matters of importance without having taken counsel of other men. The marital and paternal power had in this way been circumscribed by the family council; and it stands still more distinctly engraven as a rule for the magistracy of all ages, that in important cases, before any resolution is taken, friends must be asked for their opinion. The assembly of the friends of the king, which thus acquired a decisive influence over the most momentous affairs of the land without at the same time trenching in law on the absoluteness of the regal power, the council of state, which the king had to consult in all affairs not of a purely military or purely judicial kind, was called the Council of the Elders (Senatus). It was by no means, however, an assemblage merely of such confidants of the king as it was his pleasure to consult; it was a permanent political institution to which even in the earliest times a certain represent-