After these events, the importance of the tribunate manifests itself in a peculiar way. The tribunes summon the consuls of the past year before the people; not, as our writers represent it, before the _Plebes_, for as yet it was much too powerless to sit in judgment on the sovereign magistrates; nor even before the centuries, which also were in fact chiefly plebeian. But it was either not the tribunes at all, but on the contrary, the quæstors; or what was much more likely, a great change had taken place, so that the tribunes insisted upon the right of prosecuting the consuls before their own community, the _Populus_, because those whose proper duty it was, had forborne to do it. On the conviction of the defendants, which ended in a moderate fine, they proceeded to impeach the consuls, their successors. These were acquitted; but the exasperation rose higher and higher. The tribunes had brought their charge before the body of the citizens for matters which it was authorized to judge; it was _majestas populi Romani imminuta re male gesta_, therefore a _crimen majestatis_. Now they went still farther. They summoned before the body of the _Plebes_ every one of the consuls, who had been in office since Sp. Cassius, for not having satisfied the people with regard to the _lex agraria_; according to the old Italian principle that when two nations were bound together by a treaty, the complaint of its breach was to be made before the injured people. It is at variance with our ideas, that any one should be judge in his own cause; yet it is every where the case among the old Italian nations, so that the Romans even held the principle of giving up to allied nations citizens who had wronged them. Of this we have instances in the giving up of Mancinus to the Numantines; of Postumius and his companions to the Samnites after the defeat of Caudium; of Fabius who had aggrieved the envoys of Apollonia. This dedition of those _qui in noxa sunt_ is generally demanded when a _rerum repetitio_ occurs. The Greeks did not hold this principle. There is, on the one hand, a very generous notion at the bottom of it, that the oath taken before judging the cause, would give sufficient protection; and on the other, an idea which was also entertained by the ancient Germans. With our forefathers, every member of a house was to bear witness for his clansmen when called upon to do so (_consacramentales_), which is based on the noble idea of faith and loyalty. A member of one’s own class one cannot judge, but only defend, a principle which, it is true, has been dreadfully abused. It is wonderful how impartial the tribunals at Rome often were. The case also became less difficult owing to the circumstance that the accused, until the passing of the sentence, was at liberty to go away from Rome, and to betake himself to some town allied by isopolity, as there were many. In Cære, for instance, one could demand to be received as a citizen. The origin of that right