A less justifiable spirit of retaliation is exhibited by another enactment with which Gracchus inaugurated his tribunate, although in this, as in ail his other acts, the blow levelled at his enemies was not devoid of a deep political significance. He introduced a proposal that a magistrate who had been deposed by the people should not be allowed to hold any further office.[600] Octavius was the obvious victim, and the mere personal significance of the measure does not necessarily imply that Gracchus was burning with resentment against a man, whose opposition to his brother had rapidly been forgotten in the degradation which he had experienced at that brother's hands. Hatred to the injured may be a sentiment natural to the wrongdoer, but is not likely to be imparted even to the most ardent supporter of the author of the mischief. It were better to forget Octavius, if Octavius would allow himself to be forgotten; but the sturdy champion of the senate, still in the middle of his career, may have been a future danger and a present eyesore to the people: Gracchus's invectives probably carried him and his auditors further than he intended, and the rehabilitation of his brother's tribunate in its integrity may have seemed to demand this strong assertion of the justice of his act. But the legality of deposition by the people was a still more important point. Merely to assert it would be to imply that Tiberius had been wrong. How could it be more emphatically proclaimed than by making its consequences perpetual and giving it a kind of penal character? But the personal aspect of the measure proved too invidious even for its proposer. A voice that commanded his respect was raised against it: and Gracchus in withdrawing the bill confessed that Octavius was spared through the intercession of Cornelia.[601]