But when those masses —the comitia primarily, and practically also the contiones — were permitted to interfere in the administration, and the instrument which the senate employed to
such interferences was wrested out of its hands ; when this so-called burgess-body was allowed to decree to itself lands along with all their appurtenances out of the public purse ; when any one, whom circumstances and his influence with the proletariate enabled to command the streets for a few hours, found it possible to impress on his projects the legal stamp of the sovereign people's will, Rome had reached not the beginning, but the end of popular freedom — had arrived not at democracy, but at monarchy.
The history of Rome; tr. with the sanction of the ... v.3. Mommsen, Theodor, 1817-1903
