# CHAPTER 48 — Anyone Wishing to Prevent a Magistracy from Being Given to a Man of Humble Birth or to an Evil Man Should Have It Requested Either by a Man Who Is Too Humbly Born and Evil or by One Who Is Too Noble and Too Good

When the senate feared that tribunes with consular authority would be chosen from among the plebeians, it adopted one of two methods: either it called on the most renowned citizens of Rome or, indeed, it corrupted by the necessary means some humbly born and extremely ignoble plebeians who would ask for the office and be mixed together with the plebeians of better quality who usually asked for the office. The latter method made the plebeians ashamed of giving the office to such men; the former method made them ashamed to refuse it to worthy individuals. All of this demonstrates the truth of the preceding discourse, where it was demonstrated that if the people are deceived in general questions, they are not deceived in the particulars.