slave, attained the throne by his ability and merit? For what shall I say of Titus Tatius the Sabine, whom Romulus himself, the founder of our city, admitted into partnership of the throne? Accordingly, whilst no class of persons is disdained, in whom conspicuous merit may be found, the Roman dominion increased. You do well to be dissatisfied now with a plebeian consul, when your ancestors disdained not foreigners as kings, and when, even after the expulsion of kings, the city was not shut against foreign merit. After the expulsion of the kings, we certainly admitted the Claudian family from the Sabine country not only into citizenship, but even into the number of the patricians. Can a man from a foreigner be made a patrician, then a consul? shall a Roman citizen, if he belong to the commons, be precluded from all hope of the consulate? Do we then deem it impossible that a man of the commons can be a person of fortitude and activity, qualified to excel both in peace and war, tyke to Numa, Lucius Tarquinius, and Servius Tullius? Or, should such appear, shall we not suffer him to meddle with the helm of government? or shall we have consuls like the decemvirs, the most abandoned of mortals, who were, however, all patricians, rather than like the best of kings, though new men? 4. "But (I may be told) no commoner has been consul since the expulsion of the kings. What then? ought no innovation to be introduced? and what has not yet been practised, (and in a new state there are many things not yet practised,) ought not even such measures, even though they be useful, be adopted? During the reign of Romulus there were no pontiffs, nor augurs: they were appointed by Numa Pompilius. There was no census in the state, nor the distribution of centuries and classes; it was introduced by Servius Tullius: there never had been consuls; they were created after the expulsion of the kings. Of a dictator neither the office nor the name had existed; it commenced its existence among the senators. There were no tribunes of the people, ædiles, nor quæstors: it was resolved that those officers should be appointed. Within the last ten years we both created decemvirs for compiling laws, and we abolished them. Who can doubt but that in a city doomed for eternal duration, increasing to an immense magnitude, new civil offices, priesthoods, rights of families and of individuals, may be established? This very matter, that there should not be the right of intermarriage between patricians and commons, did not the decemvirs introduce within the last few years to the utmost injury of the commons, on a principle most detrimental to the public? Can there be a greater or more marked insult, than that one portion of the state, as if contaminated, should be deemed unworthy of intermarriage? What else is it than to suffer exile within the same walls, actual rustication? They wish to prevent our being mixed with them by affinity or consanguinity; that our blood be not mingled with theirs.