Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/67

 may be traced through the changes in the character of that majority of the citizens, wham it left without the opportunity or the fruits of industry. Even in the time of the younger Gracchus, they retained dignity enough to hope for an amelioration of their condition by the action of laws, and the exercise of their own franchisee. Failing in this end through the firmness of the nobles, the free middling class was entirely destroyed; society soon became divided into the very rich and the very poor; and slaves, who performed all the labor, occupied the intermediate position between the two classes. The first step in the progress of degradation constituted the citizens, by their own vote, a class of paupers. They called on the state to feed them from the public granaries. But mark the difference between the pauper system of England, or America, and that of home. We cheerfully sustain in decent competence the aged, the widow, the cripple, the sick and the orphan; Rome supplied the great body of her citizens. England, who also feeds a large proportion of her laboring class, entrusts to her paupers no elective franchises. Rome fed with eleemosynary corn the majority of her citizens, who retained, even in their condition of paupers, the privileges of electing the government, and the right of supreme, ultimate legislation. Thus besides the select wealthy idlers, here was a new class of idlers, a multitudinous aristocracy, having no estate but their citizenship, no inheritance but their right of suffrage. Both were a burden upon the industry of the slaves; the senate directly from the revenues of their plantations, the commons indirectly, from the coffers of the Commonwealth. It was a burden greater than the fruits of slave industry could boar; the deficiency was supplied by the plunder of foreign countries. The Romans, as a nation, became an accomplished horde of robbers. This first step was ominous enough; the second was still more alarming. A demagogue appeared, and gaining office, and the conduct of a war, organized these pauper electors into a regular army. The demagogue was Marius; the movement was a revolution. Hitherto the senate had exercised an exclusive control over the brute force of the Commonwealth; the mob was now armed and enrolled, and led by an accomplished chieftain. Both parties being thus possessed of great physical force, the civil wars between the wealthy slaveholders and the impoverished freemen, the select and the multitudinous aristocracy of Rome, could not but ensue. Marius and Sylla were the respective leaders; the streets of Rome and the fields of Italy became the scenes of massacre; and the oppressed bondmen had the satisfaction of beholding the jarring parties, in the nation which had enslaved them, shed each other's blood as freely as water.

This was not all. The slaves had their triumph. Sylla selected ten thousand from their number, and to gain influence for himself at the polls, conferred on them freedom, and the elective franchise.

Of the two great leaders of the opposite factions, it has been asserted that Sylla had a distinct purpose, and that Marius never had. The remark is true, and the reason is obvious. Sylla was the organ of the aristocracy; to the party which already possessed all the wealth, he desired to secure all the political power. This was a definite object, and in one sense was attainable. Having effected a revolution, and having taken vengeance on the enemies of the senate, he retired from office. He could not have retained perpetual authority; the forms of the ancient republic were then too vigorous, and the party on which he rested for support, would not have tolerated the usurpation. He established the supremacy of the senate, and retired into private life. Marius, as the leader of the people, was met by insuperable difficulties. The existence of a slave population rendered it impossible to elevate the character of his indigent constituents; nor were they possessed of sufficient energy to grasp political power with tenacity. He could therefore only embody them among his soldiers, and leave the issue to Providence. His partisans suffered from evils, which it required centuries to ripen and to heal; Marius could have no plan.