nor was this right extended to the plebeians until after they had been admitted to full citizenship.  With regard to the state the possessor[20] was merely a tenant at will and could be removed whenever desired; but as regarded other persons he was like the owner of the soil and could alienate the land which he occupied either for a term of years, or forever, as if he were the real proprietor.[21] The public land thus occupied was looked to as a resource upon the admission of new citizens.  They customarily received a small freehold according to the general notion of antiquity that a burgess must be a landowner.  This land could only be found by a divison of that which belonged to the public, and a consequent ejectment of the tenants at will.  In the Greek states every large accession to the number of citizens was followed by a call for a division of the public lands and, as this division involved the sacrifice of many existing interests, it was regarded with aversion by the old burgesses as an act of revolution.

A great part of the wealth of the Romans consisted in domains of this kind, and the question will occur to the thoughtful mind how the government was able to keep the most distinguished part of her citizens in a legal position so uncertain and alarming.  English law is very different from the Roman in this respect and would decide in favor of the tenant and against the state.  It is fairly possible that this uncertainty of tenure tended to render the government more stable and less liable to sudden revolutionary movements, thus having the same effect upon the Roman government which funded debts have upon the nations of to-day.

[Footnote 1:  Long, Decline of the Roman Rep., I, ch. 11.]

[Footnote 2:  Muirhead, Roman Law, 92.]

[Footnote 3:  Ortolan, Histoire de la legislation Romaine, p. 21.]

[Footnote 4:  Mommsen, I, 131; Arnold, I, 157.]

[Footnote 5:  Dionysius, IV, 11, Livy.]

[Footnote 6:  Ihne, I, 175.]

[Footnote 7:  Ihne, I, 175.]

[Footnote 8:  Livy, Bk.  I, c. 38, with note by Drachenborch; Livy, Bk.  VII, c. 31.]

[Footnote 9:  Siculus Flaccus, De Conditione Agrorum, 2, 3:  “Ut vero Romani omnium gentium potiti sunt, agros alios ex hoste captos in victorem populum partiti sunt, alios verro agros vendiderunt, ut Sabinorum ager qui dicitur quaestorius.”]

[Footnote 10:  Cicero, in Verrem, II, Bk. 3, Sec. 6.]

[Footnote 11:  Giraud, Droit de propriete chez les romains, 160.]

[Footnote 12:  Ihne, I, 175.]

[Footnote 13:  Muirhead, 92; Giraud, 165.]

[Footnote 14:  Higin., De Limit.  Const. apud Goes.  Rei Agr.  Script., pp. 159-160.]

[Footnote 15:  Giraud, 164.]

[Footnote 16:  Dionysius, II, 7.]

[Footnote 17:  Aristotle, Polit., [Greek:  Z. Keph. th. 7:  Anagkaion toinun eis duo merae diaeraesthai taen choran kai ton men einai koinaen, taen de ton idioton.]]