X. The first law that Solon enacted in his new capacity was bold and
decisive. No revolution can ever satisfy a people if it does not
lessen their burdens. Poverty disposes men to innovation only because
innovation promises relief. Solon therefore applied himself
resolutely, and at once, to the great source of dissension between the
rich and the poor--namely, the enormous accumulation of debt which had
been incurred by the latter, with slavery, the penalty of default. He
induced the creditors to accept the compromise of their debts: whether
absolutely cancelling the amount, or merely reducing the interest and
debasing the coin, is a matter of some dispute; the greater number of
authorities incline to the former supposition, and Plutarch quotes the
words of Solon himself in proof of the bolder hypothesis, although
they by no means warrant such an interpretation. And to remove for
ever the renewal of the greatest grievance in connexion with the past
distresses, he enacted a law that no man hereafter could sell himself
in slavery for the discharge of a debt. Even such as were already
enslaved were emancipated, and those sold by their creditors into
foreign countries were ransomed, and restored to their native land,
But, though (from the necessity of the times) Solon went to this
desperate extent of remedy, comparable in our age only to the formal
sanction of a national bankruptcy, he rejected with firmness the wild
desire of a division of lands. There may be abuses in the contraction
of debts which require far sterner alternatives than the inequalities
of property. He contented himself in respect to the latter with a law
which set a limit to the purchase of land--a theory of legislation not
sufficiently to be praised, if it were possible to enforce it [202].
At first, these measures fell short of the popular expectation,
excited by the example of Sparta into the hope of an equality of
fortunes: but the reaction soon came. A public sacrifice was offered