The tribuneship of the people had quite changed character; the tribune holding arbitrary sway just like any tyrant. A tribune (C. Atinius Labeo), a few years after Gracchus, wanted to have the censor Metellus thrown from the Tarpeian rock for having excluded him from the senate; and it was only with difficulty that his family succeeded in getting another tribune to intercede for him. Such instances are not unseldom met with, as the tribunes themselves no longer knew what their office meant. It was very likely the same Atinius, who brought in the law that the tribunes were eo ipso senators, and could only be excluded by the same rules as other senators.
TIBERIUS SEMPRONIUS GRACCHUS.
There was a time when the name of the Gracchi was cried down, when they were looked upon as the leaders of a tyrannical onslaught upon the property of others; and there was another time, when they had a renown which would have certainly been most hateful to themselves. Both of these opinions are now entirely exploded; and, although the complicated system of the ager publicus is not yet understood everywhere, still I do not believe that any one in Germany—unless indeed it be in some corner of Austria—holds the old views with regard to the Gracchi. The French still cling a little to their false prejudices; but in America my account of the matter is already the one generally received, as a reviewer of my history in a North American periodical has especially pointed out.
Tiberius Gracchus was the son of Tiberius Gracchus the elder who had made the peace with the Celtiberians, and of Cornelia, the daughter of the first Scipio Africanus, who was given in marriage to her husband, not, as Livy says, by her father, but, after his death, by her family: both of these were, even in the midst of the thorough corruption of that age, acknowledged to have been people of the highest virtue, in whom the olden times were living again. Of their many children, few only remained alive—in fact, out of twelve not more than three, namely the two brothers, Tiberius and Caius, and the daughter, who was married to the younger Scipio (Paulli fil.). The sons were brought up under the eye of the mother by distinguished Greeks, and by a Campanian, C. Blossius, who was a perfect Grecian, writing Greek, and even composing poetry in Greek: he was, as we now know, the author of Rhintonian comedies,[64] a proof of the flourishing state of Greek literature at that time in Italy, of which Cicero also informs us. He was the teacher and friend of Tiberius of whom he was somewhat the elder, and a follower of Stoic philosophy, a system which in those days was congenial to the aspirations of all generous minds, and was particularly welcome to a nation like the Romans. When Tiberius, owing to the great favour which he had with the people, had been raised step by step to honours, and he had gained glory already at Carthage, where with C. Fannius he was the first to mount the wall, he became a quæstor and made the peace with Numantia. Its not being ratified greatly exasperated him. Unfortunately, we have for this period only desultory works from second or third hand, such as those of Appian and Plutarch: the latter of these wrote the lives of the Gracchi with much feeling, but without any knowledge of the true state of affairs, the moral part in him, being, however, really beautiful; moreover, like Appian, he is led astray by the gossip of any writer. Thus Plutarch allows himself to be beguiled into the belief that the vanity of Tiberius had been hurt by the repudiation of the peace; but of a soul such as that of Tiberius, we may safely say that its motives for anger were different. He had concluded the peace as an honest man, and to see it trampled upon in defiance of all good faith, embittered him against the men who then were in power. How a character like Gracchus in such times as those must have felt bound to take in hand these dangerous πολιτεύματα, may best be shown from the Servile war in Sicily, where the real canker which lay at the root of the whole state of society is laid bare.
The ager publicus[65] was the land taken in war, of which the ownership belonged to the commonwealth, but the possession was given up to Roman citizens, or to foreigners, on the payment of certain outgoings, such as the tithes on the produce of the arable land and of the live stock; a scriptura on the pasture land according to the number of the cattle; and other things of the kind. By the Licinian law[66] it had been enacted that no one should possess more than five hundred jugera of the ager publicus, but that he might transfer the occupancy as if it were his property: yet the possessor was, after all, only a precarious occupant, a tenant at will,[67] whom the real owner might turn out, whenever he liked. If he possessed more than was allowed by law, he was liable to punishment, and what was above the quantity was to be confiscated: the state, however, might, of course, at any time take back the whole.
The way in which the Licinian law was kept, was just what might be expected under such circumstances: one or two incidents give us light enough to see this. P. Postumius Megillus, for instance, was fined for having employed the soldiers of the legion in converting a large forest into arable land; Licinius Stolo himself was accused of having tried by emancipating his son to evade his own law, as under his name he held more than its clauses would have allowed him. The amount of land was everywhere exceeded; and the very fact of these estates being no freeholds, as they had the authority of the prætor for their only title, so that, where they were situated, there existed no jurisdiction, gave to those who wished to enrich themselves a great means of driving out the small farmers, which was now done more and more. Whilst in Germany, as well as in France and in England, the small estates are worth much more taken singly, than when combined in large masses; in the South, particularly in Italy, the larger properties are more profitable, and thus the small estates go on decaying, and all the land keeps falling into the hands of a few owners. Until the war with Pyrrhus, an immense deal of land had been won, and so likewise after the war with Hannibal: part of it was taken up for colonies, and another share was left to the Latin allies, whose claims were thereby satisfied, though even in this case also, the right of ownership seems to have been reserved to the Roman commonwealth. Only in Samnium and Apulia, and I believe also in Lucania,[68] had an extraordinary distribution been made to the veterans of Scipio’s army; but besides this, no general assignment had been made to the plebeians viritim, as in olden times.
It is in the nature of things, that the husbandman is able to pay a far higher rent for a piece of land, than we could, who do not till it ourselves, provided, however, that no capital is needed for it. We have to pay the labourer, whereas the other gets the double gain of the labourer and of the farmer. I know the farming in Italy well, having taken much trouble to become acquainted with all kinds of land-owners and farmers there, particularly with the larger ones, who understand husbandry very well. The latter manage their farms in an excellent style, and yet they are a curse to the country: on the other hand, I quite love the poor peasants. Among others, I knew of a small farmer at Tivoli, who did his very utmost to get himself out of the clutches of the usurers, and to free his bit of ground; on which occasion I fully learnt how great the value of labour is in Italy, and what an advantage it is there for a man to farm his own land. But as the money is in very few hands, only indeed in those of the men of rank, the small proprietor, if any ill luck befalls him, is unable to keep his freehold, and therefore this class of men dwindles faster and faster every year. The poor man, for instance, lived near the rich one; the former in hard times had taxes to pay, but, having had losses owing to murrain among the cattle and other visitations, he could not raise the money: thus he borrowed from his wealthy neighbour, and as he had no other pledge to offer but his farm, he had to pay a heavy rate of interest. Nor was this the whole of his troubles: his son, perhaps, served in a legion, in which case, if the father was taken ill and had to keep labourers, he could not pay the interest; and now, if his neighbour called upon him for the principal and interest, he must needs give up to him the possession of his land at a low price. He who is once in the fangs of the large proprietors, will never get out again. And so Tib. Gracchus found the many small allotments on which the soldiers had settled, either burthened with debt after the long series of disasters during the late campaigns (in which the war-taxes moreover were most heavily felt), or already fallen into the hands of the rich. Such a change of property goes on increasing like an avalanche. In Tivoli, the number of land-owners is now perhaps not a fifth of what it was forty years back, and not one-fiftieth of what it was four hundred years ago; as I have learned from an old survey of the fifteenth century. I made inquiries to know what became of many of the olive-yards there, which (in former times) belonged to certain families in the town, and one by one have been got hold of by the rich. Sonnino[69] has four thousand inhabitants, and some five or six men own the whole of the land: all the rest are beggars and robbers.
By the Licinian law it was enacted, that on every five hundred jugera, a certain number of free labourers (cottagers)[70] should be employed, that slaves might not work on them. But the rule had not been kept: thousands of slaves came in, as was also the case in Portugal from the sixteenth century to Pombal’s days, when negro slaves were so very cheap within the kingdom, owing to which indeed so many mulattoes are found there. The condition of Italy was now this: on the one hand, the number of Roman citizens had increased, partly—which was desirable—from the allies, but chiefly in a worse way from the freedmen, the common run of whom bore the brand of slavery; and on the other hand, the numbers of the hereditary land-holders and land-owners were dwindling fast. It is very likely that the first thought of amending this state of things, came into the mind of Tib. Gracchus on his return from Spain through Etruria, where he saw large tracts of country with nothing but slaves, who worked at the ground in chains, while the free-born men were begging and starving. The population of Rome had become more and more a true rabble, and in the country the poor increased at a fearful rate, an evil which alas! is now a growing one in Europe. The Romans did not blind themselves to the condition in which they were; they mourned over it, and acknowledged that, if the Licinian law had been observed and the poor had been allowed to occupy the land, there never would have been that wretchedness. Every body wished, like the king[71] in Goethe’s play, that “all were otherwise;” but no one had the courage to do anything. There is no doubt that just after the war with Hannibal, it would not have been hard to stop the mischief, and that was one of those momentous periods which sometimes follow after great convulsions, and must be taken advantage of, or else they are irrecoverably lost: one ought then to have created a magistracy to watch over the way in which the Licinian law was kept, and to distribute part of the conquered ager publicus, and to see that the occupation was fairly managed. Since that time, seventy years had passed, and every one must have looked blank at the very mention of a reform. C. Lælius is said to have thought of it, but to have given up the plan as impracticable; so that he got the surname of Sapiens. This was either a nickname, or else sapiens here means prudent; for prudent it is not to stir up a wasp’s nest. There were now but few great families indeed which did not possess far more than the lawful quantity, and which did not keep more than a hundred head of cattle, and five hundred sheep and goats, upon their estates: all these were sure to be offended, if the Licinian law were carried out in all its rigour. As our governments have now the right, when a lease is out, of warning off a tenant on the crown-land, although his forefathers held it perhaps for many years before him; thus also the Roman government had never given up its right to the ager publicus, although it had not exercised it for a long time. The law was quite clear; yet as it had not been enforced for ages, it might be said on the other side, that it was only common equity not to root out an old abuse at once, and thus wound many interests. The rich might plead, that “when C. Flaminius made his agrarian law to apply to the new conquests only, he thereby tacitly acknowledged what had hitherto been held by right of possession; moreover when the loan was contracted in the war with Hannibal the ager publicus was pledged to us, and has thus become our property.” A hundred years had already passed since then; some of the estates had also been laid waste during the war; in the full trust that every one would remain in possession of what belonged to him, they had planted them anew,[72] they had raised buildings on them, they had drained fens: and now they were to sacrifice all this, and to be turned out of what was their own.
Of purer intentions than Tiberius Gracchus, no man could ever have been: even they have owned it, who a long time after, blinded by party spirit, have railed against this undertaking; nay, Cicero himself, whose generous heart always gets the better of him whenever he views a subject with unprejudiced eyes, calls him sanctissimus homo. The statesmen of old were not such as our fancy would generally lead us to paint them; but they had the self-same ends in view as those of our times: Tiberius Gracchus saw clearly, that, if things were to go on in this way, utter ruin must follow, and Rome would fall into despotism. Had he now wished to enforce the Licinian rogations to the very letter, this would indeed have been just in law, but in reality most unfair. He therefore laid down the rule, that every one should be allowed to have, and that as freehold property, five hundred jugera for himself, and two hundred and fifty for every son who was still in patria potestate, though as it seems, not for more than two of these (for so must the passage in the Epitome of Livy be interpreted according to the correct reading);[73] and moreover, that buildings erected on that part of the land which was to be given up, should be valued, and an indemnity paid to those who had owned them. Thus, instead of infringing upon vested rights, he, on the contrary, converted a mere tenure at will into a regular freehold which no man could touch. One case, however, Gracchus had not considered: many had bought the ager publicus of the former occupant for ready money, or had taken it at its value as their share of an inheritance; these could not be expected to lose their capital. When this had happened, the overplus ought to have been bought in at a fair price by the state, and then there would have been nothing to say against the law: the great wealth of the state would have certainly sufficed for this, as there could not, after all, have been so many cases of people having more than a thousand jugera. Five hundred jugera are a very good-sized estate, as much as seventy rubbii are now, which is still looked upon as not a bad property in Italy. I should not in that country wish for a larger one: one may get from it in a fruitful district, if well managed, a net income of five thousand crowns, merely by letting it out in farms. That the money which was hoarded up in the treasury, could not have been better spent than for such a purpose, is as clear as day. In this way it might have become possible to remove from the city the sentina rei publicæ, the disgrace of the Roman people, which weighed like a heavy burthen upon it, and which always sold its votes in the comitia. To this class allotments ought to have been given, but with the condition that they should never be alienated, as otherwise they would have fallen again into the hands of the rich. It is ever to be lamented that Gracchus did not do this: however great the cost might have been, the state ought to have borne it. In all likelihood he would have escaped the fate which befell him, though indeed the hatred against him would always have been bitter.
Gracchus is said also to have thought of widening the extent of the Roman franchise; yet this is only dimly hinted at, as, generally speaking, the accounts which we have of the whole of his undertaking are so very scanty. He saw clearly that the middle class of the Roman people had almost entirely disappeared, and that its restoration was one of the principal wants of the time; and therefore he wished to open the citizenship to the allies. This regeneration is quite in the spirit of the old laws: its aim was to infuse fresh blood into the higher orders, and to enlarge their numbers; just as in former times the Licinian laws gave new life to the republic which was dwindling to an oligarchy, and began the second brilliant epoch of Rome. There were in Italy thirty Latin colonies, and in these there were many citizens of great respectability, who might vote among the tribes in the Roman assemblies, and who felt second only to the Romans, if not quite their equals. These Latins actually now held the same rank which the plebeians did two hundred and fifty years before: there was even much more refinement in those towns than in Rome. Tiberius Gracchus wished therefore to admit these to the full rights of Roman citizens, and he likewise undoubtedly meant to grant the suffragium to any municipia sine suffragio which at that time may have still existed.