position to meet its increased
obligations by the admission of 300 new members; a special criminal
commission was to be appointed for pronouncing judgment in the case
of those jurymen who had been or should be guilty of accepting bribes.
By this means the immediate object was gained; the capitalists were
deprived of their political exclusive rights, and were rendered
responsible for the perpetration of injustice. But the proposals
and designs of Drusus were by no means limited to this; his projects
were not measures adapted merely for the occasion, but a comprehensive
and thoroughly-considered plan of reform. He proposed, moreover,
to increase the largesses of grain and to cover the increased expense
by the permanent issue of a proportional number of copper plated,
alongside of the silver, -denarii-; and then to set apart all the
still undistributed arable land of Italy--thus including in particular
the Campanian domains--and the best part of Sicily for the settlement
of burgess-colonists. Lastly, he entered into the most distinct
obligations towards the Italian allies to procure for them the Roman
franchise. Thus the very same supports of power and the very same ideas
of reform, on which the constitution of Gaius Gracchus had rested,
presented themselves now on the side of the aristocracy--a singular,
and yet easily intelligible coincidence. It was only to be expected
that, as the -tyrannis- had rested for its support against the oligarchy,
so the latter should rest for its support against the moneyed aristocracy,
on the paid and in some degree organized proletariate; while the
government had formerly accepted the feeding of the proletariate at
the expense of the state as an inevitable evil, Drusus now thought of
employing it, at least for the moment, against the moneyed aristocracy.
It was only to be expected that the better part of the aristocracy, just
as it formerly consented to the agrarian law of Tiberius Gracchus, would
now readily consent to all those measures of reform, which, without
touching the question of a supreme head, only aimed at the cure of the
old evils of the state. In the question of emigration and colonization,
it is true, they could not go so far as the democracy, since the power
of the oligarchy mainly rested on their free control over the provinces
and was endangered by any permanent military command; the ideas of
equalizing Italy and the provinces and of making conquests beyond the
Alps