Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/458

 452 THE EEVOLUTIOXS. BOOS; IV. into the public treasury, whence it afterwards flowed, under the form of the triobolon, to be distributed among the poor. But even all this did not snfllce; for the number of poor continued to increase. The poor then began to use their right of suffrage either to de- cree an abolition of debts, or a grand confiscation, and a general subversion. In earlier times they had respected the right of prop- erty, because it was founded in a religious belief. So long as each patrimony was attached to a worship, and was reputed inseparable from the domestic gods of a family, no one had thought of claiming the right to de- spoil a man of his field ; but at the time to ■which the revolutions have conducted us, these old beliefs are abandoned, and the religion of property has disappeared. Wealth is no longer a sacred and inviolable domain. It no longer apjiears as a gift of the gods, but as a gift of chance. A desire springs up to lay hold of it by de- spoiling the possessor, and this desire, which formerly would have seemed an impiet}*, begins to appear right. Men no longer saw the superior principle that conse- crates the right of property. Each felt only his own wants, and measured his rights by them. We have already seen that the city, especially among the Greeks, had unlimited power, that liberty was un- known, and that individual rights were nothing when opposed to the will of the state. It followed that a majority of votes might decree the confiscation of the property of the rich, and that the Greeks saw neither illegality nor injustice in this. What the state had declared was right. This absence of individual liberty was for Greece a cause of misfortunes and disorders. Rome, which had a little more respect for the rights of man, suffered less.