of Rome who had no political existence, but who were free, and in many instances wealthy and of noble origin; who therefore, although now without rights, were in every respect well fitted to receive them. The principle of an aristocracy is equality within its own body, ascendency over all the rest of the community. Opposed to this is the system, which, rejecting these extremes of equality and inequality, subjects no part of the community to another, but gives a portion of power to all; not an equal portion however, but one graduated according to a certain standard, which standard has generally been property. Accordingly, this system has both to do away with distinctions and to create them; to do away, as it has generally happened, with distinctions of birth, and to create distinctions of property. Thus at Rome, in the first instance, the tribes or divisions of the people took a different form. The old three tribes of Ramnes, Tities, and Luceres, had been divisions of birth, real or supposed; each was made up of the houses of the curiæ, and no man could belong to the tribe without first belonging to a curia, and to a house; nor could any stranger become a member of a house except by the rite of adoption, by which he was made as one of the same race, and therefore a lawful worshipper of the same gods. Each of these tribes had its portion of the Ager Romanus, the old territory of Rome. But now, as many others had become Romans in the course of time, without belonging to either of these three tribes, that is, had come to live under the Roman kings, many in Rome itself, and had received grants of land from the kings beyond the limits of the old Ager Romanus, a new division was made including all these; and the whole city and territory of Rome, except the Capitol, were divided into thirty tribes, four for the city, and twenty-six for the country, containing all the Romans who were not members of the houses, and classing them according to the local situation of their property. These thirty tribes corresponded to the thirty curiæ of the houses; for the houses were used to assemble, not in a threefold division, according to their tribes, but divided into thirty, according to their curiæ: and the commons were to meet and settle all their own affairs in the assembly of their tribes, as the houses met and settled theirs in the assembly of their curiæ.