The first of the economic measures of Gaius Gracchus was one to renew and extend the agrarian law of his brother. In connection with this law the right to decide whether land was public or private was once more given to the Agrarian Commission, and provisions were also made providing that new colonies should be founded in different parts of Italy and also in the provinces. The carrying into execution of this last provision was to be postponed until the following year. The proposal to found colonies beyond the limits of Italy marked an innovation both in Roman law and in the economic habits and customs of the Romans.
Another law provided that the Roman government should undertake the work of providing grain for its citizens; that every person possessing the Roman franchise should have the right of purchasing grain from the government at the price of six and a third asses per modius (the set price being far under the market value); and that the losses sustained in this grain trade should be taken out of the public treasury. Of all the proposed reforms of the Gracchi this is the least defensible, and the one which had the greatest influence upon the future. Lord Macaulay, in the course of his speech made on the third reading of the great English Reform Bill of 1832, said:
"The defect is not in the Reform Bill, but in the very nature of government. On the physical condition of the great body of people government acts not as a specific, but as an alterative. Its operation is powerful, indeed, and certain, but gradual and indirect. The end of government is not directly to make the people rich, but to protect them in making themselves rich—and a government which attempts more than this is precisely the government which is likely to perform less. Governments do not and cannot support the people. We have no miraculous powers—and we have not the rod of the Hebrew lawgiver—we cannot rain down bread on the multitude from Heaven—we cannot smite the rock and give them to drink. We can give them only freedom to employ their industry to the best advantage, and security in the enjoyment of what their industry has acquired."
The fundamental principles of the science of government and political economy, so forcibly expressed by Lord Macaulay on this occasion, and which must be both understood and applied by every successful lawmaker, were throughout his career thoroughly realized by Tiberius Gracchus, and were also generally appreciated by his younger brother. On this occasion, however, Gaius Gracchus lost sight of, or recklessly disregarded, all the basic principles of the true science of government or economics. If it became the permanent policy of Rome to provide food for a great proportion of her citizens, this could only result finally in their permanent pauperization. The effect of this law was certain to be the opposite of that sought by the agrarian laws of the two Gracchi.
The object of the latter laws was to bring the Roman citizens, or as many of them as possible, "back to the soil"; to develop once more that race of hardy Roman peasants, whose arms had won the great military victories of the Roman republic; and to reduce both the numbers and the influence of the unemployed and dangerous proletariat of the city. The law as to the sale of grain was not only certain to have an influence in an exactly opposite direction to that which would be exerted by the agrarian law, if this latter law could be put into successful operation, but, more than this, the operation of the grain law would render the success of the agrarian law far more difficult and doubtful. The truth of the matter was that the success of the agrarian law was endangered not only by the opposition of the aristocracy but also by the present character of the Roman proletariat. The course of events at Rome during the previous century and a half had done much to destroy the stamina of the mass of the Roman people; and a life of economic independence, as the result of hard labor in the country, held less attractions for the majority of this class than an easily secured, though meager, living in the city. Anything which rendered life in Rome easier and more pleasant made it so much the harder to induce Roman citizens to settle on the farms. No legislation ever yet passed in Rome had aroused such immediate and universal enthusiasm among the poorer classes at Rome as did this law relative to the sale of grain.
This law, the worst of those proposed by the Gracchi, was destined to have the greatest influence of any of those laws upon the course of development of Roman history. It is a peculiar phenomenon to be observed in the study of the psychology of dishonesty that while the beneficiaries of any system of "graft" will fight to the last extremity against any infringement upon their interests, sometimes even, as was the case with French nobility at the time of the French Revolution, carrying their resistance to such limits as to involve themselves and their country in a common ruin; nevertheless, it is often easy to induce these favored interests to assist in the establishment of some other system of "graft" for the benefit of certain classes of their opponents.
When a class has become so blinded to the true standard of right and wrong, and of relative values, as to look upon special privileges for the few against the many, and long-continued systems of dishonesty, as "vested interests," it seems to be much easier for them to submit to wrongful exactions from others than to cease from such wrongful exactions themselves. Thus, in the case of the grain laws at Rome, the aristocratic party, unrelenting in their opposition to the agrarian laws of the Gracchi, which would put an end to long-continued robbing of the state and go far toward building up again a class of free yeoman landowners, without opposition acquiesced in the establishment of a system of wholesale exploitation of the state for the maintenance at the public expense of a lazy, worthless, and corrupt mob.
The fatal idea contained in the grain law, having obtained a foothold in the Roman policy, rapidly developed. Fifty years after the law of Gaius Gracchus it was necessary to limit the amount of grain which could be purchased by any one citizen to five modii (about one and a quarter bushels) per month; at this period forty thousand citizens were regular purchasers of grain from the state. At a little later period it was provided that five modii per month should be given without charge to such citizens as might require it. At one time the number of Roman citizens receiving this free allowance of grain rose to three hundred and twenty thousand. The Emperor Augustus fixed the maximum number to whom such allowance should be given at two hundred thousand.
The permanent and continuing effect of these grain laws was to further demoralize free labor in Italy and the character of the Roman citizen, and to bring about a constantly increasing use of slave labor in agriculture and of mercenaries in war.
One of the minor laws introduced by Gaius Gracchus was that which fixed the minimum age for military service at seventeen, and provided that the uniform and arms of the soldiers should be furnished by the state.