The whole chapter (pp. 301-355) contains many statutes and much other matter, illustrating the intimidation exercised by powerful men in those days over the course of justice.
A passage among the Fragmenta of Sallust, gives a striking picture of the conduct of powerful citizens under the Roman Republic. (Fragm. lib. i, p. 158, ed. Delph.)
“At discordia, et avaritia, et ambitio, et cætera secundis rebus oriri sueta mala, post Carthaginis excidium maximè aucta sunt. Nam injuriæ validiorum, et ob eas discessio plebis à Patribus, aliæque dissensiones domi fuere jam inde à principio: neque amplius, quam regibus exactis, dum metus à Tarquinio et bellum grave cum Etruriâ positum est, æquo et modesto jure agitatum: dein, servili imperio patres plebem exercere: de vitâ atque tergo, regio more consulere: agro pellere, et à cæteris expertibus, soli in imperio agere. Quibus servitiis, et maximè fœnoris onere, oppressa plebes, cum assiduis bellis tributum simul et militiam toleraret, armata Montem Sacrum et Aventinum insedit. Tumque tribunos plebis, et alia sibi jura paravit. Discordiarum et certaminis utrimque finis fuit secundum bellum Punicum.”
Compare the exposition of the condition of the cities throughout Europe in the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries, in Hüllmann’s Städte-Wesen des Mittelalters, especially vol. iii, pp. 196-199, seqq.
The memorable institution which spread through nearly all the Italian cities during these centuries, of naming as podesta, or supreme magistrate, a person not belonging to the city itself, to hold office for a short time,—was the expedient which they resorted to for escaping the extreme perversion of judicial and administrative power, arising out of powerful family connections. The restrictions which were thought necessary to guard against either favor or antipathies on the part of the podesta, are extremely singular. (Hüllmann, vol. iii, pp. 252-261, seqq.)
“The proceedings of the patrician families in these cities (observes Hüllmann) in respect to the debts which they owed, was among the worst of the many oppressions to which the trading classes were exposed at their hands, one of the greatest abuses which they practised by means of their superior position. How often did they even maltreat their creditors, who came to demand merely what was due to them!” (Städte-Wesen, vol. ii, p. 229.)
Machiavel’s History of Florence illustrates, throughout, the inveterate habit of the powerful families to set themselves above the laws and judicial authority. Indeed, he seems to regard this as an incorrigible chronic malady in society, necessitating ever-recurring disputes between powerful men and the body of the people. “The people (he says) desire to live according to the laws; the great men desire to overrule the laws: it is therefore impossible that the two should march in harmony.” “Volendo il popolo vivere secondo le leggi, e i potenti comandare a quelle, non è possibile che capino insieme.” (Machiavelli, Istorie Fiorentine, liv. ii, p. 79, ad ann. 1282.)
The first book of the interesting tale, called the Promessi Sposi, of Manzoni,—itself full of historical matter, and since published with illustrative notes by the historian Cantù,—exhibits a state of judicial administration, very similar to that above described, in the Milanese, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: demonstrated by repeated edicts, all ineffectual, to bring powerful men under the real control of the laws.
Because men of wealth and power, in the principal governments of modern Europe, are now completely under the control of the laws, the modern reader is apt to suppose that this is the natural state of things. It is therefore not unimportant to produce some references, which might be indefinitely multiplied, reminding him of the very different phenomena which past history exhibits almost everywhere.
[698] The number of Roman judices employed to try a criminal cause under the quæstiones perpetuæ in the last century and a half of the Republic, seems to have varied between one hundred, seventy-five, seventy, fifty-six, fifty-one, thirty-two, etc. (Laboulaye, Essai sur les Loix Criminelles des Romains, p. 336, Paris, 1845.)