Page:Roman Constitutional History, 753-44 B.C..djvu/54

40 could furnish the security required and undertake business on so large a scale. The rich made money, and the lower classes paid not only toward the support of the government, but also for the profits of the rich. In the course of time the system produced a class of contractors and farmers of taxes {publicani), and became a momentous and pernicious factor in the political, as well as the economic, life of Rome.

The System of Occupation. — The selfishness of the governing class was most evident in its management of the public lands. When in earlier times new territory was acquired by conquest, a colony was perhaps founded, as at Ostia; and parcels of land were usually given away to individual citizens. Another method was to allow private persons to occupy portions of the public domain until further notice. The state was entitled to reclaim at any time the tracts so occupied, and it demanded of the tenant one-tenth of the grain and one-fifth of the oil and wine produced. Public land not suitable for tillage was turned into public pasture.

The patrician government did not venture to discontinue entirely the old policy of distributing lands in full ownership, but its grants became fewer and smaller, and it adopted in the main the system of occupation. It permitted only patricians and rich and eminent plebeians to enjoy the privilege of occupation.

The patrician quaestors, moreover, were negligent or indulgent in collecting the tax of one-tenth and one-fifth, and gradually discontinued it altogether. Moreover, the tenure of the occupants became permanent and hereditary. The public pastures were managed in the same selfish way, and the custom of collecting charges for their use fell into desuetude.

The small plebeian farmers and laborers, who needed land the most, were in this way excluded, and their burdens were