ernment, greatly indebted as they were for their new
political rights to the proletariate which was suffering and expecting
help at their hands, were politically and morally under special
obligation to attempt its relief by means of government measures,
so far as relief was by such means at all attainable.

The Licinian Agrarian Laws

Let us first consider how far any real relief was contained in that
part of the legislation of 387 which bore upon the question. That
the enactment in favour of the free day-labourers could not possibly
accomplish its object--namely, to check the system of farming on
a large scale and by means of slaves, and to secure to the free
proletarians at least a share of work--is self-evident. In this
matter legislation could afford no relief, without shaking the
foundations of the civil organization of the period in a way that
would reach far beyond its immediate horizon. In the question of the
domains, on the other hand, it was quite possible for legislation to
effect a change; but what was done was manifestly inadequate. The new
domain-arrangement, by granting the right of driving very considerable
flocks and herds upon the public pastures, and that of occupying
domain-land not laid out in pasture up to a maximum fixed on a
high scale, conceded to the wealthy an important and perhaps even
disproportionate prior share in the produce of the domains; and by
the latter regulation conferred upon the domain-tenure, although it
remained in law liable to pay a tenth and revocable at pleasure,
as well as upon the system of occupation itself, somewhat of a legal
sanction. It was a circumstance still more suspicious, that the
new legislation neither supplemented the existing and manifestly
unsatisfactory provisions for the collection of the pasture-money
and the tenth by compulsory measures of a more effective kind, nor
prescribed any thorough revision of the domanial possessions, nor
appointed a magistracy charged with the carrying of the new laws into
effect. The distribution of the existing occupied domain-land partly
among the holders up to a fair maximum, partly among the plebeians
who had no property, in both cases in full ownership; the abolition
in future of the system of occupation; and the institution of
an authority empowered to make immediate distribution of any
future acquisitions of territory, were so clearly demanded by the
circumstances of the case, that it certainly was not through