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 as the price and as the acknowledgment of the concession of domain; and, on the other hand, paid no taxes on his possessions, if, as there is good reason to believe, only citizens’ property was taxed.”—Laboulaye: History of Property.

In order thoroughly to understand the preceding quotation, we must know that the estates of citizens—that is, estates independent of the public domain, whether they were obtained in the division of Numa, or had since been sold by the questors—were alone regarded as property; upon these a tax, or cense, was imposed. On the contrary, the estates obtained by concessions of the public domain, of the ager publicus (for which a light rent was paid), were called possessions. Thus, among the Romans, there was a right of property and a right of possession regulating the administration of all estates. Now, what did the proletaires wish? That the jus possessionis—the simple right of possession — should be extended to them at the expense, as is evident, not of private property, but of the public domain,—agri publici. The proletaires, in short, demanded that they should be tenants of the land which they had conquered. This demand, the patricians in their avarice never would accede to. Buying as much of this land as they could, they afterwards found means of obtaining the rest as possessions. Upon this land they employed their slaves. The people, who could not buy, on account of the competition of the rich, nor hire, because—cultivating with their own hands—they could not promise a rent equal to the revenue which the land would yield when cultivated by slaves, were always deprived of possession and property.

Civil wars relieved, to some extent, the sufferings of the multitude. “The people enrolled themselves under the banners of the ambitious, in order to obtain by force that which