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INTRODUCTION.

IMPRUDENT MPRUDENT trust to agents and servants, in business or in private families, is found to corrupt their morais; producing peculation and disorder, in proportion to the extent of the trust; to the number employed; and to the temptations to which they are exposed: whereas, a proper control checks dishonesty, and encourages diligence, decent manners, and good morals. Hence, as the highest national agents are but men, we must conclude, that these causes will have similar effects upon them.

AND Consequently there seems to be reason to suppose, that the virtue of the public agents of the ancient Romans, and the depravity of the public agents of the modern French, will be found to have been produced by the respective constitutions of these nations: That the Romans had been cautious in giving trust, and that

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To ascertain whether these suppositions wer were not, well founded, was the object of an enq of which the following considerations were the re

SECTION I.

A Cursory View of the Roman Constitution, from the building of Rome to the 385th year of the Republic.

FROM the building of Rome to the usurpation

of Tarquin the Proud, a period of about 230 years, the first magistrate of the Romans was called King. But their historians have not given any account of the particular powers annexed to that office, nor of the power of the Senate, or of the society collectively, during that period. They seem, however, to have recorded every change which took place in these powers; at least they have given a very particular account of the new method of taking the votes of the people by centuries, which was, as they express themselves, established by Servius Tullius, the last legal King.

B

ALL the Roman historians agree, that the two consuls who were appointed after the expulsion of Tarquin, to execute the office of king, were jointly invested with the same power which had been formerly intrusted to the kings.

BUT the powers which the society retained. and exercised themselves, the particular powers intrusted to the senate and to the consuls, at that period, are not specified.

By the narratives of the operations of these different powers, however, after that event, as the history becomes more full and authentic, we arrive at last at a certain knowledge of what these different powers were.

AND the violent disputes, which continued for 140 years after the expulsion of Tarquin, about the patrician rights, but more particularly, the dispute betwixt the people and the se

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