direct legislative authority, had been allowed the right of reviewing any
new schemes which were to be submitted to the assembly. The constitutional
means of preventing tribunes from carrying unwise or unwelcome measures
lay in a consul's veto, or in the help of the College of Augurs, who could
declare the auspices unfavorable, and so close all public business. These
resources were so awkward that it had been found convenient to secure
beforehand the Senate's approbation, and the encroachment, being long
submitted to, was passing by custom into a rule. But the Senate, eager as
it was, had not yet succeeded in engrafting the practice into the
constitution. On the land question the leaders of the aristocracy were the
principal offenders. Disregarding usage, and conscious that the best men
of all ranks were with him, Tiberius Gracchus appealed directly to the
people to revive the agrarian law. His proposals were not extravagant.
That they should have been deemed extravagant was a proof of how much some
measure of the kind was needed. Where lands had been enclosed and money
laid out on them he was willing that the occupants should have
compensation. But they had no right to the lands themselves. Gracchus
persisted that the _ager publicus_ belonged to the people, and that
the race of yeomen, for whose protection the law had been originally
passed, must be re-established on their farms. No form of property gives
to its owners so much consequence as land, and there is no point on which
in every country an aristocracy is more sensitive. The large owners
protested that they had purchased their interests on the faith that the
law was obsolete. They had planted and built and watered with the sanction
of the government, and to call their titles in question was to shake the
foundations of society. The popular party pointed to the statute. The
monopolists were entitled in justice to less than was offered them. They
had no right to a compensation at all. Political passion awoke again after
the sleep of a century. The oligarchy had doubtless connived at the
accumulations. The suppression of the small holdings favored their