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The administration of the cursus publicus, or office of postmaster-general, was transferred from the prætorian prefects to the master of offices, and the same transferrence was made in regard to the manufactories of arms. On the other hand, the grand chamberlain, præpositus sacri cubiculi, was made an illustris, equal in rank to the prætorian prefects.
They could embrace a greater quantity of land in their grasp, and so save the trouble which attended an estimate of the returns of a great number of small holdings; they possessed more effective means of reclaiming waste or devastated land, for they had a greater control of capital and labour; lastly, through their large bands of clients and slaves, they had the means of efficiently protecting the land which they had occupied, and this must have been an important consideration at a time when large tracts of the ager publicus lay amidst foreign territories which were barely pacified, and were owned by communities that often wavered in their allegiance to Rome.
Finally, M. Troplong goes so far as to maintain that the Roman maxim, Nihil comune habet proprietas cum possessione which contains so striking an allusion to the possession of the ager publicus, and which, sooner or later, will be again accepted without qualification expresses in French law only a judicial axiom, a simple rule forbidding the union of an action possessoire with an action petitoire, an opinion as retrogressive as it is unphilosophical.
"All the way the universal outcry and curses of the people went along with them," says MERCURIUS PUBLICUS. "When these three carcasses arrived at Tyburn, they were pulled out of their coffins, and hanged at the several angles of that triple tree, where they hung till the sun was set; after which they were taken down, their heads cut off; and their loathsome trunks thrown into a deep hole under the gallows.
The establishment of two estates in land; one the ownership, the other the use, may be traced to the payment of rent, to the Roman commonwealth, for the AGER PUBLICUS. Under the feudal system the rent was of two classes personal service or money; the latter was considered base tenure.
But on the other hand, the fact that the kernel of these estates was composed of public land in excess of the prescribed limit seemed to make resumption by the State and redistribution to the poor legally possible. The ager publicus, therefore, formed the basis for future agitation and was the rallying point for supporters and opponents of the proposed methods of agricultural reform.
"Jalangr". General usage. "publicus consuetudini": namely, the rule of combat that two should not fight against one. After the death of Fridleif, his son FRODE, aged seven, was elected in his stead by the unanimous decision of the Danes.
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.
On what, then, depended the establishment and maintenance of equality in conditions and fortunes? On a more equitable division of the ager publicus, a wiser distribution of the right of possession.
The ager publicus disappeared almost entirely,... but the cause of the evil accumulated property became more potent than ever." The author whom I quote does not tell us why this division of territory which followed civil wars did not arrest the encroachments of accumulated property; the omission is easily supplied.
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