One of the drawbacks of a free government is the extreme difficulty of retrieving a fault which has been once committed. The efforts of rulers to amend it are rarely acknowledged by the people. An independent prince may do so without weakening his authority, and without any danger to himself. But the case is different in republics. If the people were good-natured and conscientious enough to hold out the hand of reconciliation, it would do. But it is not so. If a government wishes to make amends to those whom it has injured, the first step which these take is to revenge themselves. This must excuse the Romans who were in power,--especially if Sp. Cassius fell an innocent victim,--when they were guilty of another arbitrary act, and after his death once more changed the constitution in their own favour. The government could not now stop short; and least of all, if it was conscious of guilt. If it had let the constitution remain as it was, it had to expect, that in the free election of the centuries for the consulship the plebeians would only have allowed patricians who were like Sp. Cassius to get it. They were therefore obliged to do what Dionysius so strangely describes, when he tells us that the _Plebes_ had withdrawn from the elections, and that these were now conducted by the principal men alone. As if under the Servian constitution any other but the principal men could ever have turned the scale! The fact is quite different. I state it as it is; the proofs I will not adduce here.