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The panic occasioned hereby urged the decemvirs to consult the senate, two wars at the same time surrounding the city.

While we have neither bounds in the pursuit of power, nor you in that of liberty, while you are wearied of patrician, we of plebeian magistrates, they have taken courage. In the name of Heaven, what would you have? You desired tribunes of the commons; we granted them for the sake of concord. You longed for decemvirs; we suffered them to be created.

I hardly need say that I am opposed to any such system as that of Galveston, or to call it by its broader name, the commission system. It is but another name for despotism. Louis XIV was a commissioner for executing the duties of governing France. Philip II was the same in Spain. The Decemvirs and Triumvirs of Rome were but the same sort of thing, as was also the Directory in France.

This end can only have been pursued by the party of the nobility, and if the patricio-plebeian decemvirs made the attempt to maintain themselves in office beyond their time, the nobility were certainly the first to enter the lists against them; on which occasion doubtless the nobles would not neglect to urge that the stipulated rights of the plebs should be curtailed and the tribunate, in particular, should be taken from it.

Now at length, when civil war was imminent and the conflict in the streets might hourly begin, the decemvirs renounced their usurped and dishonoured power; and the consuls Lucius Valerius and Marcus Horatius negotiated a second compromise, by which the tribunate of the plebs was again established.

The consulars also and senior members, from the hatred of tribunitian power still rankling in their bosoms, the desire of which they considered was much more keenly felt by the commons than that of the consular power, almost had rather that the decemvirs themselves should voluntarily resign their office at some future period, than that the people should rise once more into consequence through their unpopularity.

Disturbances over the agrarian law Cincinnatus called from his fields and made dictator Number of tribunes increased to ten Decemvirs appointed The ten tables Tyranny of the decemvirs Death of Virginia Re-establishment of the consular and tribunician power

The whole reform was of singular and lasting benefit, and a permanent monument of the practical, moderate, statesmanly spirit, which made its author well worthy, like the old decemvirs, to step forward between the parties as sovereign mediator with his code of law. Police Laws

It is probable that the plebeian demand for reform was so great that the decemvirs did not dare to disregard it. At the end of the year of office of these officials it was felt that they had done so well that it was thought wise to continue them in power for another year.

If the nobility thereupon succeeded in setting aside the decemvirs, it is certainly conceivable that after their fall the plebs should once more assemble in arms with a view to secure the results both of the earlier revolution of 260 and of the latest movement; and the Valerio-Horatian laws of 305 can only be understood as forming a compromise in this conflict. The Valerio-Horatian Laws