"The cities of Greece," writes an acute observer, Fustel de Coulanges, "wavered between two revolutions: one that despoiled the rich, and another that reinstated them in the possession of their fortunes. This state of things continued from the Peloponnesian War up to the time of the Roman Conquest."1 огд The much vaunted community of goods in Sparta, of which superficial historians still continue to speak, never really existed. Great disproportion of fortune reigned more in Sparta than elsewhere; and, contrary to the assertions of some historians, up to the third century, that is to say, till the period of the demagogic revolutions, no division of landed property had been effectuated. "Sparta," as Montesquieu subtly remarks, "was but an army supported by the peasants."3 And a recent historian of Socialism acknowledges that it required "all the bad faith of a certain set of reactionists to hold up the tyrannical city. as the type of all Communistic realisation ".4 The concentration of capital, the rapid absorption of small properties, and the frequent revolutions excited by the abuses of the financial aristocracy, were the causes which produced in Greece the thinning of the agricultural population and the misery of the inhabitants, and prepared the nation to suffer without resistance, nay, to welcome perhaps with joy, foreign invasion and conquest. In all forms of human society there exists a phenomenon of capillarity in virtue of which individuals tend to raise themselves in the financial sphere as well as in the intellectual sphere. So long as class distinctions and rigid monarchies render it impossible to overstep certain limits, and men may not rise beyond the lowest level, so long as there exists no deeply 1 Fustel de Coulanges, La Cité Antique. Paris Hachette, 1870. * On the abuses of property in Sparta, see Aristotle, Politica, book ii., chap. ix. For all details respecting the social organisation of Sparta, etc., see Claude Jannet, Les institutions sociales et le droit civil à Sparte Ist edition Paris: Pedone Laurel, 1880. Montesquieu, Esprit des lois, book xxiii., chap. xvi. • Benoît Malon. felt economic inequality, nations live on and survive over long periods. But when Democracy renders it possible for all citizens to raise themselves, yet at the same time the profound economic inequalities existing keep men in a constant state of expectant aspiration, the number of births rapidly diminishes, and the development of the population is paralysed. The states of antiquity, when governed by a vigorous monarchy, or by democracies based on relative economic equality, were able to subsist and to develop during a long period of time. But the growth of democratic ideas and of Cæsarian democ"acy, accompanied by great economic inequalities, destroyed the ancient states, by rapidly arresting the increase of population. When Democracy is not joined to an economic constitution on a large basis, it has always the effect of diminishing population, or of keeping it at stagnation point. The concentration of property in democratic states is always followed by the anæmia of the nation. This invariable law can alone explain how the flourishing states of antiquity slowly perished. "The democratic institutions," very justly writes Laveleye, "have given no rest to men, unless when, as in Switzerland, or during primitive times, customs were simple and the conditions. equal." 1 Even ancient writers intuitively felt this profound truth. "Let us cite," says Polybius, "this decrease of the population, this penury of men experienced at the present day throughout Greece, which leaves our cities deserted and our fields untilled, when neither continual wars, nor scourges, such as the plague, have exhausted our strength."2 And Plutarch mournfully adds that at his time the whole of Greece could not furnish the 3000 hoplites, which in former 1 Laveleye, De la propriété et de ses formes primitives, p. 362. edit. 1891. Paris: Alcan, 4me édn. 2 Polybius, book xxxviii., 4-79. times the small town of Megara alone had sent to the battle of Platea. 1 In Rome the individualistic evolution of property, the formation of latifundia, the abuses of capitalistic property, the tyranny of the banking companies, all developed to a greater extent and more rapidly than in Greece, and consequently the social conflicts which for many centuries afflicted the State, and finally overthrew the colossal fabric of the Roman Empire, were far more violent and more intense than they had been in the other states of antiquity. The history of property in Rome is, in the main, nothing more than the history of the gradual assimilation of things mancipi to things nec mancipi; in other words, the assimilation of real estate to movable property. Things mancipi, according to Ulpian, originally consisted in inherited property in real estate on Italian soil, the slaves attached to rural property, and agricultural implements. The category of nec mancipi goods was open, indefinite, and such property might be alienated without any formalities, by simple traditio (assignment). So long as this distinction was maintained, it proved a serious obstacle to all concentration of revenue. But when equitas, prætorial jurisprudence, the jus gentium, by means of countless measures, removed almost all distinction between the two species of property, when, finally, all difference between cognati and agnati disappeared, and full liberty to devise by will was granted, the concentration of property became speedily effectuated. Then the Lex Furia, which prohibited all donations exceeding a thousand asses; the Lex Glicia, that obliged the testator, under pain of nullifying his will, to indicate just reasons in the case of his disinheriting his children; the Lex Falcidia, which assured a fourth part of the inheritance to the 1 Plutarch, De defectu oraculorum, chap. viii.; see also on this subject the very interesting book by Karl Bücher, Die Aufstände der unfreien Arbeiter, chap. iv., 1874. 2 See Sir H. Sumner Maine, L'ancien droit, pp. 208, 257, 265; and Letourneau, L'Évolution de la propriété, pp. 352, 358, 362, and 364. 3 Sumner Maine, L'ancien droit, p. 257. 4 Ulpian, Reg., xix. natural heirs; the Lex Julia et Papia Poppaa, obliging wealthy parents to settle a dowry on their marriageable daughters, all rendered the accumulation of great fortunes easy. But the evils caused by the concentration of property were much less serious, much less disastrous than those produced by the banking system and the concentration of capital. To these last causes the fall of Rome was due, in a far greater degree than to the invasion of the barbarians, or to the dissolving infiltrations of Christianity. If, by placing a feeble check on the abuses of the publicans and bankers, the empire was able to retard its decline, it did not succeed in warding off the final catastrophe, but merely delayed it. For several centuries the wealthy middle-class, composed of the order of knights and of publicans, placed themselves above the law, nor were the recriminations of the patricians, who felt the power slipping from them, nor the revolts of the plebeians, nor the tardy legislative measures, of any avail. Rome had originally been a small agricultural State, governed by an aristocracy. When, as the result of her conquests, the riches of the world flowed in, and colossal fortunes were formed, the distinctions between the social classes, between rich and poor, became very profound. Every time that a legislator or tribune sought to place a limit to the absorption of the smaller fortunes by bankers and capitalists, he either paid it with his life, like the prætor Sempronius Asellus, or was forced to halt in the face of unsurmountable difficulties. During several centuries all economic legislation in Rome did but serve the interests of the great proprietors. The contest with Carthage was simply a commercial contest. Delenda Carthago! was the cry of the Roman protectionists. Cicero relates that the Senate, composed of wealthy landed proprietors, caused the vineyards and olive groves of Gaul to be destroyed, in order to avoid a damaging competition with the rich Roman landlords,1 "The majority of the great landowners were greedy capitalists. Little by little they expropriated the greater part of the small proprietors of the soil 1 Cicero, De Republica, iii., 6. a large number of whom they also compelled to cultivate their own vast estates; for, according to Roman law, the insolvent debtor who had no security to offer, might not quit the land he had once occupied. Thus it came to pass that the free labourers were replaced by multitudes of slaves."1 The passage from the gens to the family community took place rapidly; but during the heroic period of Roman history, family communities, subject to the absolute arbitration of the father, formed small social units, bound together by solidarity and by ties of interest. When individual property began to develop rapidly, and restrictions were no longer laid on the liberty of bequeathing by will, when the increase in commercial exchange brought in immense wealth, and the conquests raised the number of slaves to millions, when the small proprietors, unable to withstand the competition of the latifundia, became bankrupt, and the policy of protectionism, which had induced the Romans, in their commercial hate, to destroy Carthage, became the constant rule of Roman economy, Italy was peopled by individuals living in the two extremes of wealth and poverty. "Economic evolution," writes Letourneau, "invariably goes hand in hand with moral evolution, to which it is absolutely co-relative. Accustomed as we now are to the individualistic régime, we wonder at the fierce patriotism that inflamed the citizens of the small cities and republics of antiquity. It was a sentiment inspired by the very instinct of self-preservation. In the bosom of the clan and family all interests were collective. A defeat might lead not only to total ruin, but even to slavery. This exalted patriotism was, after all, but an idealised love of property. But in proportion as economic Individualism progressed, the mass of the people became disaffected towards a res publica that had no longer anything public or popular to recommend it. The rich, the dominating classes, dreamt only of preserving and increasing their estates. As to the enslaved multitudes, what mattered it to them if they changed masters ? " 2 1 Letourneau, L'Évolution de la propriété, p. 356. |