Though a firm hand had secured the promist benefits, yet nothing but time and the gentle force of habit could establish a sincere peace between two orders, which had now past over to a state of equality from one of longstanding oppression and insult. The blindness of the patricians prevented them from perceiving, how vain their attempts were, to recover their lost privileges: it was necessary that such attempts should become dangerous to them, before the republic could enjoy internal peace with freedom. Before this object was attained, five and twenty years past by in supprest but violent agitations.

After the revolution, which had become possible through external peace, there followed an unusual calm, while the government was wholly engaged in carrying the laws into effect. It may also be true, that the senate did not wish for any war, in order to keep the plebeian consul in inglorious inactivity. Natural events of a destructive kind prevented this tranquillity from restoring the republic to health: a pestilence raged: and the river overflowed the low districts. But so changed was the general feeling in little more than one generation, that now the comitia could not be disturbed by the pretended indignation of the gods at the election from unworthy houses. The fourth year was already passing away without war: and now there ripened in the patricians the scheme for putting a stop to the operations of the Licinian law by the old terrours of the dictatorship, and by a forced levy of troops.