of 320,000, was reduced by the exclusion of all individuals having means or otherwise provided for to 150,000, and this number was fixed once for all as the maximum number of recipients of free corn; at the same time an annual revision of the list was ordered, so that the places vacated by removal or death might be again filled up with the most needful among the applicants.  By this conversion of the political privilege into a provision for the poor, a principle remarkable in a moral as well as in a historical point of view came for the first time into living operation.  Civil society but slowly and gradually works its way to a perception of the interdependence of interests; in earlier antiquity the state doubtless protected its members from the public enemy and the murderer, but it was not bound to protect the totally helpless fellow-citizen from the worse enemy, want, by affording the needful means of subsistence.  It was the Attic civilization which first developed, in the Solonian and post-Solonian legislation, the principle that it is the duty of the community to provide for its invalids and indeed for its poor generally and it was Caesar that first developed what in the restricted compass of Attic life had remained a municipal matter into an organic institution of state, and transformed an arrangement, which was a burden and a disgrace for the commonwealth, into the first of those institutions—­in modern times as countless as they are beneficial—­where the infinite depth of human compassion contends with the infinite depth of human misery.

The Budget of Income

In addition to these fundamental reforms a thorough revision of the income and expenditure took place.  The ordinary sources of income were everywhere regulated and fixed.  Exemption from taxation was conferred on not a few communities and even on whole districts, whether indirectly by the bestowal of the Roman or Latin franchise, or directly by special privilege; it was obtained e. g. by all the Sicilian communities(41) in the former, by the town of Ilion in the latter way.  Still greater was the number of those whose proportion of tribute was lowered; the communities in Further Spain, for instance, already after Caesar’s governorship had on his suggestion a reduction of tribute granted to them by the senate, and now the most oppressed province of Asia had not only the levying of its direct taxes facilitated, but also a third of them wholly remitted.  The newly-added taxes, such as those of the communities subdued in Illyria and above all of the Gallic communities—­which latter together paid annually 40,000,000 sesterces (400,000 pounds)—­ were fixed throughout on a low scale.  It is true on the other hand that various towns such as Little Leptis in Africa, Sulci in Sardinia, and several Spanish communities, had their tribute raised by way of penalty for their conduct during the last war.  The very lucrative Italian harbour-tolls abolished in the recent times