United States or Liechtenstein ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
On the other hand by a law, which the tribune of the people Spurius Thorius carried under the instructions of the senate, the allotment-commission was abolished in 635, and there was imposed on the occupants of the domain-land a fixed rent, the proceeds of which went to the benefit of the populace of the capital apparently by forming part of the fund for the distribution of corn; proposals going still further, including perhaps an increase of the largesses of grain, were averted by the judicious tribune of the people Gaius Marius.
Presumably the Latins were named as those who would have to bear the costs of the plan, for there does not appear to have now existed in Italy other occupied domain-land of any extent save that which was enjoyed by them.
In like manner Picenum and the so-called -ager Gallicus- acquired a numerous body of farmers through the distributions of domain-land consequent on the Flaminian law of 522 a body, however, which was sadly reduced in the Hannibalic war.
This tax-tenth, which the state levied from private landed property, is to be clearly distinguished from the proprietor's tenth, which it imposed on the domain-land. Comp, my Staatsrecht, iii. 730. The mode of proceeding was apparently as follows. The Roman government fixed in the first instance the kind and the amount of the tax.
It is characteristic of the government, that it neither distributed the lands which Sulla had destined for allotment but had not yet parcelled out, nor directly abandoned the claim to them, but tolerated the former owners in provisional possession without regulating their title, and indeed even allowed various still undistributed tracts of Sullan domain-land to be arbitrarily taken possession of by individuals according to the old system of occupation, which was de jure and de facto set aside by the Gracchan reforms.
The final step was taken eight years afterwards , when by a new decree of the people the occupied domain-land was directly converted into the rent-free private property of the former occupants.
All Roman Italy was in a blaze, and there must have been a sense of insecurity and anxiety even in those allied towns whose interest in Roman domain-land was remote. Might not State interests be as lightly violated as individual interests by a sovereign people: and was not the example of Rome almost as perilous as her action?
The domain-land thus resumed was to be broken up into lots of 30 jugera; and these were to be distributed partly to burgesses, partly to Italian allies, not as their own free property, but as inalienable heritable leaseholds, whose holders bound themselves to use the land for agriculture and to pay a moderate rent to the state-chest.
This tax-tenth, which the state levied from private landed property, is to be clearly distinguished from the proprietor's tenth, which it imposed on the domain-land. Comp, my Staatsrecht, iii. 730. The mode of proceeding was apparently as follows. The Roman government fixed in the first instance the kind and the amount of the tax.
The final step was taken eight years afterwards , when by a new decree of the people the occupied domain-land was directly converted into the rent-free private property of the former occupants.
Word Of The Day