Unless the authority were shared, the commons would never enjoy an equal share in the commonwealth; nor was there any reason why any one should think it enough that plebeians were taken into account at the consular elections; unless it were made indispensable that one consul at least should be from the commons, no one would be elected.

Or had they already forgotten, that when it had been determined that military tribunes should be elected rather than consuls, for this reason, that the highest honours should be opened to plebeians also, no one out of the commons was elected military tribune for forty-four years?
How could they suppose, that they would voluntarily confer, when there are but two places, a share of the honour on the commons, who at the election of military tribunes used to monopolize the eight places?
and that they would suffer a way to be opened to the consulship, who kept the tribuneship so long a time fenced up?
That they must obtain by a law, what could not be obtained by influence at elections; and that one consulate must be set apart out of the way of contest, to which the commons may have access; since when left open to dispute it is sure ever to become the prize of the more powerful.

Nor can that now be alleged, which they used formerly to boast of, that there were not among the plebeians qualified persons for curule magistracies.

For, was the government conducted with less activity and less vigour, since the tribunate of Publius Licinius Calvus, who was the first plebeian elected to that office, than it was conducted during those years when no one but patricians was a military tribune?
Nay, on the contrary, several patricians had been condemned after their tribuneship, no plebeian.
Quaestors also, as military tribunes, began to be elected from the commons a few years before; nor had the Roman people been dissatisfied with any one of them.

The consulate still remained for the attainment of the plebeians; that it was the bulwark, the prop of their liberty.