were not only legally acquired but inviolable, then they raised the mask, and by a bold step swept away the vectigal,[32] thus leaving their property free.  The enactment of this law virtually closed the long struggle between patrician and plebeian over the public lands of Rome, and left them as full property in the hands of the rich nobility.  The results could hardly have been otherwise.  Sumptuary laws, false economic principles, had closed all channels[33] of trade and manufacture to the nobility, while conquest had filled their hands with gold and placed at their disposal vast numbers[34] of slaves.  There was but one channel open for the investment of this gold,—­the agrarian.[35] Farming and cattle-raising were the only occupations in which slaves could be used with advantage and so, as a natural result of Roman economics, the plebeian, with little or no money and subject to the military call, was compelled to enter into a one-sided contest with capital and slave labor.  So long as these conditions existed so long would all the laws of the world fail to save him from abject poverty and its attendant evils.

[Footnote 1:  Rudorff, Ackergesetz des Spurius Thorius, Zeitschrift fuer geschichtliche Rechtswissenschaft, Band X, s. 1-158.  Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, vol.  V, pp. 75-86.  Wordsworth, Specimens and Fragments of Early Latin, 440-459.]

[Footnote 2:  Appian, Bell.  Civ., I, c. 27.]

[Footnote 3:  Ihne, Roman History, V, 9.]

[Footnote 4:  Momm., Rom.  Hist., III, 165.]

[Footnote 5:  Long, Decline of the Rom.  Rep., I, 352.  See Lange, Roem.  Alter., III, 48.]

[Footnote 6:  Long, loc. cit.]

[Footnote 7:  Momm., III, 161; Ihne, V, 10.]

[Footnote 8:  Long, loc. cit.]

[Footnote 9:  Lange, III, 48-49; Marquardt u.  Momm., IV, 108.]

[Footnote 10:  Long, loc. cit. Momm., III, 167-168; Ihne, V, 8-10.]

[Footnote 11:  Appian, I, c. 27.]

[Footnote 12:  Long, I, 353.]

[Footnote 13:  Long, I, 354.]

[Footnote 14:  Ihne, V, 10-11.]

[Footnote 15:  Long, I, 353; Wordsworth, 440; Momm., III, 165, note; Ihne, V, 9; Lange, III, 48; Appian, I, c. 27.]

[Footnote 16:  Cicero, Brut., 36.]

[Footnote 17:  Cicero, De Orat., II, 70.]

[Footnote 18:  Marquardt u.  Momm., Roem.  Alter., IV, 108, n. 4; Wordsworth, 441.]

[Footnote 19:  Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, vol.  I, p. 74.]

[Footnote 20:  Appian, I, c. 27.]

[Footnote 21:  Long, I, 355; Wordsworth, 440.]

[Footnote 22:  Long, I, 355; Wordsworth, 440; See Rudorff, Ack. des Sp.  Thor.]

[Footnote 23:  Zeitschrift fuer geschichtliche Rechtswissenschaft, Band X, s. 1-194.]

[Footnote 24:  C.I.L., I, pp. 75-86.]

[Footnote 25:  Long, I, 356.]