Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/65

 indigent freeman is in a worse condition. The slave has his task, and also his home and his bread. He is the member of a wealthy family. The indigent freeman has neither labor, nor house, nor food; and, divided by a broad gulf from the upper class, he has neither hope nor ambition. The poor freeman claims sympathy; he is so abject, that often even the slave despises him. The slave-holder is the competitor of the free laborer, and by the lease of slaves, takes the bread from his mouth. The wealthy Craseus, the richest man in Rome, was the competitor of the poorest free carpenter. The Roman patricians took away the business of the sandal-maker. The existence of slavery made the opulent owners of bondmen the rivals of the poor; greedy after the profits of their labor, and monopolising those profits through their slaves.

The laws of Gracchus cut the patricians with a double edge. Their fortunes consisted in land and slaves; it questioned their titles to the public land, and tended to force emancipation by making their slaves a burden. In taking away the soil, it took away the power that kept their live machinery in motion.

The moment was a real crisis in the affairs of Rome; such a crisis as hardly occurs to a nation in the progress of many centuries. Men are in the habit of proscribing Julius Cæsar as the destroyer of the Commonwealth. The civil wars, the revolutions of Cæsar, the miserable vicissitudes of the Roman emperors, the avarice of the nobles and the rabble, the crimes of the forum and the palace, — all have their germ in the ill success of the reform of Gracchus.

We pass over the proofs of moderation which the man of the people exhibited, by appearing in the Senate, where he had hoped to obtain from the justice of the patricians some reasonable compromise. The attempt of the aristocracy to check all procedures in the assembly of the people, by instigating another tribune to interpose his veto, was defeated by the prompt decision of the people to depose the faithless representative; and the final success of Gracchus seemed established by the unanimous decision of the commons in favor of his decree. But such delays had been created by his opponents, that the year of his tribuneship was nearly passed; his re-election was needed in order to carry his decree into effect. But the evil in Rome was already too deep to be removed. The election day for tribunes was in mid-summer; the few husbandmen, the only shadow of a Roman yeomanry, were busy in the field, gathering their crops, and failed to come to the support of their champion. He was left to rest his defense on the rabble of the city; and though early in the morning great crowds of people gathered together; and though, as Gracchus appeared in the forum, a shout of joy rent the skies, and was redoubled as he ascended the steps of the Capitol, yet when the aristocracy, determined at every hazard to prevent his election, came with the whole weight of their adherents in a mass, the timid flock, yielding to the sentiment of awe rather than of cowardice, fled like sheep before wolves, and left their defender, the incomparable Gracchus, to be beaten to death by the clubs of senators. Three hundred of his more faithful friends were left lifeless in the market-place. In the fury of triumphant passion, the corpse of the tribune was dragged through the streets, and thrown into the Tiber.

The deluded aristocracy raised the full chorus of victory and joy. They believed that the Senate had routed the democracy, when it was but the avenging spirit of slavery, that struck the first deadly wound into the bosom of Rome.

The murder of Gracchus proved the weakness of the senate; they could defeat the people only by violence. But the blood of their victim, like the blood of other martyrs, cemented his party. It was impossible to carry the Agrarian Law into execution; it was equally impossible to effect its repeal.

Gracchus had interceded for the unhappy indigent freeman, whose independence was crushed by the institution of slavery. The slaves themselves were equally sensible of their wrongs; and in the island of Sicily they resolved on an insurrection. Differing