ABSTRACT
As soon as Rome grew strong it was involved in wars with the neighbouring cities, chiefly those of the Latins. In these wars it was usually victorious, and the citizens of the conquered cities were commonly transferred to Rome, and became partakers of the Roman name. Vanquished in war, they could not expect to be adopted int.o the patrician tribes; and it was real generosit.y on the part of the conquerors not to reduce them t.o slu\·ery. They formed a third class in the state, not individually attached to a patron, like the Clientes, but like them excluded from al1 share in the government; nominally free, but without any safeguards to their fl'eedom, and 110 person being charged with the vindication of their rights. These were the plebeians; aud their position at Rome, B.C. 600, was very: like that of single women in England, A.D. 1850. During the latter part of the regal period, the relation of patron and Client seems to have insensibly relaxed; and afterwards the ClientcR became virtually amalgamated with the plebeians. (The Clientela of a later age was a totally different im;htution.) The oppression impartially exercised over all cluF;ses and conditions by the Tarquins, seems to have united nIl in antagonism to t.hem; and in the revolution ",rhich replaced the kings by annually elected consuls therc a.ppears nothing of patrician or plebeian; all were Romans. So it was throughout the war with Porsenna, and as long as the exiled royal family strove to regain its lost dominion. 'Vhen a nation is struggling against an imputial despotism, class rights and wrongs are ignored; it was so in Engla-Dd on more than one occasion, and in the long struggle against the borough-mongers that preceded the reform of 1832, the special claims of
ED,nl.hwomaD'. R.vlew,H October lttb, lI76. ,oJ ana its Modern Parallel. 435
the feminine plebs, 88 against the masculine populus, were scarcely thought of. But there is a curious coincidence between the fact, that in the Reform Act of 1832, and in the subsequent Municipal Reform Act, the word "male" was first introduced iuto the legal qualifications, and the other fact related by the old Roman annalist that, "In the year 'l'arquin died Ln.c. 496], the patricians began to oppress the plebeians."
