Page:Roman Constitutional History, 753-44 B.C..djvu/158

144 populace the fitness of open-handed candidates. Moreover, with a view to obtaining the censorship, the consuls might conciliate the soldiers by a lavish distribution of the spoils of war, which used to be the property of the state. In place of expending one's own money, it was rather convenient to levy on the Latins, Italians, and provincials, as Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus did in his aedileship. Such assessments were, however, then prohibited by a decree of the senate.

Laws on Canvassing for Office. — After a time these means of corrupting the people were considered inadequate, and candidates began to resort to commonplace, direct bribery. Laws were passed to prevent such excessive competition. The Cornelio-Baebian law threatened any one who employed illegal means in his canvass, especially bribery, with exclusion from office for ten years. The Cornelio-Fulvian law punished bribery during a canvass with exile.

Methods of Reimbursement. — The Roman nobility was based on large and permanent possessions, and the Roman politicians were too thrifty a race to spend so much money on the populace without reimbursing themselves. They refilled their chests by the pernicious system of farming public revenues, by spoils and robbery in war, and especially by extortion in the provinces.

They enriched themselves also by their management of the public domain. The low charges for using the public pastures were indeed collected, and as late as 193 stock-raisers were punished for violating the Licinian provision as to the number of cattle allowable (p. 66). But the rent, or tax, due on public land in Italy occupied by private individuals was in the great majority of cases not paid, and the Licinian maximum of three hundred and eleven acres was probably exceeded with impunity. Of the more recent