Excerpts from LETTER LII on
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Power [in Rome] was lodged
with the senate, a body which, though by the emulation of its members too much
disposed to war, and ambitious of conquest, was never surpassed in magnanimity,
ability, or in steadiness, by any council of state whatever. The people had
submitted to the senate, as possessed of an authority which was founded in the
prevailing opinion of their superior worth; and even the most aspiring of the
commons allowed themselves to be governed by an order of men, amongst whom they
themselves, by proper efforts and suitable merit, might hope to ascend.
. . . The
nobles began to avail themselves of the high authority and advantages of their
station, and to accumulate property as well as honours.
Citizens contended for offices in the state, as the road to lucrative
appointments abroad; and when they had obtained this end, and had reigned for a
while in some province, they brought back from their government a profusion of
wealth ill acquired, and the habit of arbitrary and uncontrolled command. When
disappointed in the pursuits of fortune abroad, they became the leaders of
dangerous factions at home; or, when suddenly possessed of great wealth, they
became the agents of corruption, to disseminate idleness and the love of
ruinous amusements in the minds of the people.
The city was gradually crowded with a populace, who, tempted with the cheap or
gratuitous distribution of corn, by the frequency of public shows, by the
consequence they enjoyed as members of the popular assemblies, flocked to Rome.
There they were corrupted by idleness and indigence; and the order itself was
continually [augmented] by the frequent accession of emancipated slaves. A
turbulent populace tyrannized, in their turn, over the masters of the world,
and wreaked on the conquerors of so many nations the evils
which they themselves had so freely inflicted on mankind. Citizens of
this extraction . . . became a part of that faction, who are ever actuated by
envy to their superiors, by mercenary views, or by abject fear; who are ever
ready to espouse the cause of any leader, against the restraints of public
order; disposed to vilify the more respectable ranks of men, and, by their
indifference on the subjects of justice or honour, to
frustrate every principle that may be employed for the government of mankind,
besides fear and compulsion.
Although citizens of this description were yet far from being the majority at
Rome, yet it is probable that they were in numbers sufficient to contaminate
the whole body of the people. . . While the inferior
people sunk in their characters, or were debased by the circumstances
mentioned, the superior ranks, by their application to affairs of state, by
their education, by the ideas of high birth and family distinction, by the
superiority of fortune, began to rise in their estimation, in their
pretensions, and in their power; and they entertained some degree of contempt
for persons, whom the laws still required them to admit as their
fellow-citizens and equals.
In this disposition of parties, so dangerous in a commonwealth, and amidst
materials so likely to catch the flame, some sparks were thrown, that soon
kindled up anew all the popular animosities which
seemed to have been so long extinguished. Tiberius Gracchus, born of a plebeian
family, but ennobled by the honours of his father, by
his descent, on the side of his mother, from the first Scipio Africanus, and by his alliance with the second Scipio, who
had married his sister, being now a tribune of the people, and possessed of all
the accomplishments required in a popular leader, great ardour,
resolution, and eloquence, formed a project in itself extremely alarming, and
in its consequences dangerous to the peace of the republic. Being called to
account for his conduct as quæstor in Spain, the
severity he experienced from the senate, and the protection he obtained from
the people, filled his breast with animosity to the one, and a prepossession in
favour of the other. Actuated by these dispositions,
or by an idea not uncommon to enthusiastic minds, that the unequal distribution
of property, so favourable to the rich, is an injury
to the poor, he proposed a revival of the law or Licinius,
by which Roman citizens had been restrained from accumulating estates in land
above the value of five hundred jugera, little more
than half as many acres.
This was impracticable, and even dangerous, in the present state of the
republic. The distinctions of poor and rich are as necessary, in states of
considerable extent, as labour and good government.
The poor are destined to labour; and the rich, by the
advantages of education, independence, and leisure, are qualified for superior
stations. The empire was now greatly extended, and owed its safety, and the
order of its government, to a respectable aristocracy, founded on the
possession of fortune, as well as personal qualities and public honours. The rich were not, without some violent
convulsion, to be stripped of estates which they themselves had bought, or
which they had inherited from their ancestors. The poor were
not qualified at once to be raised to a state of equality with persons
inured to a better condition. The project seemed to be as ruinous to government
as it was to the security of property, and tended to place the members of the
commonwealth, by one rash and precipitate step, in situations in which they
were not at all qualified to act. For these reasons, as well as from motives of
private interest affecting the majority of the nobles, the project of Tiberius
was strenuously opposed by the senate; and, from motives of envy, interest, or
mistaken zeal for justice, as warmly supported by the opposite party. Acting in
concert with Appius Claudius, whose daughter he had
married, a senator of the family of Crassus, who was then at the head of the
priesthood, and Mutius Scævola
the consul, he exhausted all his art, and displayed all his eloquence in
declamation; but when he came to propose that the law should be read, he found
that his opponents had procured M. Octavius, one of
his colleagues, to interpose his negative, and forbid any further proceeding in
the business. Here, according to the law and the constitution, the matter
should have dropped: but inflamed and unbalanced parties are not to be
restrained by laws and constitutions. . . The constitution thus violated,
Gracchus next violated the sacred character of his colleague the tribune. The senate were transported with indignation; violence ensued,
and the two Gracchi fell. Afterwards Marius carried the popular pretentions
still higher; and Sylla might, if he would, have been
emperor. Cæsar followed, and completed the
catastrophe.
This [Roman] commonwealth, by the splendor of
its actions, the extent of its empire, the wisdom of its councils, the talents,
integrity, and courage of a multitude of characters, exhibits the fairest
prospect of our species, and is the most signal example, excepting England, of
the wisdom and utility of a mixture of the three powers in a commonwealth: on
the other hand, the various vicissitudes of its fortune, its perpetual domestic
contests, and internal revolutions, are the clearest proofs of the evils
arising from the want of complete independence in each branch, and from an
ineffectual balance.