stage seems certainly to have been reached in the social problems
presented by the times. In the old days of the struggle between the
orders the question of privilege had sometimes overshadowed the purely
economic issue, and although a close scrutiny of those days of turmoil
shows that the dominant note in the conflict was often a mere pretext
meant to serve the personal ambition of the champions of the Plebs, yet
the appearance rather than the reality of an issue imposes on the
imagination of the mob, and political emancipation had been thought a
boon even when hard facts had shown that its greater prizes had fallen
to a small and selfish minority. Now, however, there could be no
illusion. There was nothing but material wants on one side, there was
nothing but material power on the other. The intellectual claims which
might be advanced to justify a monopoly of office and of wealth, could
be met by an intellectual superiority on the part of a demagogue
clamouring for confiscation. The ultimate basis of the life of the State
was for the first time to be laid bare and subjected to a merciless
scrutiny; it remained to be seen which of the two great forces of
society would prevail; the force of habit which had so often blinded the
Roman to his real needs; or the force of want which, because it so
seldom won a victory over his innate conservatism, was wont, when that
victory had been won, to sweep him farther on the path of reckless and
inconsistent reform than it would have carried a race better endowed
with the gift of testing at every stage of progress the ends and needs
of the social organism considered as a whole.

An analysis of social discontent at any period of history must take the
form of an examination of the wants engendered by the age, and of the
adequacy or inadequacy of their means of satisfaction. If we turn our
attention first to the forces of society which were in possession of the
fortress and were to be the object of attack, we shall find that the