opportunity of wreaking their vengeance on the people for the step they had taken. When Menenius desired to know what security he required, Junius demanded leave for the people to choose annually a certain number of magistrates out of their own body, vested with the power of defending their rights and liberties, and protecting their persons from injury and violence. As this new and unexpected demand seemed of too great consequence to be granted by the ambassadours, Valerius with some others were sent to take the opinion of the senate upon that subject. Valerius laid this demand before the senate, and gave his opinion that the favour should be granted, and Appius, as usual, opposed it with outrageous fury. But the majority, determined at all events to put a period to the secession, ratified all the promises made by the ambassadours, and granted the desired security. The seceders held their assembly in the camp, and taking the votes by curiæ, elected five persons for their annual magistrates, who were termed tribunes of the people. By a law made immediately after the election, the persons of the tribunes were rendered sacred; and the people obliged themselves to swear by whatever was held most sacred that they and their posterity would preserve it inviolably. The erection of the tribunitial-power, which happened about seventeen years after the expulsion of the kings, is certainly the æra from which the liberty of the Roman people ought properly to be dated. All the neighbouring states were at that time subject to aristocracy, where the people had little or no share in the government, and it appears evidently from the Roman historians that the Romans intended to establish the same form of government at Rome after the abolition of monarchy. For the senate, as Livy informs us,[259] gave a loose to that unbounded joy which the death of Tarquin inspired, and begun to oppress and injure the people, whom until that time they had courted with the utmost assiduity. But Sallust is more full and explicit. For he affirms,[260] “that after the expulsion of the kings, as long as the fear of Tarquin and the burdensome war with the Etrurians kept the Romans in suspense, the government was administered with equity and moderation. But as soon as ever the dread of those impending dangers was removed, the senate begun to domineer over the people and treat them as slaves; inflicting death or scourging after the arbitrary manner of despotick tyrants; expelling them from their lands, and arrogating the whole power of government to themselves, without communicating the least share of it to the Plebeians.” Thus the people, before the creation of this magistracy, were amused with the name of liberty, whilst in fact they had only changed the tyranny of one, for the more galling yoke of three hundred. But the tribunicial-power proved an invincible obstacle to the arbitrary schemes of the aristocratick faction, and at last