Political Science Of The State

IJ4 POLITICAL SCIENCE.
iwwand thirty-five of seniores. The census still determined
the class in which each person should be enregistered, and
the members in the upper classes, it is altogether probable,
were much fewer than those in the following ones. Hence,
still, a preponderance was given to the wealthier citizens;
but this revised division of the citizens leaned more to-
wards democracy than the older constitution. Down to the
year 442 of the city (312 B.C.), none but freeholders could
enjoy the right of suffrage. At that time the censor Ap-
pius Claudius arbitrarily admitted persons who had movable
property and no land, into any tribe they might prefer, and
into the century suited to their amount of property. A few
years afterwards, another censor, Fabius Rullianus, assigned
" all who had no land, and those freedmen possessed of land
whose property was valued at less than thirty thousand ser-
terces [or about one thousand four hundred and sixty-one
dollars], into the four city tribes which were now made to
rank not as the first, but as the last." In general, by the
reforms of these years, "provision was made for the prepon-
derance of the freeholders in the comitia of the tribes, while
in the comitia centuriata, in which, from the decided prefer-
ence given to the wealthy, few measures of precaution sufficed
—the freedmen could do no harm." * In the later reform, of
which we have spoken already, and which belongs probably
to the early part of the sixth century of the city (513=241
B. C.), practically the change affected only voting for censors,
praetors, and consuls, and the question of declaring war ;
while the other elections, propositions of laws, criminal
charges, were brought before the comitia tributa, where the
working of the political machine was more easy. But the
control of the higher classes or more highly assessed per-
sons was diminished,, as far as voting in the comitia of the
tribes were concerned, by the fact that there was an equality
within^the tribe for the citizens of free birth, whatever might
be their census. " The democratic, but not demagogic ten-
*Mommsen, Hist, of R., i., 397, transl.