tation of the Etrurians, wished to make priests of the
land-surveyors; who invented a liturgy for cadastral operations, and
ceremonies of consecration for the marking of boundaries,--who, in
short, made a religion of property. [51] All these fancies would have
been more beneficial than dangerous, if the holy king had not forgotten
one essential thing; namely, to fix the amount that each citizen could
possess, and on what conditions he could possess it. For, since it is
the essence of property to continually increase by accession and profit,
and since the lender will take advantage of every opportunity to apply
this principle inherent in property, it follows that properties tend, by
means of their natural energy and the religious respect which protects
them, to absorb each other, and fortunes to increase or diminish to an
indefinite extent,--a process which necessarily results in the ruin
of the people, and the fall of the republic. Roman history is but the
development of this law.

Scarcely had the Tarquins been banished from Rome and the monarchy
abolished, when quarrels commenced between the orders. In the year
494 B.C., the secession of the commonalty to the Mons Sacer led to the
establishment of the tribunate. Of what did the plebeians complain?
That they were poor, exhausted by the interest which they paid to the
proprietors,--_foeneratoribus;_ that the republic, administered for the
benefit of the nobles, did nothing for the people; that, delivered over
to the mercy of their creditors, who could sell them and their children,
and having neither hearth nor home, they were refused the means of
subsistence, while the rate of interest was kept at its highest point,
&c. For five centuries, the sole policy of the Senate was to evade
these just complaints; and, notwithstanding the energy of the tribunes,
notwithstanding the eloquence of the Gracchi, the violence of Marius,
and the triumph of Caesar, this execrable policy succeeded only too
well. The Senate always temporized; the measures proposed by the
tribunes might be good, but they were inopportune. It admitted that
something should be done; but first it was necessary that the people
should resume the performance of their duties, because the Senate could
not yield to violence, and force must be employed only by the law. If
the people--out of respect for legality--took this beautiful advice, the
Senate conjured up a difficulty; the reform was postponed, and that was