Page:The history of Rome. Translated with the author's sanction and additions.djvu/293

clan-nobility, and the basis of a new burgess-body was laid, the preponderance in the latter rested on the possession of land and on age, and the first beginnings were already visible of a new aristocracy based primarily on the actual consideration in which the families were held—the future nobility. There could be no clearer indication of the fundamentally conservative character of the Roman commonwealth than the tact, that the revolution which gave birth to the republic laid down at the same time the primary outlines of a new organization of the state, which was in like manner conservative and in like manner aristocratic.