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THE COMMONALTY BEFORE THE SECESSION,

AND THE NEXI.

THE appointment of the dictator by the curies was a step backward from the constitution of Servius, evincing a settled plan to rob the plebeians of its advantages and honours, while its burthens were still to remain with them: and it was the prelude to a far worse usurpation, by which the plebs was deprived of its right of electing the consuls in the centuries, as it had already been deprived of its share in the consulship. Possessing the dictatorial power, which they might either exercise or hold out in terrour, the patricians were strong enough to engage in a plan for stripping their free countrymen of all their rights, and reducing them individually to slavery. Had it been executed with caution, the atrocious design might have succeeded its failure, as is often the case, was owing to their mad impatience and precipitance, and to that cupidity which cannot wait until usurpation in its struggle against the feelings of freedom has cleared the course for it.

After the banishment of the Tarquins the government behaved kindly to the commonalty. It is related that all duties were then done away with; and that the city took the salt-trade into its own hands, to stop the extortion of the retail-dealers 1260. As to the statement that the plebs was exempted from tribute, it must either mean, that the whole charge of paying the troops was thrown

1260 Livy II. 9.

upon the ærarians*, or that the arbitrary taxation introduced under the last Tarquinius was abolisht. The Valerian laws restored the good laws of king Servius with regard to life, personal security, and honour. In like manner the first consuls are said to have renewed the laws which prohibited pledging the person 1261: that the guilds and their motes were reestablisht, follows of course.

But it was only while Tarquinius excited alarm, and till the hard war with Etruria was ended, that the government, as Sallust says, ruled with justice and moderation. When this was over, the patricians dealt with the plebeians as with slaves, tyrannically maltreated them and even sported with their lives, turned them out of the public domain, and wielded the government alone, to the exclusion of their fellowcitizens: by which outrages, and above all by the pressure of usury, the commonalty, being forced at once to pay tribute and to serve in neverceasing wars, was at last driven into insurrection. This representation has been adopted by the greatest father of the western church as evidently true 62. To the same effect Livy relates that, so long as Tarquinius was living in exile, the favour of the plebs was courted: but that after his death the nobles began to maltreat it 65. I repeat, that chronological statements with regard to this period are totally idle; only it is too gross a violation of all probability in Livy, to place the king's death, the change in the conduct of the patricians, and the beginning of its fruits, the first disturbance, all within the same year. Some annalist must have mentioned the evil, which without doubt had been waxing worse and worse during several

*See above p. 465.

63

1261 Dionysius v. 2. Καὶ τοὺς νόμους τοὺς περὶ τῶν συμβολαίων τοὺς ὑπὸ Τυλλίου γραφέντας, φιλανθρώπους καὶ δημοτικοὺς εἶναι δοκοῦντας, οὓς ἅπαντας κατέλυσε Ταρκύνιος, ανενεώσαντο.

62 Augustin de Civitate Dei II. 18.

63 II. 21. Plebi, cui ad eam diem summa ope inservitum erat, injuriæ a primoribus fieri cœpere

N N

years, for the first time retrospectively at the epoch when it reached its full growth.

That the oligarchy should have been strong enough, when aided by the terrours of the dictatorship, openly to revive the ancient laws of debt, is no way incredible: but when we find these laws not only remaining unaltered at the peace between the two estates, but for half a century after those of Licinius, great doubts are cast on the story that they had already been abolisht twice in the very early ages. Be this as it may, that difference between the rights of the two orders, which afterward caused the need for the legislation of the decemvirs, was here so deeply rooted, that it lasted for four generations after the laws of the twelve tables and hence Livy, when he is about to relate the abolition of bondage for debt, says, this was the commencement of a new freedom for the plebs 1264. This remark clearly belongs to an old annalist, not to Livy and it may therefore be regarded as a distinct assertion on what otherwise could only be inferred, though with perfect certainty; namely, that the pressure of this system fell on the plebeian debtor alone. As to the patrician, he can never have either pledged his person by covenant, or been sentenced to servitude by the

law.

Now if the only difference had been, that the original citizens enjoyed a better state of law within their own body, this would have bred no feud between the two estates: the plebs might have passed a resolution to adopt the same system, and would have had no trouble in obtaining the sanction of the ruling class for it, if requisite. But unfortunately it was the interest of the patricians to stand up for the cruel practice of personal pledges, as much as for any privilege of their order. Livy himself in spite of his prejudices does not suppress what was to be

1264 VIII. 28. Eo anno plebi Romanæ velut aliud initium libertatis factum est, quod necti desierunt. See above p. 423.

read in the Annals; that every patrician house was a gaol for debtors, and that in seasons of great distress, after every sitting of the courts, herds of sentenced slaves were led away in chains to the houses of the nobless1265. Dionysius too represents king Servius as saying, that the cruel usury of the patricians, who by its means were reducing the free citizens to servitude, and their pretensions to the exclusive occupation of the public domain, were the motives which urged them to plot his death 66: and in the decisive case where the abominable consequences of this system led to its abolition, the usurer, L. Papirius, was a patrician; his victim a plebeian, C. Publilius*.

Nay they appear in these cases not like persons who from their superior power come forward in behalf of others as well as of themselves, but as if they alone were concerned; and this too so late as in the year 397, when a reasonable limitation to the rate of interest is eagerly determined upon by the plebs, but gives offense to the patricians 67. Not that we can suppose the plebeians to have been without the power of proceeding after the same system: only if they wished to abuse it by stretching it to the utmost, they might be restrained, as they were subsequently by the tribunes of the people, so even in those days

1265 vi. 36. Gregatim quotidie de foro addictos duci, et repleri vinctis nobiles domos: et ubicunque patricius habitet, ibi carcerem pri

vatum esse.

66 ιν. 11. Μεμήνυνταί μοι τινὲς ἐκ τῶν πατρικίων ἀποκτεῖναί με συνομνύμενοι,—ὧν τὸν δῆμον εὖ πεποίηκα αχθόμενοι-οἱ δανεισταὶ μὲν, ὅτι τοὺς πένητας ὑμᾶς οὐκ εἴασα τὴν ἐλευθερίαν ἀφαιρεθῆναι ὑπ' αὐτῶν πρὸς τὰ χρέα ἀχθέντας (read απαχθέντας), οἱ δὲ κατανοσφιζόμενοι τὰ δημόσια κ. τ. λ.

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67 Haud æque læta patribus-de unciario fœnore-rogatio est perlata: et plebs aliquanto eam cupidius scivit. Livy vII. 16. Manlius too (VI. 14) vociferatus de superbia patrum, ac crudelitate fœneratorum, et miseriis plebis,

by the magistrates whose office gave rise to that of these tribunes: and the free possessor of hereditary property might screen himself against the persecution of a brother plebeian, by becoming the client of a patrician. Probably however the main part of the loans were merely negociated in the name of patricians on account of their clients, who were forced to appear in the person of their patrons, and who also reaped the greatest advantage from doing so. If a foreiner practised such usury, he had without doubt, beside the ordinary burthens of clientship, to pay, like the freedmen, a particular sum to his lord.

Now that in these early times not the slightest trace should be found of usury carried on by the plebeians, is the more remarkable, because in the latter ages of the republic the plebeian knights were the very class among whom it struck root; although Cato had pronounced it to be no better than highway-robbery: while on the other hand among the members of the few remaining patrician houses hardly a single one has been charged with this disgraceful trade: a memorable instance, that virtues and vices are not heirlooms in particular families or classes of society; but that the power of doing what they list misleads such as are not restrained by respect for the opinion of the better disposed among their fellow countrymen and equals, while on the other hand the necessity of keeping watch over our honour preserves us from depravity; that a dominant faction is ever sure to transgress, and thereby to set its adversaries in a favorable light.

In all countries men in need have had the wretched right of selling themselves and their families: it obtained among the northern nations as well as among the Greeks and in Asia. The right of the creditor to seize his insolvent debtor as a servant, and by his labour or by the sale of his person to repay himself so far as this went, was scarcely less widely spread. Akin in their origin and in their results, these rights are yet substantially different; and if we draw a proper distinction

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