political views had perhaps
already inclined to change. He was still of an age when indignation
at oppression calls out a practical desire to resist it. On his journey
home from Spain he witnessed scenes which confirmed his conviction and
determined him to throw all his energies into the popular cause. His
road lay through Tuscany, where he saw the large estate system in full
operation--the fields cultivated by the slave gangs, the free citizens
of the Republic thrust away into the towns, aliens and outcasts in their
own country, without a foot of soil which they could call their own. In
Tuscany, too, the vast domains of the landlords had not even been fairly
purchased. They were parcels of the _ager publicus_, land belonging to
the state, which, in spite of a law forbidding it, the great lords and
commoners had appropriated and divided among themselves. Five hundred
acres of state land was the most which by statute any one lessee might
be allowed to occupy. But the law was obsolete or sleeping, and avarice
and vanity were awake and active. Young Gracchus, in indignant pity,
resolved to rescue the people's patrimony. He was chosen tribune in the
year 133. His brave mother and a few patricians of the old type
encouraged him, and the battle of the revolution began. The Senate, as
has been said, though without direct legislative authority, had been
allowed the right of reviewing any new schemes which were to be
submitted to the Assembly. The constitutional means of preventing
tribunes from carrying unwise or unwelcome measures lay in a consul's
veto, or in the help of the College of Augurs, who could declare the
auspices unfavorable and so close all public business. These resources
were so awkward that it had been found convenient to secure beforehand
the Senate's approbation, and the encroachment, being long submitted to,
was passing by custom into a rule. But the Senate, eager as it was, had
not yet succeeded in engrafting the practice into the constitution. On
the land question the leaders of the aristocracy were the principal
offenders.

Disregarding usage, and conscious that the best men of all ranks were
with him, Tiberius Gracchus appealed directly to the people to revive
the Agrarian law. His proposals were not extravagant. That they should
have been deemed extravagant was a proof of how much some measure of the
kind was needed. Where lands had been enclosed and money laid out on
them, he was willing that the occu