her 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 OF POSSESSION 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 fac