Page images
PDF
EPUB

characters in a comedy of Aristophanes," pay tribute to Athens. Now if each was ordered to furnish subsistence for only twenty Athenians, twenty thousand of us might live in all ease and luxury, in a manner worthy of the dignity of the commonwealth, and the trophy of Marathon." In fact, at Athens a policy, the converse of the plan of limiting the amount of the English Poor-Rates attempted to be introduced by Mr. Scarlett, took place. The direct revenues appropriated, as above noticed, to the relief of the citizens, were derived principally from the silver-mines within the Attic territories, and from the tax on foreign settlers. It was therefore the policy of the sovereign many to keep down the number of citizens, and to increase the revenues, by which means the share of each privileged individual would be augmented *.

But in the Roman system of colonization was comprehended, not only subsistence for the few sent out to cultivate new soils, as implied in the word "colonia;" but a portion of the acquired subsistence was to be afforded to the increasing multitude who stayed at home. It was an application of the Agrarian system, or rather a part of it.

The Romans, as they extended their territory, imposed upon the conquered nations either the * Mitford's Greece, chap. 21.

+ See Brotier's Tacitus, Annal. 14. 27, and the notes; and Frontinus de Coloniis.

condition of sending provision (vectigal annona) for the supply of Rome, or of giving up a portion of their territory to be cultivated by Roman citi zens expressly for this purpose. This was their early and their settled policy: this was what the Plebeians were always demanding; and what the Patricians, into whose hands Plebeian property was constantly precipitating itself, through the idleness and vice of its owners, as constantly obviated or eluded.

Tacitus, in enumerating the objects of the internal history of Rome, dwells almost entirely on these subjects of dispute :-" discordias consulum adversus tribunos, Agrarias frumentariasque leges, plebis et optimatum certamina."-Ann. 4.31. Under the Emperors the inadequate supply. of provisions caused popular tumults. Tiberius on one occasion stated the more ample supplies of corn which he had caused to be brought to the city than Augustus: "quibus e provinciis, et quanto majorem quam Augustus rei frumentariæ copiam advectaret."-Tacitus, Annal. 6. 13.

When the Roman people were about to adopt the plan of the Tribune Rullus, and sell the colonized lands in the most fertile part of Italy, to settle new colonies in and out of Italy, the Senate, who were always fearful of the increase of an useless population, and sensible that there was less danger of that increase to be ap

prehended from the dense population of the city, than the extension of it which takes place in newly settled colonies, employed Cicero to dissuade them from the measure; and "great must have been that eloquence," says his admirer Pliny, "which could have prevailed on the greedy multitude to give up this agrarian law, their very subsistence (agrarias leges, hoc est, alimenta sua)*."

But the system must have an end. Italy was fully colonized, and the masters of the republic felt no difficulty in paying their victorious legions with the lands of the colonists themselves, who were forcibly expelled to make room for the Roman soldiers †.

The populace, who clung to the comforts of Rome, so delightfully described ‡ in the elegant irony of Cicero, as long as the Roman imperial power kept together, still continued to be fed, to excess and abuse, by the tributary corn from the subject provinces. But the revolt or the falling off of these provinces gradually reduced these

* Pliny, Hist. Nat. l. 7. c. 30.

+ "Divisiones agrorum ne ipsis quidem qui fecere laudatas." Tacitus, An. 1. 10.

[ocr errors]

Neque veteranorum neque possessorum gratiam tenuit : alteris pelli se, alteris non pro spe meritorum tractari querentibus."-Suetonius in Vita Augusti.

# "Retinete istam possessionem gratiæ, libertatis, suffragiorum, dignitatis, urbis, fori, ludorum, festorum dierum, ceterorum omnium commodorum."-Orat. de Lege Agrariâ.

supplies: famine, and tumult, and poverty, followed in their natural order; and Rome lost that direct dominion which enabled her to feed an useless and pernicious population. The increase of slaves and the diminution of the free people of Rome took place under the imperial government, from the increased luxury of the higher orders, and the difficulty and expense of procuring the increasing supply of food which was necessary*. But slavery still continued to exist; under the feudal system which succeeded, slaves still continued to be the only cultivators of the soil. In the middle ages the practice of freedmen selling themselves or their children for slaves in times of distress, was common and legal. Their condition might be, and undoubtedly was, alleviated by the moral feeling which Christianity had introduced. It was under Antoninus Pius that the first legal check was put to the excessive cruelty of masters towards their slaves; but the Christian Councils, by precepts, by laws, and by the privileges of sanctuary, interposed their authority for this purpose. The asylums of Paganism were naturally enough converted into the sanctuaries of Christianity. There

"Urbem trepidam ob multitudinem familiarum quæ gliscebat immensam, minore in diei plebe ingenuâ."-Tacitus, Annal. 4. 27.

For the number of slaves see Annal. 12. 65; and Plin. xxxiii. 10. Claudius Isidorus left 4117 slaves to be sold, in his will.

was in the forum of Athens an altar to mercy, where slaves and debtors fled for refuge from the persecution of their masters or their creditors. The Romans sent their slaves when sick to the Temple of Esculapius, on the Tiber. If a master deserted his slave in sickness, the slave obtained his liberty. Although I cannot find the fact positively stated, yet I think there is little doubt but that, in these asylums and temples, the miserable wretches who had recourse to them partook of the superfluities of the sacerdotal feasts.

Still it was by slow degrees that the services of slaves were exalted from arbitrary and indefinite to definite and certain, and gradually to complete emancipation. In the same degree, however, as the great mass of the people were released from their dependence on their particular masters, were their claims, when reduced to indigence, transferred to the general state. Concurrent with, and probably arising from, this great change, were the establishments founded for religious and charitable purposes: and it appears that the state, which acknowledged the claims of its indigent subjects for relief, made it a condition with the founders of these establishments, that a very large proportion of their settled revenues should be applied to the latter purposes. To this purpose a law, in 816, of the Emperor Louis, is very remarkable; "that of the oblations to the church,

« PreviousContinue »