hiefly by the extension
of the Roman economy and the throwing of the capital which existed in
Latium into the field of mercantile activity opened up throughout the
range of the Mediterranean. Now even the extended field of business
was no longer able to contain the increased mass of capital; and an
insane legislation laboured simultaneously to compel the investment
of senatorial capital by artificial means in Italian estates, and
systematically to reduce the value of the arable land of Italy by
interference with the prices of grain. Thus there began a second
campaign of capital against free labour or--what was substantially the
same thing in antiquity--against the small farmer system; and, if the
first had been bad, it yet seemed mild and humane as compared with the
second. The capitalists no longer lent to the farmer at interest
--a course, which in itself was not now practicable because the petty
landholder no longer aimed at any considerable surplus, and was
moreover not sufficiently simple and radical--but they bought up the
farms and converted them, at the best, into estates managed by
stewards and worked by slaves. This likewise was called agriculture;
it was essentially the application of the capitalist system to the
production of the fruits of the soil. The description of the
husbandmen, which Cato gives, is excellent and quite just; but how
does it correspond to the system itself, which he portrays and
recommends? If a Roman senator, as must not unfrequently have been
the case, possessed four such estates as that described by Cato, the
same space, which in the olden time when small holdings prevailed had
supported from 100 to 150 farmers' families, was now occupied by one
family of free persons and about 50, for the most part unmarried,
slaves. If this was the remedy by which the decaying national economy
was to be restored to vigour, it bore, unhappily, an aspect of extreme
resemblance to the disease.

Development of Italy

The general result of this system is only too clearly obvious in the
changed proportions of the population. It is true that the condition
of the various districts of Italy was very unequal, and some were even
prosperous. The farms, instituted in great numbers in the region
between the Apennines and the Po at the time of its colonization, did
not so speedily disappear. Polybius, who visited that quarter not
long after the close of the present period, commends its numerous,
hands