It was by no means a homogeneous party which developed this programme and attempted to replace a government which they deemed incompetent. Even its more thorough-going members cannot be described by a single name. Amongst the _populares_ were many Liberals who had nothing to gain by revolution; but amongst them were also to be found many who were democrats by necessity as well as by conviction, the revolutionary element which was often a thorn in the side of the reforming constitutionalists, the class of _improbi_ which supplied Catiline’s so-called “conspiracy” and made it a genuine democratic movement, and whose aspirations were subsequently represented by Caelius Rufus and Dolabella. Nor must it be supposed that there was any clear line of demarcation between _populares_ and senators. Nowhere was the Senate more bitterly attacked than from within its own body. The leaders of the extreme party had attained the magistracies that entitled them to a seat in the Curia, and elections, so far as they were not gained by family influence or bribery, were fought on party lines. Nor even amongst the constitutionalists was there a lack of would-be reformers of a more moderate type. The elder Cato and the Scipionic circle, while eager to maintain senatorial ascendency, had been conscious of some of its defects; and, as the cry for innovation gathered in strength, a party was formed which, by borrowing wholesale from the radical programme, attempted to reconcile the privileges of their order with concessions to Italy, purity in imperial administration, and care for the poor of Rome. This attempt was shattered by the fate of the younger Drusus, and henceforth there is no senatorial party of reform. Even Cicero, with his wide sympathies and his acute sense of the evils of the time, can suggest only a _concordia ordinum_, merely a means of bolstering up the existing constitution by means of a union of the propertied and therefore “loyal” classes (_boni_). The municipal statesman did, indeed, wish to see an “Italian” rather than a “Roman” government, but he had no scheme by which Italy could have secured representation at Rome, and before the close of his life he had accepted the inevitable solution of personal rule. There was to be a _moderator rei publicae_, a _princeps civitatis_;[1557] but this monarchy is not to destroy the constitution; his prince is to be a loyal coadjutor of the Senate, not the exponent of a military despotism.