Sallust, who, like Thucydides, had prefixed to his history of the times after Sylla, which, alas! is lost, a succinct review of the moral and political history of his nation, preserved to us by St. Augustine, tells us in it, that no longer than the fear of Tarquin lasted, had Rome been governed with fairness and justice; but that, as soon as that fear had been removed, the _Patres_[89] had ventured upon every sort of arbitrary deeds, and from the severity of the law of usury the _Plebes_ was kept under a yoke of slavery. Livy says likewise, that the Plebes was oppressed, _cui summa opera inservitum erat_ until the ruin of the Tarquins. Until then, salt, which belonged to the _publicum_, had been sold at a low price; customs had been abolished; the demesnes of the kings had been distributed among the _Plebes_; and the φιλάνθρωπα δίκαια of Servius Tullius were again enforced. Finally, the old account states that Brutus had filled up the senate, _qui imminutus erat_, with plebeians. As he was the _Tribunus Celerum_ of the plebeians, and afterwards plebeian consul, he may without doubt have admitted plebeians into the senate, although not in such considerable numbers as is asserted. But this did not last. Plebeian senators cannot have continued to the time of the legislation of the decemvirs; but from what Sallust says, who in the speech of Macer displays an uncommon acquaintance with the old constitution,--and St. Augustine, one of the greatest minds, a man endowed with the clearest penetration, believed him,--that the patricians _soli in imperio habitabant_, it is evident, that, when tranquillity was restored, they again excluded the plebeians. There are analogous cases in all states, precisely because it is in human nature. Without doubt the banished royal family had left a considerable party behind them, as is wont to happen in all revolutions; or a new one arose, which attached itself to the cause of the refugees, as was the case in the Italian towns of the middle ages. We may think what we like of the battle on the Regillus; we may deem the cohort of the Roman emigrants in the army of the Latins as improbable as it really is; yet we may with certainty believe in the existence of an emigration from Rome in a mass, linked to the royal fugitives, and always keeping up a connexion with the friendly party in the city,--like the φυγάδες in Greece, and as in English history, at the time of the great rebellion when the Stuarts were abroad, the Irish Papists and the Scotch Presbyterians, who were overpowered, and partly driven out of the country by Cromwell, joined the old cavaliers then living away from their homes with the royal family. The same was the case in the French revolution. As long as Tarquin, a man of personal eminence, was living abroad, the patricians hesitated to carry their innovations to extremities; yet they may have annoyed the plebeians; they may have deprived them of the _imperia_; they may