Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/64

 more, the last British governor of Virginia, at the commencement of the American Revolution, followed this example.

We have now exhibited to the reader the principal features of slavery in Rome. We have seen the origin, numbers and condition of the slaves, their treatment, and the laws that governed them. We have seen the general prev- alence of the institution, but not its effects upon the Romans themselves, and upon many of the prominent events of their history. To such as may feel in- terested in this branch of the subject, we present the views of an able writer upon the Influence of Slavery on the Revolutions in Rome. We have already referred to the condition of the poorer class of freemen in the time of the elder Gracchus. The writer proceeds:

' Gracchus found the inhabitants of the Roman State divided into three classes. The few wealthy nobles; the many indigent citizens; the still more numerous class of slaves. Reasoning upon the subject, he perceived that it was slavery which crowded the poor freeman out of employment, and barred the way to his advancement. It was the aim of Gracchus, not so much to mend the condition of the slaves, as to lift the brood of idle persons into dignity; to give them land, to put the plow into their hands, to make them industrious and useful, and so to repose on them the liberties of the State. He resolved to increase the number of landed proprietors; to create a Roman yeomanry. This was the basis of his radical reform; the means were at hand. The lands of Italy were of two classes; private estates and the public domain. With private estates he refused to inter- fere. The public domains, even though they had been usurped by the patricians, were to be reclaimed as public property, and to be appropriated to the use of the people, under restrictions which should pi'event their future concentration in the hands of the few. To effect this object required no new order; the proper decree was already engraved among the tablets of the Roman laws. It was necessary only to revive the law of Licinius, which had slumbered for two centuries unrepealed.

In a republic, he that will execute great designs, must act with an organized party. Gracchus took counsel with the purest men of Rome; with Appius Claudius, his fatner in-law, a patrician of the purest blood; with the great lawyer, Mutitf 3 Scasvola, a man of consular dignity, and with Crassus, the leader of the priesthood; men of the best learning and character, of unimpeachable patriotism, and friends to the new reform. But his supporters at the polls could be none other than the common people, composed of the impoverished citizens, and the very few husbandmen who had still saved some scanty acres from the grasp of the aristocracy.

The people rallied to the support of their champion; and Gracchus, being elected their tribune, was able to bring forward his Agrarian Law. This law, relating only to the public domain, was distinguished by mitigating clauses. To each of those who had occupied the land without a right, it generously left five hundred acres; to each of their minor children, two hundred and fifty more; and it also promised to make from the public treasury further remuneration for improvements. To every needy citizen it probably allotted not more than ten acres. Thus it was designed to create in Italy a yeomanry; instead of planters and slaves, to substitute free laborers; to plant liberty firmly in the land; to perpetuate the Roman Commonwealth, by identifying its princi- ples with the culture of the soil. No pursuit is more worthy of freemen than agricul- ture. Gracchus claimed it for the free.

Philanthropy, when it contemplates a slave-holding country, may have its first sym- pathies excited for the slaves; but it is narrow benevolence which stops there The