the conversion of these largesses into a provision
for the poor limited to a fixed number. The ranks of the existing
proletariate were thinned on the one hand by the tribunals
which were instructed to proceed with unrelenting rigour
against the rabble, on the other hand by a comprehensive transmarine
colonization; of the 80,000 colonists whom Caesar sent beyond the seas
in the few years of his government, a very great portion
must have been taken from the lower ranks of the population
of the capital; most of the Corinthian settlers indeed were freedmen.
When in deviation from the previous order of things, which precluded
the freedmen from any urban honorary office, Caesar opened to them
in his colonies the doors of the senate-house, this was doubtless done
in order to gain those of them who were in better positions to favour
the cause of emigration. This emigration, however, must have been
more than a mere temporary arrangement; Caesar, convinced like every
other man of sense that the only true remedy for the misery
of the proletariate consisted in a well-regulated system of colonization,
and placed by the condition of the empire in a position to realize it
to an almost unlimited extent, must have had the design
of permanently continuing the process, and so opening up a constant means
of abating an evil which was constantly reproducing itself.
Measures were further taken to set bounds to the serious fluctuations
in the price of the most important means of subsistence in the markets
of the capital. The newly-organized and liberally-administered
finances of the state furnished the means for this purpose,
and two newly-nominated magistrates, the corn-aediles(49) were charged
with the special supervision of the contractors and of the market
of the capital.

The Club System Restricted

The club system was checked, more effectually than was possible
through prohibitive laws, by the change of the constitution;
inasmuch as with the republic and the republican elections and tribunals
the corruption and violence of the electioneering and judicial
-collegia---and generally the political Saturnalia of the -canaille---
came to an end of themselves. Moreover the combinations called
into existence by the Clodian law were broken up, and the whole system
of association was placed under the superintendence of the governing
authorities. With the exception of the ancient guilds and associations,
of the religious unions of the Jews