even have expelled them from the senate;--at least they certainly did not fill up the places of those who died, with plebeians. Whenever in Switzerland danger threatened from abroad, the aristocratical cantons were mild to their country districts; otherwise they were harsh and cruel. Immediately after the English revolution of 1688, the liberties of the dissenters were far greater than they were twelve or fifteen years afterwards. What the plebeians lost, cannot be particularized. That the Valerian law of appeal to the tribes had been done away with is not likely; but it was no longer regarded, since it could only be upheld by impeaching the consul who had infringed it, when his year of office was expired: this the plebeian magistrates no more dared to do. Yet the real oppression only began when the fear of the foreigner was taken away. Whether the law of debt had been changed by Servius Tullius, and Tarquin had abrogated the Servian laws, but Valerius had restored them, is a question with regard to which Dionysius is not to be implicitly believed. Tarquin is said to have utterly destroyed the tablets on which it was inscribed, that he might quite blot it out from the memory of men. This looks very suspicious: they needed only to have been copied once, and all that was done would be of no avail. We may however conclude from that statement that they were not contained in the _jus Papirianum_: the _Plebes_ would have restored them after the Secession, if they had been deprived of a right so expressly granted. In this case, therefore, one of the plebeian forgeries seems to lie before us.