should they be prosecuted for extortion. This was a monstrous abuse, occasioned by accidental circumstances; but for Rome and Italy the change was an improvement: and so it was on the whole for all those places to which the farming companies did not extend. This fell upon the senators like a thunderbolt. And when an independent body of judges had now been formed, Gracchus went still farther: he substituted their jurisdiction for those popular tribunals which were not worth anything, and which henceforth are only met with as an exception. This was setting bounds to democracy, where democracy was no longer in its right place. In order to put better blood into the veins of the thirty-five tribes, he wished to extend the full right of citizenship to the Latins, among whom there were some forty colonial towns besides the old Latin cities: they had existed for three hundred years, and had for two centuries been entirely amalgamated by language and manners with the Romans; and in all likelihood he meant to form them into new tribes. The Italian allies, on the other hand, from Lucania to the March of Ancona, nay all the Italian districts as far as to the Alps, he wished to raise to that position which the Latins then held; that is to say, to give them a vote in the assembly of the people, and prepare them to become full citizens after thirty or forty years. It may even be that something was really done to carry this out. This law again was most wise and judicious, and those who were for a reasonable aristocracy must have rejoiced at it. In the Latin towns, there were many good families of local celebrity, which were now to be ranked among the Roman citizens. In Augustus’ times, the most distinguished families came from the allied towns: the Asinii were Marrucinians; thus also, the Munatii and others; according to Cicero, literature was more cultivated among them than at Rome. Thus, an aristocracy of wealth and refinement was to be brought in; a wiser and more praise-worthy scheme than that of C. Gracchus, there could not possibly have been. Many of his laws are either not known to us at all, or only from occasional notices. Though he wished to make the plebeians good husbandmen, if he could, and therefore assigned land to them, he did not make them a present of it. The state, the interests of which Gracchus did not lose sight of, had hitherto always had the tithes from the occupants; and this burthen he allowed to continue, as we learn from a passage in Plutarch which can have no other meaning. To him it seemed evident, that Rome could only hold her own by returning to her first principles: he therefore gave the Italians hopes of the right of citizenship, and also moved for a reform of the manner of voting; so that the republic would no longer have comprised one city, but the whole of Italy.