It was the almost universal creed of Englishmen, that the law of England, the judicature of England, the unpaid magistracy of England, were models of excellence.

Others say that the later right by which a Latin obtained the citizenship in virtue of filling a magistracy in his native town existed already.

Horrible crimes were perpetrated in the bosom of families of the highest rank; for instance, the consul Gaius Calpurnius Piso was poisoned by his wife and his stepson, in order to occasion a supplementary election to the consulship and so to procure the supreme magistracy for the latter a plot which was successful (574).

The nobles had no exclusive privilege like the feudal aristocracy of mediaeval Europe, although it was their aim to secure the high magistracies to the members of their own body.

Bold and defiant in its grotesque mixture of the ancient principles of the magistracy with the novel theories of philosophy, the resolution of the Parliament was quashed by the king.

A patrician, long before the reforms of the Gracchi, had become a man of secondary importance, but the nobles were aristocrats to the close of the republic, and continued to secure the highest offices; they prevented their own extinction by admitting into their ranks those who distinguished themselves,that is, exercising their influence in the popular elections to secure the magistracies from among themselves.

And in the height of the wrath of the whole of the magistracy at the expulsion of their lord-lieutenant, the Earl of Gainsborough, and the substitution of the young Duke of Berwick, what must Peregrine do but argue in high praise of that youth, whom he had several times seen and admired.

After the election of the magistrates, the dictator returned to his army, which was in winter quarters at Teanum, leaving his master of the horse at Rome, to take the sense of the fathers relative to the armies to be enlisted and embodied for the service of the year, as he was about to enter upon the magistracy after a few days.