it
abolished the former summary proceedings in execution on a loan-debt,
and laid down the rule that no Roman burgess could be led away to
bondage except upon the sentence of jurymen.

Continued Distress

It is plain that all these expedients might perhaps in some respects
mitigate, but could not remove, the existing economic disorders.
The continuance of the distress is shown by the appointment of a
bank-commission to regulate the relations of credit and to provide
advances from the state-chest in 402, by the fixing of legal payment
by instalments in 407, and above all by the dangerous popular
insurrection about 467, when the people, unable to obtain new
facilities for the payment of debts, marched out to the Janiculum,
and nothing but a seasonable attack by external enemies, and the
concessions contained in the Hortensian law,(10) restored peace to
the community. It is, however, very unjust to reproach these earnest
attempts to check the impoverishment of the middle class with their
inadequacy. The belief that it is useless to employ partial and
palliative means against radical evils, because they only remedy
them in part, is an article of faith never preached unsuccessfully
by baseness to simplicity, but it is none the less absurd. On the
contrary, we may ask whether the vile spirit of demagogism had not
even thus early laid hold of this matter, and whether expedients were
really needed so violent and dangerous as, for example, the deduction
of the interest paid from the capital. Our documents do not enable
us to decide the question of right or wrong in the case. But we
recognize clearly enough that the middle class of freeholders
still continued economically in a perilous and critical position;
that various endeavours were made by those in power to remedy it by
prohibitory laws and by respites, but of course in vain; and that the
aristocratic ruling class continued to be too weak in point of control
over its members, and too much entangled in the selfish interests of
its order, to relieve the middle class by the only effectual means at
the disposal of the government--the entire and unreserved abolition
of the system of occupying the state-lands--and by that course to free
the government from the reproach of turning to its own advantage the
oppressed position of the governed.

Influence of the Extension of the Roman Dominion in Elevating the
Farmer-Class

A more effectual relief than any which the governm