The results could hardly have
been otherwise. Sumptuary laws, false economic principles, had closed all
channels[33] of trade and manufacture to the nobility, while conquest had
filled their hands with gold and placed at their disposal vast numbers[34]
of slaves. There was but one channel open for the investment of this
gold,--the agrarian.[35] Farming and cattle-raising were the only
occupations in which slaves could be used with advantage and so, as a
natural result of Roman economics, the plebeian, with little or no money
and subject to the military call, was compelled to enter into a one-sided
contest with capital and slave labor. So long as these conditions existed
so long would all the laws of the world fail to save him from abject
poverty and its attendant evils.
[Footnote 1: Rudorff, _Ackergesetz des Spurius Thorius_, Zeitschrift fuer
geschichtliche Rechtswissenschaft, Band X, s. 1-158. Corpus Inscriptionum
Latinarum, vol. V, pp. 75-86. Wordsworth, _Specimens and Fragments of Early
Latin_, 440-459.]
[Footnote 2: Appian, _Bell. Civ._, I, c. 27.]
[Footnote 3: Ihne, _Roman History_, V, 9.]
[Footnote 4: Momm., _Rom.
Pages:
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151