abrogation of the constitution. The consulship was abolished; the Plebs gave up their tribunate, some have thought in perpetuity, misled by the hope that the publication of the law would render such a check on the consular power unnecessary, and as a part of the compromise with the Patricians, and stipulated only that certain privileges which they had already gained by law should not be abrogated.[391] The provisional government appointed for the year 451 took the form of a board of ten men with consular power but not subject to the law of appeal.[392] The work was done within the year, and the code posted up on ten tablets (_tabulae_) and published to the masses. The people were summoned and told that the commission had created equal rights for all,[393] and the whole body of law was passed as a _lex_ by the _comitia centuriata_. But at the end of the year it was declared that the work was not quite complete. Again the constitution was suspended, and a new board of ten appointed, this time inclusive of Plebeians.[394] Two new sections were added, thus bringing up the number of the _tabulae_ to twelve; these also were confirmed by the centuries, and after the government of the “wicked ten” had abused its power and fallen, were published with the rest of the code by the consuls of 448.[395] Although the law of the Twelve Tables (_lex duodecim tabularum_) was for the most part a codification of existing rules, it marks a distinct advance in the recognition of plebeian rights, and thus was of the utmost political importance in framing rules for the whole state the question before the commissioners was whether the customary law embodied in the code should be that which prevailed in the patrician, or that which held good in the plebeian community. In almost every important particular plebeian law was preferred. The reason was not any regard for plebeian rights (the decemvirs re-enacted the rule forbidding marriage between the orders), but the simplicity and the capacity for universality of this law. The code is not a hap-hazard collection, but a scientific compilation; the aim was a “levelling” of the law, an arbitrament between classes, such as had often formed the task of the Greek legislator; and in effecting this object the commissioners showed more wisdom than any Greek legislator of whom we hear. The idea of legislating for a class, or the still more foolish idea of perfect logical adjustment, are strikingly absent. The code is thoroughly Roman in its caution and good sense, its respect for the past, which it disregards only when old custom violates the rules of common sense, and its judicious contempt for symmetry. Such a code as this might be changed in detail, but was never likely to be repealed. It remained the “fountain of all public and private law,” and justly, for, according to Tacitus, it was the “consummation of equal right.”[396] Its rhythmical sentences were learnt by heart by school-boys