invented for a temporary resident. Nor was it even certain that the wholly unqualified foreigner might not give a surreptitious vote; for the president of the assembly was the man interested in the passing of the bill, and his subordinates might be instructed not to submit the qualifications of the voters to too strict a scrutiny. It was under these circumstances that the senate resorted to the device, rare but not unprecedented, of an alien act. Following its instructions, the tribune Marcus Junius Pennus introduced a proposal that foreigners should be excluded from the city.[479] We know nothing of the wording of the act. It may have made no specific mention of Italians, and its operation was presumably limited to strangers not domiciled before a certain date. But, like all similar provisions, it must have contained further limitations, for it is inconceivable that the foreign trader, engaged in legitimate business, was hustled summarily from the city. But, however limited its scope, its end was clear: and the fact that it passed the Comitia shows that the franchise movement was by no means wholly popular. A crowd is not so easy of conversion as an individual. Recent events must have caused large numbers of the urban proletariate to hate the very name of the Italians, and the idea of sharing the privileges of empire with the foreigner must already have been distasteful to the average Roman mind. It was in vain that Caius Gracchus, to whom the suggestion of his brother was already becoming a precept, tried to emphasise the political ruin which the spirit of exclusiveness had brought to cities of the past.[480] The appeal to history and to nobler motives must have fallen on deaf ears. It is possible, however, that the personality of the speaker might have been of some avail, had he been ably supported, and had the people seen all their leaders united on the question of the day. But there is reason for supposing that serious differences of opinion existed amongst these leaders as to the wisdom of the move. Some may have held that the party of reform had merely drifted in this direction, that the proposal for enfranchisement had never been considered on its own merits, and that they had no mandate from the people for purchasing land at this costly price. It may have been at this time that Carbo first showed his dissatisfaction with the party, of which he had almost been the accepted leader. If he declined to accompany his colleagues on this new and untried path, the first step in his conversion to the party of the optimates betrays no inconsistency with his former attitude; for he could maintain with justice that the proposal for enfranchising Italy was not a popular measure either in spirit or in fact.