In order thoroughly to understand the preceding quotation, we must know that the estates of CITIZENS--that is, estates independent of the public domain, whether they were obtained in the division of Numa, or had since been sold by the questors--were alone regarded as PROPERTY; upon these a tax, or _cense_, was imposed.On the contrary, the estates obtained by concessions of the public domain, of the ager publicus (for which a light rent was paid), were called POSSESSIONS.Thus, among the Romans, there was a RIGHT OF PROPERTY and a RIGHT OFPOSSESSION regulating the administration of all estates.Now, what did the proletaires wish? That the jus possessionis--the simple right of possession--should be extended to them at the expense, as is evident, not of private property, but of the public domain,--agri publici.The proletaires, in short, demanded that they should be tenants of the land which they had conquered.This demand, the patricians in their avarice never would accede to.Buying as much of this land as they could, they afterwards found means of obtaining the rest as POSSESSIONS.
Upon this land they employed their slaves.The people, who could not buy, on account of the competition of the rich, nor hire, because--cultivating with their own hands--they could not promise a rent equal to the revenue which the land would yield when cultivated by slaves, were always deprived of possession and property.
Civil wars relieved, to some extent, the sufferings of the multitude."The people enrolled themselves under the banners of the ambitious, in order to obtain by force that which the law refused them,--property.A colony was the reward of a victorious legion.But it was no longer the ager publicus only; it was all Italy that lay at the mercy of the legions.The ager publicus disappeared almost entirely,...but the cause of the evil--accumulated property--became more potent than ever."(Laboulaye: History of Property.)
The author whom I quote does not tell us why this division of territory which followed civil wars did not arrest the encroachments of accumulated property; the omission is easily supplied.Land is not the only requisite for cultivation; a working-stock is also necessary,--animals, tools, harnesses, a house, an advance, &c.Where did the colonists, discharged by the dictator who rewarded them, obtain these things? From the purse of the usurers; that is, of the patricians, to whom all these lands finally returned, in consequence of the rapid increase of usury, and the seizure of estates.Sallust, in his account of the conspiracy of Catiline, tells us of this fact.
The conspirators were old soldiers of Sylla, who, as a reward for their services, had received from him lands in Cisalpine Gaul, Tuscany, and other parts of the peninsula Less than twenty years had elapsed since these colonists, free of debt, had left the service and commenced farming; and already they were crippled by usury, and almost ruined.The poverty caused by the exactions of creditors was the life of this conspiracy which well-nigh inflamed all Italy, and which, with a worthier chief and fairer means, possibly would have succeeded.In Rome, the mass of the people were favorable to the conspirators--_cuncta plebes Catilinae incepta probabat;_ the allies were weary of the patricians' robberies; deputies from the Allobroges (the Savoyards) had come to Rome to appeal to the Senate in behalf of their fellow-citizens involved in debt; in short, the complaint against the large proprietors was universal."We call men and gods to witness," said the soldiers of Catiline, who were Roman citizens with not a slave among them, "that we have taken arms neither against the country, nor to attack any one, but in defence of our lives and liberties.Wretched, poor, most of us deprived of country, all of us of fame and fortune, by the violence and cruelty of usurers, we have no rights, no property, no liberty."
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_Dees hominesque testamur, nos arma neque contra patriam cepisse neque quo periculum aliis faceremus, sed uti corpora nostra ab injuria tuta forent, qui miseri, egentes, violentia atque crudelitate foeneraterum, plerique patriae, sed omncsfarna atque fortunis expertes sumus; neque cuiquam nostrum licuit, more majorum, lege uti, neque, amisso patrimonio, libferum corpus habere._--Sallus: Bellum Catilinarium.
The bad reputation of Catiline, and his atrocious designs, the imprudence of his accomplices, the treason of several, the strategy of Cicero, the angry outbursts of Cato, and the terror of the Senate, baffled this enterprise, which, in furnishing a precedent for expeditions against the rich, would perhaps have saved the republic, and given peace to the world.But Rome could not evade her destiny; the end of her expiations had not come.Anation never was known to anticipate its punishment by a sudden and unexpected conversion.Now, the long-continued crimes of the Eternal City could not be atoned for by the massacre of a few hundred patricians.Catiline came to stay divine vengeance;therefore his conspiracy failed.
