174 



Another important claim put forth by the Senate was that 

 of the right of dispensing ^om laws. It was often exerted, 

 and though frequently attacked by the tribunes, it was never 

 legally abolished. 



From the position of the Senate, as guardian of the state 

 religion, was derived the -very important and easily abused 

 power of annulling laws passed in the popular assembly, on the 

 ground or pretext, as it might be, of some irregularity in the 

 proceedings, particularly with respect to the auspices. This 

 right was of a very objectionable character, it would only be 

 resorted to by the Senate when all other means had failed to 

 avert a decision of the popular assembly unpalatable to the 

 Senate, It was an unfair weapon and not less dangerous to 

 the party which used it than to their opponents. It amounted 

 in most cases to a trick practised under the veil of religious 

 awe on a superstitious people. 



The dispensing power, such as it was, enjoyed or claimed 

 at least by the Senate, is, if possible, productive of still greater 

 evils, as every student of English history well knows. It is 

 clear, then, that there was something wrong in the organization 

 of the Koman republican constitution in respect to the concur- 

 rence of the Senate in the legislature — at least as far as it has 

 come under our view. But this was an evil of later growth. 

 During the earlier periods of the republic the Senate had a 

 more legitimate influence in the enactment of laws. No law 

 was brought before the popular assembly to be adopted 

 before it had been discussed and approved of by the Senate. 

 This, it wouM appear, was the safest and wisest mode of pro- 

 ceeding, and it would not have been departed from, had not 

 the growing aristocratical spirit of the Senate called into life 

 an antagonistic power, the tribuneship of the people, by which 

 the mass of the people was organized as a self-acting indepen- 

 dent political body, and assumed an attitude of hostility to- 

 wards the Senate, which often placed the Eoman republic in 

 extreme jeopardy, and finally caused its ruin. Time fails me 

 now, to trace the various steps by which the Senate was de- 



