The senate had struck out a new line of opposition, and they had found a willing, because a convinced, instrument for their schemes. It is inconceivable that a council, which reckoned within itself representatives of all the noblest houses at Rome, should not have possessed a considerable number of members who were influenced by the political views of a Cato or a Scipio, or by the lessons of that humanism which had carried the Gracchi beyond the bounds of Roman caution, but which might suffuse a more conservative mind with just sufficient enlightenment to see that much was wrong, and that moderate remedies were not altogether beyond the limits of practicability. But this section of senatorial opinion could find no voice and take no independent action. It was crushed by the reactionary spirit of the majority of the peers, and frightened at the results to which its theories seem to lead, when their cautious qualifications, never likely to find acceptance with the masses, were swept away by more thorough-going advocates. But the voice, which the senate kept stifled during the security of its rule, might prove valuable in a crisis. The moderate might be put forward to outbid the extremist; for his moderation would certainly lead him to respect the prejudices of the mob, while any excesses, which he was encouraged or instructed to commit, need not touch the points essential to political salvation, and might be corrected, or left to a natural dissolution, when the crisis had been passed and the demagogue overthrown. The instrument chosen by the senate was Marcus Livius Drusus,[682] the tribune who had threatened to interpose his veto on the franchise bill. There is no reason why the historian should not treat the political attitude of this rival of Gracchus as seriously as it seems to have been treated by Drusus's illustrious son, who reproduced, and perhaps borrowed from his father's career, the combination of a democratic propaganda, which threw specious unessentials to the people, with the design of maintaining and strengthening the rule of the nobility. The younger Drusus was, it is true, a convert to the Italian claims which his father had resisted; but even this advocacy shows development rather than change, for the party represented by the elder Drusus was by no means blind to the necessity for a better security of Italian rights. The difference between the father and the son was that the one was an instrument and the other an agent. But a man who is being consciously employed as an instrument, may not only be thoroughly honest, but may reap a harvest of moral and mental satisfaction at the opportunities of self-fulfilment which chance has thrown in his way. The position may argue a certain lack of the sense of humour, but is not necessarily accompanied by any conscious sacrifice of dignity. Certainly the public of Rome was not in the secret of the comedy that was being played. It saw only a man of high birth and