A History of Rome, Vol 1 by A H.J. Greenidge

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A HISTORY OF ROME

DURING THE LATER REPUBLIC AND
EARLY PRINCIPATE

BY

A. H. J. GREENIDGE, M. A., D. LITT.
TUTOR AND LATE FELLOW OF HERTFORD COLLEGE AND LECTURER IN ANCIENT
HISTORY AT BRASENOSE COLLEGE, OXFORD

VOLUME I

FROM THE TRIBUNATE OF TIBERIUS GRACCHUS TO
THE SECOND CONSULSHIP OF MARIUS
B.C. 133-104

WITH TWO MAPS

TO

B. G.

AND

T. G.

PREFACE

This work will be comprised in six volumes. According to the plan which
I have provisionally laid down, the second volume will cover the period
from 104 to 70 B.C., ending with the first consulship of Pompeius and
Crassus; the third, the period from 70 to 44 B.C., closing with the
death of Caesar; the fourth volume will probably be occupied by the
Third Civil War and the rule of Augustus, while the fifth and sixth will
cover the reigns of the Emperors to the accession of Vespasian.

The original sources, on which the greater part of the contents of the
present volume is based, have been collected during the last few years
by Miss Clay and myself, and have already been published in an
abbreviated form. Some idea of the debt which I owe to modern authors
may be gathered from the references in the footnotes. As I have often,
for the sake of brevity, cited the works of these authors by shortened
and incomplete titles, I have thought it advisable to add to the volume
a list of the full titles of the works referred to. But the list makes
no pretence to be a full bibliography of the period of history with
which this volume deals. The map of the Waed Mellag and its surrounding
territory, which I have inserted to illustrate the probable site of the
battle of the Muthul, is taken from the map of the "Medjerda superieure"
which appears in M. Salomon Reinach's _Atlas de la Province Romaine
d'Afrique_.

I am very much indebted to my friend and former pupil, Mr. E.J. Harding,
of Hertford College, for the ungrudging labour which he has bestowed on
the proofs of the whole of this volume. Many improvements in the form of
the work are due to his perspicacity and judgment.

A problem which confronts an author who plunges into the midst of the
history of a nation (however complete may be the unity of the period
with which he deals) is that of the amount of introductory information
which he feels bound to supply to his readers. In this case, I have felt
neither obligation nor inclination to supply a sketch of the development
of Rome or her constitution up to the period of the Gracchi. The amount
of information on the general and political history of Rome which the
average student must have acquired from any of the excellent text-books
now in use, is quite sufficient to enable him to understand the
technicalities of the politics of the period with which I deal; and I
was very unwilling to burden the volume with a _precis_ of a subject
which I had already treated in another work. On the other hand, it is
not so easy to acquire information on the social and economic history of
Rome, and consequently I have devoted the first hundred pages of this
book to a detailed exposition of the conditions preceding and
determining the great conflict of interests with which our story opens.

A. H. J. G.

OXFORD,
_August_, 1904

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I: Characteristics of the period. Recent changes in the
conditions of Roman life. Close of the period of expansion by means of
colonies or land assignments. Reasons for social discontent. The life of
the wealthier classes. The expenses of political life. Attempts to check
luxury. Motives for gain amongst the upper classes. Means of acquiring
wealth open to members of the nobility; those open to members of the
commercial class. The political influence of the Equites. The business
life of Rome; finance and banking. Foreign trade. The condition of the
small traders. Agriculture. Diminution in the numbers of peasant
proprietors. The Latifundium and the new agricultural ideal. Growth of
pasturage. Causes of the changes in the tenure of land. The system of
possession. Future prospects of agriculture. Slave labour; dangers
attending its employment; revolts of slaves in Italy. The servile war in
Sicily (_circa_ 140-131 B.C.). The need for reform.

CHAPTER II: The sources from which reform might have come, too. Attitude
of Scipio Aemilianus. Tiberius Gracchus; his youth and early career. The
affair of the Numantine Treaty. Motives that urged Tiberius Gracchus to
reform. His tribunate (B.C. 133). Terms of the agrarian measure which he
introduced. Creation of a special agrarian commission. Opposition to the
bill. Veto pronounced by Marcus Octavius. Tiberius Gracchus declares a
Justitium. Fruitless reference to the senate. Deposition of Octavius.
Passing of the agrarian law; appointment of the commissioners; judicial
power given to the commissioners. Employment of the bequest of Attalus.
Attacks on Tiberius Gracchus. His defence of the deposition of Octavius.
New programme of Tiberius Gracchus; suggestion of measures dealing with
the army, the law-courts and the Italians. Tiberius Gracchus's attempt
at re-election to the tribunate. Riot at the election and death of
Tiberius Gracchus, Consequences of his fall.

CHAPTER III: Attitude of the senate after the fall of Tiberius Gracchus.
Special commission appointed for the trial of his adherents (B.C. 132).
Fate of Scipio Nasica. Permanence of the land commission and
thoroughness of its work. Difficulties connected with jurisdiction on
disputed claims. The Italians appeal to Scipio Aemilianus. His
intervention; judicial power taken from the commissioners (B.C. 129).
Death of Scipio Aemilianus. Tribunate of Carbo (B.C. 131); ballot law
and attempt to make the tribune immediately re-eligible. The Italian
claims; negotiations for the extension of the franchise. Alien act of
Pennus (B.C. 126). Proposal made by Flaccus to extend the franchise
(B.C. 125). Revolt of Fregellae. Foundation of Fabrateria (B.C. 124).
Foreign events during this period; the kingdom of Pergamon. Bequest of
Attains the Third (B.C. 133). Revolt of Aristonicus (B.C. 132-130).
Organisation of the province of Asia (B.C. 129-126). Sardinian War (B.C.
126-125). Conquest and annexation of the Balearic Islands
(B.C. 123-132).

CHAPTER IV: The political situation at the time of the appearance of
Caius Gracchus as a candidate for the tribunate (B.C. 124). Early career
of Caius Gracchus. First tribunate of Caius Gracchus (B.C. 123). Laws
passed or proposed during this tribunate; law protecting the Caput of a
Roman citizen. Impeachment of Popillius. Law concerning magistrates who
had been deposed by the people. Social reforms. Law providing for the
cheapened sale of corn. Law mitigating the conditions of military
service, 208. Agrarian law. Judiciary law. Law permitting a criminal
prosecution for corrupt judgments. Law concerning the province of Asia.
The new balance of power created by these laws in favour of the Equites.
Law about the consular provinces. Colonial schemes of Caius Gracchus.
The Rubrian law for the renewal of Carthage. Law for the making of
roads. Election of Fannius to the consulship and of Caius Gracchus and
Flaccus to the tribunate. Activity of Caius Gracchus during his second
tribunate (B.C. 122). The franchise bill. Opposition to the bill.
Exclusion of Italians from Rome; threat of the veto, and suspension of
the measure. Proposal for a change in the order of voting in the Comitia
Centuriata. New policy of the senate; counter-legislation of Drusus.
Colonial proposals of Drusus. His measure for the protection of the
Latins. The close of Caius Gracchus's second tribunate. His failure to
be elected tribune for the third time. Proposal for the repeal of the
Rubrian law. The meeting on the Capitol and its consequences (B.C. 121).
Declaration of a state of siege. The seizure of the Aventine; defeat of
the Gracchans; death of Caius Gracchus and Flaccus. Judicial prosecution
of the adherents of Caius Gracchus. Future judgments on the Gracchi. The
closing years of Cornelia. Estimate of the character and consequences of
the Gracchan reforms.

CHAPTER V: The political situation after the fall of Caius Gracchus.
Prosecution and acquittal of Opimius (B.C. 120). Publius Lentulus dies
in exile. Prosecution and condemnation of Carbo (B.C. 119). Lucius
Crassus. Policy of the senate towards the late schemes of reform. Two
new land laws (_circa_ 121-119 B.C.). The settlement of the land
question with respect to Ager Publicus in Italy (B.C. III). Limitations
on the power of the nobility; the Equestrian courts; trials of Scaevola
(B.C. 120) and Cato (B.C. 113). Consulship of Scaurus (B.C. 115); law
concerning the voting power of freedmen. Sumptuary law; activity of the
censors Metellus and Domitius (B.C. 115). Triumphs of Domitius, Fabius
(B.C. 120) and Scaurus (B.C. 115), for military successes. Confidence of
the electors in the ancient houses. Recognition of talent by the
nobility; career of Scaurus (B.C. 163-115). The rise of Marius; his
early career (B.C. 157-119). Tribunate of Marius (B.C. 119). His law
about the method of voting in the Comitia carried in spite of the
opposition of the senate. He opposes a measure for the distribution of
corn. Marius elected praetor; accused and acquitted of Ambitus (B.C.
116). His praetorship (B.C. 115), and pro-praetorship in Spain (B.C.
114). Further opposition to the senate; foundation of Narbo Martius
(B.C. 118). Glaucia; his tribunate and his law of extortion (_circa_ 111
B.C.). The spirit of unrest; religious fears at Rome (B.C. 114). First
trial of the vestals (B.C. 114). Second trial of the vestals (B.C. 113).
Human sacrifice. Great fire at Rome (B.C. III).

CHAPTER VI: The kingdom of Numidia. The races of North Africa. The
Numidians. The Numidian monarchy. Reign of Micipsa (B.C. 148-118). Early
years of Jugurtha. Jugurtha at Numantia (B.C. 134-133). Joint rule of
Jugurtha, Adherbal and Hiempsal (B.C. 118). Murder of Hiempsal (_circa_
116 B.C.); war between Jugurtha and Adherbal. Both kings send envoys to
Rome; the appeal of Adherbal. Decision of the senate. Numidia divided
between the claimants. Renewal of the war between Jugurtha and Adherbal
(_circa_ 114 B.C.). Siege of Cirta (B.C. 112). Embassy from Rome
neglected by Jugurtha. Renewed appeal of Adherbal. Another commission
sent by Rome. Surrender of Cirta and murder of Adherbal. Massacre of
Italian traders. Its influence on the commercial classes at Rome;
protest by Memmius. Declaration of war against Jugurtha. Command of
Bestia in Numidia (B.C. III). Attitude of Bocchus of Mauretania.
Negotiations of Bestia with Jugurtha; conclusion of peace. Excitement in
Rome on the news of the agreement with Jugurtha. Activity of Memmius.
Jugurtha induced to come to Rome (B.C. III). Jugurtha at Rome; the scene
at the Contio. Murder of Massiva. Jugurtha leaves Rome and the war is
renewed, 365. Spurius Albinus in Numidia. He returns to Rome leaving
Aulus Albinus in command. Enterprise of Aulus Albinus; his defeat and
compact with Jugurtha (B.C. 109). Reception of the news at Rome; the
senate invalidates the treaty. Return of Spurius Albinus to Africa. The
Mamilian Commission (B.C. 110). Metellus appointed to Numidia
(B.C. 109).

CHAPTER VII: Metellus restores discipline in the army. Jugurtha attempts
negotiation; Metellus intrigues with the envoys. First campaign of
Metellus (B.C. 109). Seizure of Vaga. Battle of the Muthul. Reception of
the news at Rome. Second campaign of Metellus (B.C. 108). Siege of Zama.
Correspondence of Metellus with Bomilcar. Negotiations with Jugurtha.
Discontent in the province of Africa at the progress of the war;
ambitions of Marius. Plans for securing the command for Marius. Massacre
of the Roman garrison at Vaga. Recovery of Vaga by Metellus. Trial and
execution of Turpilius, Intrigues of Bomilcar. Bomilcar put to death by
Jugurtha. Marius returns to Rome. His election to the consulship (B.C.
108 or 107); Numidia assigned as his province. Enrolment of the Capite
Censi in the legions. Metellus's expedition to Thala (B.C. 107); capture
of the town, Leptis Major appeals for, and receives, Roman help.
Jugurtha finds help amongst the Gaetulians. Junction of Jugurtha and
Bocchus. Metellus moves to Cirta. Close of Metellus's command.

CHAPTER VIII: Marius arrives in Africa (B.C. 107). Return of Metellus to
Rome: his triumph. First campaign of Marius. Expedition to Capsa and
destruction of the town. Second campaign of Marius (B.C. 106);
operations on the Muluccha. Arrival of Sulla with cavalry from Italy.
Early career of Sulla. Renewed coalition of Jugurtha and Bocchus.
Retirement of Marius on Cirta; battles on the route. Marius approached
by Bocchus; Sulla and Manlius sent to interview Bocchus. Envoys from
Bocchus reach Sulla in the Roman winter-camp (B.C. 105). Armistice made
with Bocchus; he is then granted conditional terms of alliance by the
Roman senate. The mission of Sulla to Bocchus. The advocates of Numidia
and Rome at the Mauretanian court. Sulla urges Bocchus to surrender
Jugurtha. Betrayal of the Numidian king; conclusion of the war;
settlement of Numidia. Fate of Jugurtha. Triumph of Marius. Lessons of
the Numidian War. Growing rivalry between Marius and Sulla. Internal
politics of Rome; reaction in favour of the nobility; election of
Serranus and Caepio (B.C. 107). The judiciary law of Caepio (B.C. 106).
The measure supported by Crassus. Reaction against the proposal; victory
of the Equites; renewed coalition against the senate due to the conduct
of the campaign in the North. The consular elections for the year 105
B.C. Effect of the defeat at Arausio (6th Oct. 105 B.C.). Election of
Marius to a second consulship.

MAPS

The Waed Mellag and the surrounding territory.
Numidia and the Roman Province of Africa.
Titles of modern works referred to in the notes.

_Does the Eagle know what is in the pit?
Or wilt thou go ask the Mole?
Can Wisdom be put in a silver rod?
Or Love in a golden bowl?_
BLAKE

A HISTORY OF ROME

CHAPTER I

The period of Roman history on which we now enter is, like so many that
had preceded it, a period of revolt, directly aimed against the existing
conditions of society and, through the means taken to satisfy the fresh
wants and to alleviate the suddenly realised, if not suddenly created,
miseries of the time, indirectly affecting the structure of the body
politic. The difference between the social movement of the present and
that of the past may be justly described as one of degree, in so far as
there was not a single element of discontent visible in the revolution
commencing with the Gracchi and ending with Caesar that had not been
present in the earlier epochs of social and political agitation. The
burden of military service, the curse of debt, the poverty of an
agrarian proletariate, the hunger for land, the striving of the artisan
and the merchant after better conditions of labour and of trade--the
separate cries of discontent that find their unison in a protest against
the monopoly of office and the narrow or selfish rule of a dominant
class, and thus gain a significance as much political as social--all
these plaints had filled the air at the time when Caius Licinius near
the middle of the fourth century, and Appius Claudius at its close,
evolved their projects of reform. The cycle of a nation's history can
indeed never be broken as long as the character of the nation remains
the same. And the average Roman of the middle of the second century
before our era[1] was in all essential particulars the Roman of the
times of Appius and of Licinius, or even of the epoch when the ten
commissioners had published the Tables which were to stamp its perpetual
character on Roman law. He was in his business relations either
oppressor or oppressed, either hammer or anvil. In his private life he
was an individualist whose sympathies were limited to the narrow circle
of his dependants; he was a trader and a financier whose humanitarian
instincts were subordinated to a code of purely commercial morality, and
who valued equity chiefly because it presented the line of least
resistance and facilitated the conduct of his industrial operations.
Like all individualists, he was something of an anarchist, filled with
the idea, which appeared on every page of the record of his ancestors
and the history of his State, that self-help was the divinely given
means of securing right, that true social order was the issue of
conflicting claims pushed to their breaking point until a temporary
compromise was agreed on by the weary combatants; but he was hampered in
his democratic leanings by the knowledge that democracy is the fruit of
individual self-restraint and subordination to the common
will--qualities of which he could not boast and symbols of a prize which
he would not have cared to attain at the expense of his peculiar ideas
of personal freedom--and he was forced, in consequence of this
abnegation, to submit to an executive government as strong, one might
almost say as tyrannous, as any which a Republic has ever displayed--a
government which was a product of the restless spirit of self-assertion
and self-aggrandisement which the Roman felt in himself, and therefore
had sufficient reason to suspect in others.

The Roman was the same; but his environment had changed more startlingly
during the last fifty or sixty years than in all the centuries that had
preceded them in the history of the Republic. The conquest of Italy had,
it Is true, given to his city much that was new and fruitful in the
domains of religion, of art, of commerce and of law. Bat these
accretions merely entailed the fuller realisation of a tendency which
had been marked from the earliest stage of Republican history--the
tendency to fit isolated elements in the marvellous discoveries made by
the heaven-gifted race of the Greeks into a framework that was
thoroughly national and Roman. Ideas had been borrowed, and these ideas
certainly resulted in increased efficiency and therefore in increased
wealth. But the gross material of Hellenism, whether as realised in
intellectual ideas or (the prize that appealed more immediately to the
practical Roman with his concrete mind) in tangible things, had not been
seized as a whole as the reward of victory: and no great attempt had
been made in former ages to assimilate the one or to enjoy the other.
The nature of the material rewards which had been secured by the epochs
of Italian conquest had indeed made such assimilation or enjoyment
impossible. They would have been practicable only in a state which
possessed a fairly complete urban life; and the effect of the wars which
Rome waged with her neighbours in the peninsula had been to make the
life of the average citizen more purely agricultural than it had been in
the early Republic, perhaps even in the epoch of the Kings. The course
of a nation's political, social and intellectual history is determined
very largely by the methods which it adopts for its own expansion at the
inevitable moment when its original limits are found to be too narrow to
satisfy even the most modest needs of a growing population. The method
chosen will depend chiefly on geographical circumstances and on the
military characteristics of the people which are indissolubly connected
with these. When the city of Old Greece began to feel the strength of
its growing manhood, and the developing hunger which was both the sign
and the source of that strength, it looked askance at the mountain line
which cut it off from the inland regions, it turned hopeful eyes on the
sea that sparkled along its coasts; it manned its ships and sent its
restless youth to a new and distant home which was but a replica of the
old. The results of this maritime adventure were the glories of urban
life and the all-embracing sweep of Hellenism. The progress of Roman
enterprise had been very different. Following the example of all
conquering Italian peoples,[2] and especially of the Sabellian invaders
whose movements immediately preceded their own, the Romans adopted the
course of inland expansion, and such urban unity as they had possessed
was dissipated over the vast tract of territory on which the legions
were settled, or to which the noble sent his armed retainers, nominally
to keep the land as the public domain of Rome, in reality to hold it for
himself and his descendants. At a given moment (which is as clearly
marked in Roman as in Hellenic history) the possibility of such
expansion ceased, and the necessity for its cessation was as fully
exhibited in the policy of the government as in the tastes of the
people. No Latin colony had been planted later than the year 181, no
Roman colony later than 157,[3] and the senate showed no inclination to
renew schemes for the further assignment of territory amongst the
people. There were many reasons for this indifference to colonial
enterprise. In the first place, although colonisation had always been a
relief to the proletariate and one of the means regularly adopted by
those in power for assuaging its dangerous discontent, yet the
government had always regarded the social aspect of this method of
expansion as subservient to the strategic.[4] This strategic motive no
longer existed, and a short-sighted policy, which looked to the present,
not to the future, to men of the existing generation and not to their
sons, may easily have held that a colony, which was not needed for the
protection of the district in which it was settled, injuriously affected
the fighting-strength of Rome. The maritime colonies which had been
established from the end of the great Latin war down to the close of the
second struggle with Carthage claimed, at least in many cases, exemption
from military service,[5] and a tradition of this kind tends to linger
when its justification is a thing of the past. But, even if such a view
could be repudiated by the government, it was certain that the levy
became a more serious business the greater the number of communities on
which the recruiting commander had to call, and it was equally manifest
that the veteran who had just been given an allotment on which to
establish his household gods might be inclined to give a tardy response
to the call to arms. The Latin colony seemed a still greater anachronism
than the military colony of citizens. The member of such a community,
although the state which he entered enjoyed large privileges of
autonomy, ceased to be a Roman citizen in respect to political rights,
and even at a time when self-government had been valued almost more than
citizenship, the government had only been able to carry out its project
of pushing these half-independent settlements into the heart of Italy by
threatening with a pecuniary penalty the soldier who preferred his
rights as a citizen to the benefits which he might receive as an
emigrant.[6] Now that the great wars had brought their dubious but at
least potential profits to every member of the Roman community, and the
gulf between the full citizens and the members of the allied communities
was ever widening, it was more than doubtful whether a member of the
former class, however desperate his plight, would readily condescend to
enroll himself amongst the latter. But, even apart from these
considerations, it must have seemed very questionable to any one, who
held the traditional view that colonisation should subserve the purposes
of the State, whether the landless citizen of the time could be trusted
to fulfil his duties as an emigrant. As early as the year 186 the consul
Spurius Postumius, while making a judicial tour in Italy, had found to
his surprise that colonies on both the Italian coasts, Sipontum on the
Upper, and Buxentum on the Lower Sea, had been abandoned by their
inhabitants: and a new levy had to be set on foot to replace the
faithless emigrants who had vanished into space.[7] As time went on the
risk of such desertion became greater, partly from the growing
difficulty of maintaining an adequate living on the land, partly from
the fact that the more energetic spirits, on whom alone the hopes of
permanent settlement could depend, found a readier avenue to wealth and
a more tempting sphere for the exercise of manly qualities in the
attractions of a campaign that seemed to promise plunder and glory,
especially when these prizes were accompanied by no exorbitant amount of
suffering or toil. Thus when it had become known that Scipio Africanus
would accompany his brother in the expedition against Antiochus, five
thousand veterans, both citizens and allies, who had served their full
time under the command of the former, offered their voluntary services
to the departing consul,[8] and nineteen' years later the experience
which had been gained of the wealth that might be reaped from a campaign
in Macedonia and Asia drew many willing recruits to the legions which
were to be engaged in the struggle with Perseus.[9] The
semi-professional soldier was in fact springing up, the man of a spirit
adventurous and restless such as did not promise contentment with the
small interests and small rewards of life in an Italian outpost. But, if
the days of formal colonisation were over, why might not the concurrent
system be adopted of dividing conquered lands amongst poorer citizens
without the establishment of a new political settlement or any strict
limitation of the number of the recipients? This 'viritane' assignation
had always run parallel to that which assumed the form of colonisation;
it merely required the existence of land capable of distribution, and
the allotments granted might be considered merely a means of affording
relief to the poorer members of existing municipalities. The system was
supposed to have existed from the times of the Kings; it was believed to
have formed the basis of the first agrarian law, that of Spurius Cassius
in 486;[10] it had been employed after the conquest of the Volscians in
the fourth century and that of the Sabines in the third;[11] it had
animated the agrarian legislation of Flaminius when in 232 he romanised
the _ager Gallicus_ south of Ariminum without planting a single colony
in this region;[12] and a date preceding the Gracchan legislation by
only forty years had seen the resumption of the method, when some Gallic
and Ligurian land, held to be the spoil of war and declared to be
unoccupied, had been parcelled out into allotments, of ten _jugera_ to
Roman citizens and of three to members of the Latin name.[13] But to the
government of the period with which we are concerned the continued
pursuance of such a course, if it suggested itself at all, appealed in
the light of a policy that was unfamiliar, difficult and objectionable.
It is probable that this method of assignment, even in its later phases,
had been tinctured with the belief that, like the colony, it secured a
system of military control over the occupied district: and that the
purely social object of land-distribution, if it had been advanced at
all, was considered to be characteristic rather of the demagogue than
the statesman. From a strategic point of view such a measure was
unnecessary; from an economic, it assumed, not only a craving for
allotments amongst the poorer class, of which there was perhaps little
evidence, but a belief, which must have been held to be sanguine in the
extreme, that these paupers, when provided for, would prove to be
efficient farmers capable of maintaining a position which many of them
had already lost. Again, if such an assignment was to be made, it should
be made on land immediately after it had passed from the possession of
the enemy to that of Rome; if time had elapsed since the date of
annexation, it was almost certain that claims of some kind had been
asserted over the territory, and shadowy as these claims might be, the
Roman law had, in the interest of the State itself, always tended to
recognise a _de facto_ as a _de jure_ right. The claims of the allies
and the municipalities had also to be considered; for assignments to
Roman citizens on an extensive scale would inevitably lead to difficult
questions about the rights which many of these townships actually
possessed to much of the territory whose revenue they enjoyed. If the
allies and the municipal towns did not suffer, the loss must fall on the
Roman State itself, which derived one of its chief sources of stable and
permanent revenue--the source which was supposed to meet the claims for
Italian administration[14]--from its domains in Italy, on the
contractors who collected this revenue, and on the Enterprising
capitalists who had put their wealth and energy into the waste places to
which they had been invited by the government, and who had given these
devastated territories much of the value which they now possessed.
Lastly, these enterprising possessors were strongly represented in the
senate; the leading members of the nobility had embarked on a new system
of agriculture, the results of which were inimical to the interest of
the small farmer, and the conditions of which would be undermined by a
vast system of distribution such as could alone suffice to satisfy the
pauper proletariate. The feeling that a future agrarian law was useless
from an economic and dangerous from a political point of view, was
strengthened by the conviction that its proposal would initiate a war
amongst classes, that its failure would exasperate the commons and that
its success would inflict heavy pecuniary damage on the guardians of
the State.