When the sentiments and votes were unanimous, the senate decided supremely, and there lay no appeal from it.(536) When there was a division, and the senate could not be brought to an agreement, the affair was then laid before the people, on whom the power of deciding thereby devolved. The reader will easily perceive the great wisdom of this regulation: and how happily it was adapted to crush factions, to produce harmony, and to enforce and corroborate good counsels; such an assembly being extremely jealous of its authority, and not easily prevailed upon to let it pass into other hands. Of this we have a memorable instance in Polybius.(537) When after the loss of the battle fought in Africa, at the end of the second Punic war, the conditions of peace offered by the victor were read in the senate; Hannibal, observing that one of the senators opposed them, represented in the strongest terms, that as the safety of the republic lay at stake, it was of the utmost importance for the senators to be unanimous in their resolutions, to prevent such a debate from coming before the people; and he carried his point. This, doubtless, laid the foundation, in the infancy of the republic, of the senate’s power, and raised its authority to so great a height. And the same author observes, in another place,(538) that whilst the senate had the administration of affairs, the state was governed with great wisdom, and was successful in all its enterprises. _The People._—It appears from every thing related hitherto, that even so low as Aristotle’s time, who gives so beautiful a picture, and bestows so noble an eulogium on the government of Carthage, the people spontaneously left the care of public affairs, and the chief administration of them, to the senate: and this it was which made the republic so powerful. But things changed afterwards. For the people, grown insolent by their wealth and conquests, and forgetting that they owed these blessings to the prudent conduct of the senate, were desirous of having a share in the government, and arrogated to themselves almost the whole power. From that period, the public affairs were transacted wholly by cabals and factions: and this Polybius assigns as one of the chief causes of the ruin of Carthage.