Page:Roman Constitutional History, 753-44 B.C..djvu/175

Rh new magistrates, who were to be elected annually by the plebeian assembly, was to have charge of the distribution.

Character of the Agrarian Law. — The bill of Gracchus was based on the Licinian provision respecting a maximum of three hundred and eleven acres, which was still formally valid, but had long been a dead letter in practice. The last prosecutions against those who occupied public lands to an illegal extent dated, it seems, from 298. Nevertheless, possession, however prolonged, did not confer ownership in the case of public lands, and the state was undeniably the owner of the lands occupied, and could legally claim its property. On the other hand, these lands had been in heritable private possession for a long time, and had quite generally come to the present holders by way of purchase or for some valuable consideration. Resumption would therefore be practically an ejection of the great landholders from a part of their estates — the part occupied in violation of the Licinian law. This was unquestionably a hardship, but the highest classes, who were to be dispossessed, had now excellent opportunities to recoup themselves in the provinces, even without violation of the law. Besides, Gracchus was willing to indemnify them so far as possible. In this respect he followed perhaps the precedent established by the resumption of the Campanian territory (p. 145). Afterward he omitted the provision as to indemnification, because of the opposition he met. Still, it is not recorded that a single aristocratic family was impoverished by the measure.

The provision for a special commission, limited to no definite time in its labors, was a great improvement on the Licinian law, and was possibly derived from the agrarian law of Flaminius. The inalienable character of the parcels of land was a principle foreign to Roman institutions, and was an attempt to prevent the large landowners from buying the new farms.