In the same spirit all the strangers, who possessed neither Roman nor Latin burgess- rights, were ejected from the capital by decree of the people in 689.

It is obvious that the intrinsic inconsistency of the Gracchan policy--in abetting at once the effort of the excluded to obtain admission into the circle of the privileged, and the effort of the privileged to maintain their distinctive rights--had passed over to their successors; while Caesar and his friends on the one hand held forth to the Transpadanes the prospect of the franchise, they on the other hand gave their assent to the continuance of the disabilities of the freedmen, and to the barbarous setting aside of the rivalry which the industry and trading skill of the Hellenes and Orientals maintained with the Italians in Italy itself.
Process against Rabirius The mode in which the democracy dealt with the ancient criminal jurisdiction of the comitia was characteristic.

It had not been properly abolished by Sulla, but practically the jury-commissions on high treason and murder had superseded it,( 5) and no rational man could think of seriously re-establishing the old procedure which long before Sulla had been thoroughly unpractical.
But as the idea of the sovereignty of the people appeared to require a recognition at least in principle of the penal jurisdiction of the burgesses, the tribune of the people Titus Labienus in 691 brought the old man, who thirty-eight years before had slain or was alleged to have slain the tribune of the people Lucius Saturninus,( 6) before the same high court of criminal jurisdiction, by virtue of which, if the annals reported truly, king Tullus had procured the acquittal of the Horatius who had killed his sister.

The accused was one Gaius Rabirius, who, if he had not killed Saturninus, had at least paraded with his cut-off head at the tables of men of rank, and who moreover was notorious among the Apulian landholders for his kidnapping and his bloody deeds.

The object, if not of the accuser himself, at any rate of the more sagacious men who backed him, was not at all to make this pitiful wretch die the death of the cross; they were not unwilling to acquiesce, when first the form of the impeachment was materially modified by the senate, and then the assembly of the people called to pronounce sentence on the guilty was dissolved under some sort of pretext by the opposite party--so that the whole procedure was set aside.
At all events by this process the two palladia of Roman freedom, the right of the citizens to appeal and the inviolability of the tribunes of the people, were once more established as practical rights, and the legal basis on which the democracy rested was adjusted afresh.
Personal Attacks The democratic reaction manifested still greater vehemence in all personal questions, wherever it could and dared.
Prudence indeed enjoined it not to urge the restoration of the estates confiscated by Sulla to their former owners, that it might not quarrel with its own allies and at the same time fall into a conflict with material interests, for which a policy with a set purpose is rarelya match; the recall of the emigrants was too closely connected with this question of property not to appear quite as unadvisable.
On the other hand great exertions were made to restore to the children of the proscribed the political rights withdrawn from them (691), and the heads of the senatorial party were incessantly subjected to personal attacks.