to keep a slave or two, just as the primary object of the ’mean white’ in America used to be to keep his negro. [Sidenote:  Failure of previous legislation.] On the whole, it is clear that legislation previous to this period had not diminished agrarian grievances, and it is clear also why these grievances were so sorely felt.  The general tendency at Rome and throughout Italy was towards a division of society into two classes—­the very rich and the very poor, a tendency which increased so fast that not many years later it was said that out of some 400,000 men at Rome only 2,000 could, in spite of the city being notoriously the centre to which the world’s wealth gravitated, be called really rich men.  To any patriot the progressive extinction of small land-owners must have seemed piteous in itself and menacing to the life of the State.  On the other hand, the poor had always one glaring act of robbery to cast in the teeth of the rich.  A sanguine tribune might hope permanently to check a growing evil by fresh supplies of free labour.  His poor partisan again had a direct pecuniary interest in getting the land.  Selfish and philanthropic motives therefore went hand in hand, and in advocating the distribution of land a statesman would be sure of enlisting the sympathies of needy Italians, even more than those of the better-provided-for poor of Rome.

[Sidenote:  Roman slavery.] Incidental mention has been made of the condition of the slaves in Italy.  It was the sight of the slave-gangs which partly at least roused Tiberius Gracchus to action, and some remarks on Roman slavery follow naturally an enquiry into the nature of the public land.  The most terrible characteristic of slavery is that it blights not only the unhappy slaves themselves, but their owners and the land where they live.  It is an absolutely unmitigated evil.  As Roman conquests multiplied and luxury increased, enormous fortunes became more common, and the demand for slaves increased also.  Ten thousand are said to have been landed and sold at Delos in one day.  What proportion the slave population of Italy bore to the free at the time of the Gracchi we cannot say.  It has been placed as low as 4 per cent., but the probability is that it was far greater. [Sidenote:  Slave labour universally employed.] In trades, mining, grazing, levying of revenue, and every field of speculation, slave-labour was universally employed.  If it is certain that even unenfranchised Italians, however poor, could be made to serve in the Roman army, it was a proprietor’s direct interest from that point of view to employ slaves, of whose services he could not be deprived.