Numa of
having neglected a necessity so important. It is moreover difficult to
see how Montesquieu could think that testamentary disposition tended to
maintain equality when the privilege was accorded to every citizen of
disposing of his entire patrimony by will even to the prejudice of his
children.[22] Again, the law of debts was hardly favorable[23] to equality.

Niebuhr clearly[24] denied the existence of the plebs until Ancus
incorporated the Latins and bestowed upon them peculiar privileges thus
forming a new and third class distinct from both patricians and clients.
Had Niebuhr succeeded in establishing this view, the right to landed
property would appear to be wholly vested in the patricians, for a client,
from the very nature of his position, could hold nothing independent of
his master. But this theory has fallen to the ground and no writer of the
present day pretends to uphold it. The plebeians existed from the very
first and some of them held land in full private ownership very little
different from the quiritarian ownership of the patricians. Cicero, who in
his Republic[25] has occupied himself with the ancient constitution of Rome
and has spoken in detail of the division of the lands, always speaks of the
distribution among the citizens without regard to quality of patrician
or plebeian, _divisit viritim civibus_. He has nowhere written that
territorial riches were the exclusive appanage of the patriciate. It must
be confessed, however, that it is doubtful whether he intended to embrace
the plebeians in his _civibus_. For more than two centuries before the time
of Cicero the plebeians had enjoyed the full rights of Roman citizenship,
but for more than that length of time property had been concentrated in
the hands of the aristocracy. This result was the consequence of the Roman
constitution[26] and the establishment of a populous city in the midst of a
narrow surrounding country. Roman policy had never been conducive to this
concentration, and it will hereafter appear that the nobility who had the
chief direction and administration of public affairs had little by little
usurped the property which formed the domain of the state, _i.e. Ager
Publicus_, and swallowed up the revenues due the treasury.

[Footnote 1: Cato, _De Re Rustica_, I, lines 3-8. "Majores nostri ... virum
bonum cum laudabant, ita laudabant, bonum agricolam bonumque colonum.
Amplissime laudari existimabatur, qui ita laudabatur."]

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