CHAPTER IV.
THE ROMAN CONSTITUTION.
As once in virtue, so in vice extreme, This universal fabric yielded loose, Before ambition still; and thundering down, At last beneath its ruins crush'd a world .-- _Thomson_.
I.The most remarkable feature in the Roman constitution is the division of the people into Patricians and Plebeians, and our first inquiry must be the origin of this separation.

It is clearly impossible that such a distinction could have existed from the very beginning, because no persons would have consented in a new community to the investing of any class with peculiar privileges.

We find that all the Roman kings, after they had subdued a city, drafted a portion of its inhabitants to Rome; and if they did not destroy the subjugated place, garrisoned it with a Roman colony.

The strangers thus brought to Rome were not admitted to a participation of civic rights; they were like the inhabitants of a corporate town who are excluded from the elective franchise: by successive immigrations, the number of persons thus disqualified became more numerous than that of the first inhabitants or old freemen, and they naturally sought a share in the government, as a means of protecting their persons and properties.

On the other hand, the men who possessed the exclusive power of legislation, struggled hard to retain their hereditary privileges, and when forced to make concessions, yielded as little as they possibly could to the popular demands.