HKB
judge he was if accused: and relinquished his right,[42] so that he might add what had been taken from the power of the office to the liberty of the people.
While highest and lowest alike obtained from them this prompt administration of justice, undefiled, as if from an oracle, at the same time their attention was devoted to the framing of laws; and, the ten tables being proposed amid the intense expectation of all, they summoned the people to an assembly: and ordered them to go and read the laws that were exhibited, [43] and Heaven grant it might prove favourable, advantageous, and of happy result to the commonwealth, themselves, and their children. That they had equalized the rights of all, both the highest and the lowest, as far as could be devised by the abilities of ten men: that the understanding and counsels of a greater number had greater weight; let them turn over in their minds each particular among themselves, discuss it in conversation, and bring forward for public discussion whatever might be superfluous or defective under each particular: that the Roman people should have such laws only as the general consent might appear not so much to have ratified when proposed as to have itself proposed. When they seemed sufficiently corrected in accordance with public opinion regarding each section of the laws as it was published, the laws of the ten tables were passed at the assembly voting by centuries, which, even at the present time, amid the immense heap of laws crowded one upon the other, still remain the source of all public and private jurisprudence. A rumour then spread that two tables were needed, on the addition of which a digest, as it were, of the whole Roman law could be completed. The desire for this gave rise, as the day of election approached, to a request that decemvirs be appointed again. The commons by this time, besides that they detested the name of consuls no less than that of kings, did not even require the tribunician aid, as the decemvirs in turn allowed an appeal.