On general grounds we should expect our system to have a better effect on the intelligence and character of the people, and to secure better officials.  The discussion of public questions, even in a partisan way, brings them to the attention of the people, sets the people thinking, and helps to educate voters on political and economic matters.  If we may draw an inference from the election posters in Pompeii, such subjects played a small part in a city election under the Empire.  It must have been demoralizing, too, to a Pompeian or a citizen of Salona to vote for a candidate, not because he would make the most honest and able duumvir or aedile among the men canvassing for the office, but because he had the longest purse.  How our sense of propriety would be shocked if the newly elected mayor of Hartford or Montclair should give a gala performance in the local theatre to his fellow-citizens or pay for a free exhibition by a circus troupe!  But perhaps we should overcome our scruples and go, as the people of Pompeii did, and perhaps our consciences would be completely salved if the aforesaid mayor proceeded to lay a new pavement in Main Street, to erect a fountain on the Green, or stucco the city hall.  Naturally only rich men could be elected to office in Roman towns, and in this respect the same advantages and disadvantages attach to the Roman system as we find in the practice which the English have followed up to the present time of paying no salary to members of the House of Commons, and in our own practice of letting our ambassadors meet a large part of their legitimate expenses.

The large gifts made to their native towns by rich men elected to public office set an example which private citizens of means followed in an extraordinary way.  Sometimes they gave statues, or baths, or fountains, or porticos, and sometimes they provided for games, or plays, or dinners, or lottery tickets.  Perhaps nothing can convey to our minds so clear an impression of the motives of the donors, the variety and number of the gifts, and their probable effect on the character of the people as to read two or three specimens of these dedicatory inscriptions.  The citizens of Lanuvium, near Rome, set up a monument in honor of a certain Valerius, “because he cleaned out and restored the water courses for a distance of three miles, put the pipes in position again, and restored the two baths for men and the bath for women, all at his own expense."[96] A citizen of Sinuessa leaves this record:  “Lucius Papius Pollio, the duumvir, to his father, Lucius Papius.  Cakes and mead to all the citizens of Sinuessa and Caedici; gladiatorial games and a dinner for the people of Sinuessa and the Papian clan; a monument at a cost of 12,000 sesterces."[97] Such a catholic provision to suit all tastes should certainly have served to keep his father from being forgotten.  A citizen of Beneventum lays claim to distinction because “he first scattered tickets among the people by means of which