1. The administration of justice is the most ancient office of a prince:
it was exercised by the Roman kings and abused by Tarquin, who alone,
without law or council, pronounced his arbitrary judgments. The first
consuls succeeded to this regal prerogative; but the sacred right of
appeal soon abolished the jurisdiction of the magistrates, and all
public causes were decided by the supreme tribunal of the people. But a
wild democracy, superior to the forms, too often disdains the essential
principles of justice: the pride of despotism was envenomed by plebeian
envy, and the heroes of Athens might sometimes applaud the happiness of
the Persian, whose fate depended on the caprice of a _single_ tyrant.
Some salutary restraints, imposed by the people on their own passions,
were at once the cause and effect of the gravity and temperance of the
Romans. The right of accusation was confined to the magistrates. A vote
of the thirty-five tribes could inflict a fine; but the cognizance of
all capital crimes was reserved by a fundamental law to the assembly of
the centuries, in which the weight of influence and property was sure to
preponderate.
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