The Historians' History of the World 05 [The Roman Republic]

First, it must be remembered that, though the centuriate assembly had been made more democratic, yet the tribe assembly was very far indeed from a purely democratic body. In the latter, the suffrages were taken by the head in each of the thirty-five tribes, and if eighteen tribes voted one way, and seventeen another, the question was decided by the votes of the eighteen. But the eighteen rarely, if ever, contained an absolute majority of citizens. For the whole population of Rome, with all the freedmen, were thrown into four tribes only, and if these four tribes were in the minority, there can be no doubt that the minority of tribes represented a majority of voters. Thus, even in the more popular assembly, there was not wanting a counterpoise to the will of the mere majority.

A still more effective check to collision is to be found in the fact that all measures proposed to the tribe assembly by the tribunes, as well as the centuriate laws proposed by the consuls or other ministers of the senate, must first receive the sanction of the senate itself. The few exceptions which occur are where tribunes propose a resolution granting to a popular consul the triumph refused by the senate. But these exceptions only serve to prove the rule.[71]

Our surprise that no collision is heard of between the two assemblies now takes another form, and we are led to ask how it came that, if all measures must be first approved by the senate, any substantial power at all could belong to the tribes? It would seem that they also, like the centuriate assembly, could at most exercise only a veto on measures emanating from the great council.

That this result did not follow, is due to the rude but formidable counter-check provided by the tribunate. The persons of the tribunes were inviolable; but the tribunes had power to place even consuls under arrest. By the advance of their intercessory prerogative they gradually built up an authority capable of over-riding all other powers in the state.

We are now better able to appreciate the position of the two assemblies as legislative bodies. The tribe assembly was presided over by officers of its own choice, invested with authority generally sufficient to extort from the senate leave to bring in laws of a popular character. No such power resided in the presidents of the centuriate assembly; for the consuls were little more than ministers of the senate. The centuriate assembly more and more became a passive instrument in the hands of the senate. The tribe assembly rose to be the organ of popular opinion.

In elections, the centuriate assembly always retained the right of choosing the chief officers of state, the consuls, prætors, and censors. The tribe assembly, originally, elected only their own tribunes and the plebeian ædiles. But in no long time they obtained the right of choosing also the curule ædiles, the quæstors, the great majority of the legionary tribunes, and all inferior officers of state. But as the centuries were, generally, obliged to elect their prætors and consuls out of those who had already been elected quæstors and ædiles by the tribes, it is manifest that the elective power of the former was controlled and overridden by the latter. In conferring extraordinary commands, such as that of Scipio in Spain, the tribes were always consulted, not the centuries.