The strangers thus brought
to Rome were not admitted to a participation of civic rights; they
were like the inhabitants of a corporate town who are excluded from
the elective franchise: by successive immigrations, the number of
persons thus disqualified became more numerous than that of the first
inhabitants or old freemen, and they naturally sought a share in the
government, as a means of protecting their persons and properties. On
the other hand, the men who possessed the exclusive power of
legislation, struggled hard to retain their hereditary privileges, and
when forced to make concessions, yielded as little as they
possibly could to the popular demands. Modern history furnishes us
with numerous instances of similar struggles between classes, and of a
separation in interests and feelings between inhabitants of the same
country, fully as strong as that between the patricians and plebeians
at Rome.
2. The first tribes were divided by Ro'mulus into thirty _cu'riae,_ and
each cu'ria contained ten _gentes_ or associations.
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