ong preserved their practical
power, just because they had at the right time abandoned their claim
to sole legal authority. It is true that the plebeians could not but
be painfully sensible of their political disabilities; but undoubtedly
in the first instance the nobility had not much to fear from a purely
political opposition, if it understood the art of keeping the
multitude, which desired nothing but equitable administration and
protection of its material interests, aloof from political strife.
In fact during the first period after the expulsion of the kings we
meet with various measures which were intended, or at any rate seemed
to be intended, to gain the favour of the commons for the government
of the nobility especially on economic grounds. The port-dues were
reduced; when the price of grain was high, large quantities of corn
were purchased on account of the state, and the trade in salt was made
a state-monopoly, in order to supply the citizens with corn and salt
at reasonable prices; lastly, the national festival was prolonged for
an additional day. Of the same character was the ordinance which we
have already mentioned respecting property fines,(1) which was not
merely intended in general to set limits to the dangerous
fining-prerogative of the magistrates, but was also, in a significant
manner, calculated for the especial protection of the man of small means.
The magistrate was prohibited from fining the same man on the same
day to an extent beyond two sheep or beyond thirty oxen, without
granting leave to appeal; and the reason of these singular rates
can only perhaps be found in the fact, that in the case of the man of
small means possessing only a few sheep a different maximum appeared
necessary from that fixed for the wealthy proprietor of herds of oxen
--a considerate regard to the wealth or poverty of the person fined,
from which modern legislators might take a lesson.

But these regulations were merely superficial; the main current flowed
in the opposite direction. With the change in the constitution
there was introduced a comprehensive revolution in the financial and
economic relations of Rome, The government of the kings had probably
abstained on principle from enhancing the power of capital, and had
promoted as far as it could an increase in the number of farms.
The new aristocratic government, again, appears to have aimed from
the first at the destruction of the middle classes, particularly of