CHAP. XLVIII.
To prevent the advancement of mean people to the Magistracy, it is particularly to be contrived that the competition be, betwixt the best and most Noble, and the wickedest and most abject.
WHen the Senate began to apprehend, that the Tribunes wnuld be chosen out of the people, and invested with Consular power; they had two ways, one of which they constantly made use of. They put the best and most honorable persons to stand, or else by their Mony they foisted in some sordid and ignoble Plebeian, among those of the better sort which pretended to the Magistracy, and demanded it for him: The last way made the people ashamed to confer it: the first made them ashamed to remove it; which reinforces what I have said so often before, that though in generals the people may be mi∣staken, in particulars they are provident enough.