howed itself first and most palpably in the treatment of the public
lands, which tended almost directly to accomplish the material and
moral annihilation of the middle classes. The use of the public
pasture and of the state-domains generally was from its very nature
a privilege of burgesses; formal law excluded the plebeian from
the joint use of the common pasture. As however, apart from
the conversion of the public land into private property or its
assignation, Roman law knew no fixed rights of usufruct on the part
of individual burgesses to be respected like those of property, it
depended solely on the pleasure of the king, so long as the public
land remained such, to grant and to define its joint enjoyment; and it
is not to be doubted that he frequently made use of his right, or at
least his power, as to this matter in favour of plebeians. But on the
introduction of the republic the principle was again strictly insisted
on, that the use of the common pasture belonged in law merely to the
burgess of best right, or in other words to the patrician; and, though
the senate still as before allowed exceptions in favour of the wealthy
plebeian houses represented in it, the small plebeian landholders and
the day-labourers, who stood most in need of the common pasture, had
its joint enjoyment injuriously withheld from them. Moreover there
had hitherto been paid for the cattle driven out on the common pasture
a grazing-tax, which was moderate enough to make the right of using
that pasture still be regarded as a privilege, and yet yielded no
inconsiderable revenue to the public purse. The patrician quaestors
were now remiss and indulgent in levying it, and gradually allowed it
to fall into desuetude. Hitherto, particularly when new domains were
acquired by conquest, allocations of land had been regularly arranged,
in which all the poorer burgesses and --metoeci-- were provided for;
it was only the land which was not suitable for agriculture that was
annexed to the common pasture. The ruling class did not venture
wholly to give up such assignations, and still less to propose them
merely in favour of the rich; but they became fewer and scantier, and
were replaced by the pernicious system of occupation-that is to say,
the cession of domain-lands, not in property or under formal lease for
a definite term, but in special usufruct until further notice, to the
first occupant and his heirs-at-law, so that the state was at any time