274

THE DECLINE AND FALL

CHAP.

LXIX.

by Arnold to revive and discriminate the eques-trian order; but what could be the motive ormeasure of such distinction ? 1 The pecuniaryqualification of the knights must have been re-duced to the poverty of the times: those timesno longer required their civil functions of judgesand farmers of the revenue; and their primitiveduty, their military service on horseback, wasmore nobly supplied by feudal tenures and thespirit of chivalry. The jurisprudence of the re-public was useless and unknown: the nationsand families of Italy who lived under the Romanand barbaric laws were insensibly mingled in acommon mass; and some faint tradition, someimperfect fragments, preserved the memory ofthe code and pandects of Justinian . With theirliberty the Romans might doubtless have restor-ed the appellation and office of consuls; had theynot disdained a title so promiscuously adoptedin the Italian cities, that it has finally settled onthe humble station of the agents of commerce ina foreign land. But the rights of the tribunes,the formidable word that arrested the publiccounsels, suppose or must produce a legitimatedemocracy. The old patricians were the sub-jects, the modern barons the tyrants, of the state;nor would the enemies of peace and order, who in-sulted the vicar of Christ, have long respectedthe unarmed sanctity of a plebeian magistrate.™

* In ancient Rome , the equestrian order was not ranked with thesenate and people as a third branch of the republic till the consulshipof Cicero , who assumes the merit of Ihe establishment (Plin. Hist.Natnr. xxxiii, 3. Beaufort Repiiblique Romaine, tom. i, p. 144 105).

m The republican plan of Arnold of Brescia is thus stated by Gun-ther :

Quin