A similar moderation appears in the political arrangements.

The innovation as respects legislation--the most important and apparently the most comprehensive--in fact only brought the letter of the constitution into harmony with its spirit.

The Roman legislation, under which any consul, praetor, or tribune could propose to the burgesses any measure at pleasure and bring it to the vote without debate, had from the first been, irrational and had become daily more so with the growing nullity of the comitia; it was only tolerated, because in practice the senate had claimed for itself the right of previous deliberation and regularly crushed any proposal, if put to the vote without such previous deliberation, by means of the political or religious veto.( 28) The revolution hadswept away thesebarriers; andin consequence that absurd system now began fully to develop its results, and to put it in the power of any petulant knave to overthrow the state in due form of law.

What was under such circumstances more natural, more necessary, more truly conservative, than now to recognize formally and expressly the legislation of the senate to which effect had been hitherto given by a circuitous process?
Something similar may be said of the renewal of the electoral census.

The earlier constitution was throughout based on it; even the reform of 513 had merely restricted the privileges of the men of wealth.