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In this magistracy he conducted himself with singular propriety; for, it being customary to court the people by a display of splendour in these official shows, he contrived to retain his popularity without submitting to the usual alternative of plundering the provinces or sacrificing his private fortune.
The dispute regarding the tribunician magistracy was opened as early as 678, immediately after the defeat of Lepidus, by the tribune of the people Lucius Sicinius, perhaps a descendant of the man of the same name who had first filled this office more than four hundred years before; but it failed before the resistance offered to it by the active consul Gaius Curio.
This was not indeed as yet the inferior magistracy itself, at least not in the sense which the republic associated with the magisterial position, inasmuch as the commissioners did not emanate from the choice of the community; but it doubtless became the starting-point for the institution of subordinate magistrates, which was afterwards developed in so manifold ways.
I have now with brevity to relate the progress of this interesting event; how African conceptions were firmly established in Rome, and, by the time that Greek Christianity had lost its expansive power and ceased to be aggressive, African Christianity took its place, extending to the North and West, and obtaining for itself an organization copied from that of the Roman empire; sacerdotal prætors, proconsuls, and a Cæsar; developing its own jurisprudence, establishing its own magistracy, exchanging the Greek tongue it had hitherto used for the Latin, which, soon becoming a sacred language, conferred upon it the most singular advantages.
Gracchus was doubtless led to this new creation purely by the needs of his measure; but he showed to later politicians the possibility of creating a new and powerful magistracy under the guise of an agrarian law. Such was the measure that seemed to its proposer a reasonable and equitable means of remedying a grave injustice and restoring rather than giving rights to the poor.
But the magistracy, both in number and function, is different in different commonwealths. Nevertheless there is one condition of it that must be the same in every one, or it dissolves the commonwealth where it is wanting.
Soldiers and citizens cried out for defence instead of surrender, as with one voice, for there were no abject spirits at Harlem, save among the magistracy; and Saint Aldegonde, the faithful minister of Orange, was soon sent to Harlem by the Prince to make a thorough change in that body.
In the month of November the city was exposed to a dangerous conflagration, kindled in the night by accident in the neighbourhood of the Royal Exchange, which burned with great fury, and, notwithstanding the assistance of the firemen and engines, employed under the personal direction of the magistracy, consumed a great number of houses, and damaged many more.
The trial probably ended in his acquittal, although condemnation would have exercised little influence on his subsequent career, for the ignominy pronounced by the censors entailed no disability for holding a magistracy. But, whatever may have been the issue, Gracchus improved the occasion by an harangue to the people, in which he defended his conduct as one of their representatives in Sardinia.
It has gone on since the beginning of the world; France was carrying it on long before the revolution of February long before the appearance of socialism with all the ceremonies of magistracy, police, gendarmerie, prisons, dungeons, and scaffolds.
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