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analogy between them, beyond the general features that must 

 attach to a select body of men placed between the executive 

 and the mass of the people. In order to elucidate this point 

 we must enter on some detail of the constitution and the func- 

 tions of the Roman Senate. 



The word Senatus, being derived from senex "old/' is a 

 sufficient indication, that, originally at least, that assembly 

 was formed of men beyond the prime of life. It is by no 

 means, however, to be supposed that all the senators were old 

 men, with white beards and stooping frame. The younger 

 senators are often mentioned under circumstances wliich prove 

 that they were still in their best years. We must imagine a 

 great proportion of the senators to have been of the age of 

 thirty-five, forty, and forty- five, with an addition, of course, of 

 men of greater years, up to the natural term of life. There 

 must have been a regulation as to the age, quahfying for a 

 seat in the Senate, but it has not been preserved. In the 

 later periods of the republic, when the Senate was almost ex- 

 clusively recruited from magistrates after the expiration of 

 their year of office, and when the office of Quaestor entitled to 

 a seat in the Senate, the required age was most probably not 

 above thirty, this being the age required for the qusestorship. 



If then in point of age the Roman Senate did not present 

 a striking contrast to the English Parliament (taking the 

 Commons and the Lords together), a still greater similarity 

 prevailed with respect to rank and station. Though a sena- 

 torial census (being the highest in the state) is not traceable 

 to a period anterior to Augustus, it is yet certain that the 

 Senate represented chiefly the aristocracy of birth, influence, 

 and wealth. It would be superfluous for me to recall to your 

 memory by more than a passing word, the time when the 

 Senate was entirely patrician. But even after the abolition of 

 the privileges of the patrician order, the Senate was only acces- 

 sible to members of the nobility, — in the Hannibalian war the 

 highest assessment for the extraordinary war-tax was that of 



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