The peasant proprietors were melting away as fast as
ever, and Rome was becoming choked with impoverished citizens, who ought
to have been farmers and fathers of families, but were degenerating into a
rabble fed upon the corn grants, and occupied with nothing but spectacles
and politics. The agrarian laws in the past had been violent, and might
reasonably be complained of; but a remedy could now be found for this
fast-increasing mischief without injury to anyone. Pompey's victories had
filled the public treasury. Vast territories abroad had lapsed to the
possession of the State; and Rullus, one of the tribunes, proposed that
part of these territories should be sold, and that out of the proceeds,
and out of the money which Pompey had sent home, farms should be purchased
in Italy and poor citizens settled upon them. Rullus's scheme might have
been crude, and the details of it objectionable; but to attempt the
problem was better than to sit still and let the evil go unchecked. If the
bill was impracticable in its existing form, it might have been amended;
and so far as the immediate effect of such a law was concerned, it was
against the interests of the democrats. The popular vote depended for its
strength on the masses of poor who were crowded into Rome; and the tribune
was proposing to weaken his own army.
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