This constitution was intended to last for ever, and it is easy to see what was the object which its authors had before them, and in what manner it was secured. From that time, the distinctions between the older and the younger clans (_gentes majores_ and _minores_), altogether disappear. These lawgivers took the same view of the state, as the government. For they reasoned thus:--that, as the state had become unprosperous since the Publilian law, the question was merely this, that the decemvirs should have the authority of the tribunes to bring any matter to discussion. In this manner, the _Plebes_ would obtain all that it could reasonably ask for: _Plebes_ and _Populus_ would stand each for itself by the side of the other, but should together form a whole. The _Plebes_ would not then want any more tribunes, as one might indeed appeal from the patrician to the plebeian decemvirs. Moreover, it was fair that the patricians and the plebeians should share the senate, yet that the plebeians should only come in by degrees, until they had a certain number. The two orders were to be carefully distinguished; but yet be invested with equal power. The former law, that the _gentes_ should send their representatives into the senate, and that when a gens became extinct, the cury, or perhaps the consuls, had the election,--these last, however, having a power far more limited than the censors afterwards, were to be replaced by a new institution. A special authority was to be created, which had to superintend and to decide on the changes from one step to another in the scale of civic rank; which should receive the _ærarius_ into the _Plebes_, and place the plebeian nobles on an equal footing with the patrician ones. These are the chief points of the second decemviral legislation: what were the results of these laws, and how little they answered men’s expectations, is shown by the subsequent history.