178 



hands of the public servants in modern states. Besides^ the 

 public expenses were to a great extent covered by the revenue of 

 the public lands, forests, lakes, rivers, mines, quarries, tolls, 

 and dues ; and, since Rome became a conquering nation, the 

 provinces supplied largely the necessities of the imperial city 

 and government, until after the final conquest of Macedonia, 

 the public treasury became so rich that the necessity no longer 

 existed of imposing in cases of emergency an extraordinary 

 war tax; and that from that time till the downfall of the 

 Republic, the Roman citizen was untaxed. 



What 1 have said will account for the striking fact that the 

 disposal of the public finances was entrusted by the people to 

 the Senate, and thus this point of similarity between the Senate 

 and the British Legislature will appear greater in point of 

 fomi, than of reality, 



I have sketched in very imperfect outlines the share which 

 the Senate had in the executive, and by which it exercised in 

 that respect a far greater influence in the state than modern 

 Parliaments. We shall now have shortly to mention in what 

 point of view the Senate was inferior in political weight to the 

 British Parliament, in order to complete the comparison. 



The sovereignty of the English people is for the time being 

 lodged in the Imperial Parliament. None of the nations of clas- 

 sical antiquity ever dejouted that supreme power, but reserved 

 it theoretically and practically to the popular assembly. The 

 sovereignty of Rome therefore rested with the people at large, 

 but the Senate had a considerable share in it. In the first 

 place, the Senate from its influence in the execuiive was wont 

 to send instructions to various magistrates and public func- 

 tionaries, and the rules laid down in such instructions were 

 intrinsically very much allied to laws, and acquired by degrees 

 legal validity. It is therefore not merely a question among 

 modem scholars, to what extent, or if at all, the Senate had 

 independent legislative authority, but this question was seri- 

 ously debated and the right attacked or contended for by the 

 political parties of the Roman Republic. 



