order of which it embodied the vices, but in a certain proportion, to be gradually increased, from the educated part of the upper middle class, or, in Roman phrase, from the best Equites. The next step would have been a Land Act, having for its object to restore the class of small farmers, and so to create a healthy nucleus for a lower middle class. When Sulla planted his military colonies, he was the Cadmus of agrarian reform; he was sowing the face of the land with dragon-seed from which armed men were to start up. The gradual disappearance of these settlements under the grinding pressure from above meant not only what the failure of the Gracchan scheme meant, the extinction of so many peasant-holders; it meant, further, that the active elements of disorder were reinforced by innumerable adventurers of military instinct and aptitude, ready for any civil war that promised to repair their fortunes. The distempers of government and society with which Sulla attempted to deal were already beyond the reach of normal legislation, which might occasionally mitigate the virulence of particular symptoms, but could not penetrate to the deeper springs of evil. A dictator, with plenary authority and of intrepid ability, was indispensable, if the progress of the disease was to be arrested. Such a dictator, acting in the temporary political vacuum caused by the suspension of ordinary forces, might replenish the failing sources of health, reinvigorate the sound parts of the Constitution, and, after the breathing-space which his own supremacy secured,
Page:Essays and Addresses.djvu/309
