The encroachment of large proprietors upon small proprietors, by the aid of usury, farm-rent, and profits of all sorts, was common throughout the empire.The most honest citizens invested their money at high rates of interest.Cato, Cicero, Brutus, all the stoics so noted for their frugality, _viri frugi_,--Seneca, the teacher of virtue,--levied enormous taxes in the provinces, under the name of usury; and it is something remarkable, that the last defenders of the republic, the proud Pompeys, were all usurious aristocrats, and oppressors of the poor.But the battle of Pharsalus, having killed men only, without touching institutions, the encroachments of the large domains became every day more active.Ever since the birth of Christianity, the Fathers have opposed this invasion with all their might.Their writings are filled with burning curses upon this crime of usury, of which Christians are not always innocent.
Fifty, sixty, and eighty per cent.--Course of M.Blanqui.
St.Cyprian complains of certain bishops of his time, who, absorbed in disgraceful stock-jobbing operations, abandoned their churches, and went about the provinces appropriating lands by artifice and fraud, while lending money and piling up interests upon interests.Why, in the midst of this passion for accumulation, did not the possession of the public land, like private property, become concentrated in a few hands?
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_Episcopi plurimi, quos et hortamento esse oportet caeteris et exemplo, divina prouratione contempta, procuratores rerum saeularium fieri, derelicta cathedra, plebe leserta, per alienas provincias oberrantes, negotiationis quaestuosae nundinas au uucu-, pari, esurientibus in ecclesia fratribus habere argentum largitur velle, fundos insidi.sis fraudibus rapere, usuris multiplicantibus faenus augere._--Cyprian: De Lapsis.
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In this passage, St.Cyprian alludes to lending on mortgages and to compound interest.
By law, the domain of the State was inalienable, and consequently possession was always revocable; but the edict of the praetor continued it indefinitely, so that finally the possessions of the patricians were transformed into absolute property, though the name, possessions, was still applied to them.This conversion, instigated by senatorial avarice; owed its accomplishment to the most deplorable and indiscreet policy.If, in the time of Tiberius Gracchus, who wished to limit each citizen's possession of the ager publicus to five hundred acres, the amount of this possession had been fixed at as much as one family could cultivate, and granted on the express condition that the possessor should cultivate it himself, and should lease it to no one, the empire never would have been desolated by large estates; and possession, instead of increasing property, would have absorbed it.On what, then, depended the establishment and maintenance of equality in conditions and fortunes? On a more equitable division of the ager publicus, a wiser distribution of the right of possession.
I insist upon this point, which is of the utmost importance, because it gives us an opportunity to examine the history of this individual possession, of which I said so much in my first memoir, and which so few of my readers seem to have understood.
The Roman republic--having, as it did, the power to dispose absolutely of its territory, and to impose conditions upon possessors--was nearer to liberty and equality than any nation has been since.If the Senate had been intelligent and just,--if, at the time of the retreat to the Mons Sacer, instead of the ridiculous farce enacted by Menenius Agrippa, a solemn renunciation of the right to acquire had been made by each citizen on attaining his share of possessions,--the republic, based upon equality of possessions and the duty of labor, would not, in attaining its wealth, have degenerated in morals;Fabricius would have enjoyed the arts without controlling artists; and the conquests of the ancient Romans would have been the means of spreading civilization, instead of the series of murders and robberies that they were.
But property, having unlimited power to amass and to lease, was daily increased by the addition of new possessions.From the time of Nero, six individuals were the sole proprietors of one-half of Roman Africa.In the fifth century, the wealthy families had incomes of no less than two millions: some possessed as many as twenty thousand slaves.All the authors who have written upon the causes of the fall of the Roman republic concur.
M.Giraud of Aix quotes the testimony of Cicero, Seneca, Plutarch, Olympiodorus, and Photius.Under Vespasian and Titus, Pliny, the naturalist, exclaimed: "Large estates have ruined Italy, and are ruining the provinces." "Inquiries concerning Property among the Romans."But it never has been understood that the extension of property was effected then, as it is to-day, under the aegis of the law, and by virtue of the constitution.When the Senate sold captured lands at auction, it was in the interest of the treasury and of public welfare.When the patricians bought up possessions and property, they realized the purpose of the Senate's decrees; when they lent at high rates of interest, they took advantage of a legal privilege."Property," said the lender, "is the right to enjoy even to the extent of abuse, _jus utendi et abutendi_; that is, the right to lend at interest,--to lease, to acquire, and then to lease and lend again." But property is also the right to exchange, to transfer, and to sell.If, then, the social condition is such that the proprietor, ruined by usury, may be compelled to sell his possession, the means of his subsistence, he will sell it; and, thanks to the law, accumulated property--devouring and anthropophagous property--will be established.
