The office of Tribune was a consequence of the struggle of the orders (Patrician versus Plebeian) during the Roman Republic. The plebeians had been agitating from some time for more equitable rights under the law. Until this time, the Patrician class (a group of men designated as “fathers” patres by Romulus; the first 100 members to constitute the Senate, a religious and political advisory body to the king) had had exclusive control of the machinery of state (the Senate, the executive function—consuls, praetors, censors—even primacy in the Assemblies). The office of Tribune, as a consequence of plebeian agitation, was created specifically to represent the interests of the plebeian order.

The office of Tribune could be held only by plebeians of free birth. Their role was to protect the lives and property of the plebeians. They were inviolable (sacrosancti). That is, no one could lay hands on them. They had the right of veto (intercessio), meaning “I forbid.” They thus had the power to stop legislation or the carrying of a motion. They could prevent any act by any magistrate.

Tribunes (tribuni plebis) held their office for one year. They were elected by the Plebeian Council/People’s Assembly (concilium plebis). Tribunes could call meetings of the People’s Assembly.

In addition to temporary enactments, particularly for remedying the most urgent distress occasioned by debt, and for providing for a number of the rural population by the founding of various colonies, the dictator carried in constitutional form a law, which he moreover—doubtless in order to secure amnesty to the burgesses for the breach of their military oath—caused every individual member of the community to swear to, and then had it deposited in a temple under the charge and custody of two magistrates specially appointed from the plebs for the purpose, the two “house-masters” (-aediles-). This law placed by the side of the two patrician consuls two plebeian tribunes, who were to be elected by the plebeians assembled in curies. The power of the tribunes was of no avail in opposition to the military -imperium-that is, in opposition to the authority of the dictator everywhere or to that of the consuls beyond the city; but it confronted, on a footing of independence and equality, the ordinary civil powers which the consuls exercised. There was, however, no partition of powers. The tribunes obtained the right which pertained to the consul against his fellow-consul and all the more against an inferior magistrate, (4) namely, the right to cancel any command issued by a magistrate, as to which the burgess whom it affected held himself aggrieved and lodged a complaint, through their protest timeously and personally interposed, and likewise of hindering or cancelling at discretion any proposal made by a magistrate to the burgesses, in other words, the right of intercession or the so-called tribunician veto.

The Tribunitial Power furnished occasions for all kinds of seditions; a power which, under pretence of maintaining the rights of the common people, (for whose protection it was established,) but in reality to acquire power for itself, courted the favour of the populace by proposing laws respecting the division of lands, the distribution of corn, and the disposal of judicial proceedings. In all these laws there was indeed a color of equity. For what was more just, than that the commons should have their full rights from the senate, that a people who had conquered all other nations, and was master of the world, might not live without altars and hearths of their own? What was more equitable, than that the poorest class of people should be maintained from the public treasury of their country? What was more conducive to the security of equal liberty, than that, while the senate settled the provinces, the authority of the equestrian order should be supported by judicial privileges? Yet these very objects led to harm, and the unhappy state became a prize for its own overthrow. The transference of the judicial power from the senate to the knights caused peculation with regard to taxes, the patrimony of government; while the purchase of corn exhausted the treasury and the nerves of the commonwealth. And how could the common people be put in possession of lands, but by the ejection of those that already occupied them, who were themselves a part of the people, and who moreover held their estates, as bequeathed to them from their forefathers, by prescription of time and right of inheritance?