Page:The history of Rome. Translated with the author's sanction and additions.djvu/219

stitution, and may be easily explained partly by the distribution of the clan-lands, which of itself must have produced as of larger landholders in consequence of the necessary inequality in the numbers of the persons included in the several clans and participating in the distribution, and partly by the abundant influx of mercantile capital to Rome. But farming on a large scale in the strict sense and implying a considerable establishment of slaves, such as we afterwards meet with at Rome, cannot be supposed to have existed during this period. On the contrary to this period we must refer the ancient definition, which represents the senators as called fathers from the fields which they parcelled out among the common people as a father among his children; and originally the landowner must have distributed that portion of his land which he was unable to farm himself, or even his whole estate, into little parcels among his dependents to be cultivated by them, as is the general practice in Italy at the present day. The recipient might be the house-child or slave of the granter; if he was a free man, his position was that which subsequently went by the name of "occupancy on sufferance" (precarium). The recipient retained his occupancy during pleasure, and had no legal means of protecting himself in possession; on the contrary the granter could eject him at any time when he pleased. The relation did not necessarily involve any payment on the part of the person who had the usufruct of the soil to its proprietor; but such a payment doubtless frequently took place and, it is probable, consisted ordinarily in the tribute of a portion of the produce. The relation in that case approximated to the of subsequent times, but remained always distinguished from it partly by the absence of a term for its expiry, partly by its non-actionable character, the only protection accorded by law to any demand under the lease being based on the lessor's right of ejection. It is plain that it was essentially a relation based on mutual fidelity, which could not subsist without the help of the powerful sanction of custom consecrated by religion; and this was not wanting. The institution of clientship, altogether of a moral-religious nature, beyond doubt rested fundamentally on this assignation of the its of the soil. Nor was the introduction of such assignations dependent on the abolition of the system of common tillage; for just as afterwards the individual, so in earlier times the gens could grant to dependents the usufruct of its