The most remarkable feature in the Roman constitution is the division of the people into Patricians and Plebeians, and our first inquiry must be the origin of this separation. It is clearly impossible that such a distinction could have existed from the very beginning, because no persons would have consented in a new community to the investing of any class with peculiar privileges. We find that all the Roman kings, after they had subdued a city, drafted a portion of its inhabitants to Rome; and if they did not destroy the subjugated place, garrisoned it with a Roman colony. 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.

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