# 50. No One Departmenta and no One Officialb in a Statec should be able to hold up proceedings

When Titus Quintius Cincinnatus and Gaius Julius Mento were consuls in Rome, they fell out, and thus stopped all proceedings in that republic. When the senate, seeing this, advised the appointment of a dictator to do what the quarrel between the consuls prevented them from doing, the consuls, though they disagreed in everything else were in agreement about just one thing – not wanting to appoint a dictator. So the senate, having no other remedy, had recourse to the tribunes for help, who, with the authority of the senate behind them, forced the consuls to submit.

Here should be noted first the utility of the tribunate, for it was useful not only in bridling the ambition of the powerful which militated against the plebs, but also in bridling the ambition which they displayed one against the other. Secondly, it is to be noted that in a state there should never be an institution which allows the few to decide on any matter which in the ordinary course of things is essential to the maintenance of the commonwealth. For instance, if you empower a council to distribute preferments and emoluments, or a magistracy to administer some department, it is expedient either to make it necessary for them to take action or to arrange for someone else to have the power and duty of acting, should they be unwilling to act. Otherwise the institution will be defective and dangerous, as it would have been in Rome if it had not been possible to overcome the obstinacy of the consuls by the authority of the tribunes.

In the republic of Venice the Great Council distributes preferments and emoluments, and at times it has happened that at their general meeting, owing either to annoyance or to a misapprehension, they failed to appoint successors to some of the city magistrates and to those who administered their dominions elsewhere. This caused much disorder because all at once subject territories and the city itself lacked legally constituted judges. Nor was there any redress so long as this council at its general meeting remained dissatisfied and failed to realize its mistake. This inconvenience would have reduced that city to sore straits, if some prudent citizens had not met the case by passing on a suitable occasion a law prohibiting all magistrates from vacating any office to which they had been, or should be, appointed within and without the city, till they had been relieved and their successors appointed. This council was thus deprived of the privilege of being able to hold up public business to the danger of the republic.