CHAPTER V.
THE ROMAN TENURE OF LAND--COLONIAL GOVERNMENT.
Each rules his race, his neighbour not his care, Heedless of others, to his own severe .-- _Homer_.
[As this chapter is principally designed for advanced students, it has not been thought necessary to add questions for examination.] The contests respecting agrarian laws occupy so large a space in Roman history, and are so liable to be misunderstood, that it is necessary to explain their origin at some length.

According to an almost universal custom, the right of conquest was supposed to involve the property of the land.

Thus the Normans who assisted William I.were supposed to have obtained a right to the possessions of the Saxons; and in a later age, the Irish princes, whose estates were not confirmed by a direct grant from the English crown, were exposed to forfeiture when legally summoned to prove their titles.

The extensive acquisitions made by the Romans, were either formed into extensive national domains, or divided into small lots among the poorer classes.
The usufruct of the domains was monopolized by the patricians who rented them from the state; the smaller lots were assigned to the plebeians, subject to a tax called tribute, but not to rent.

An agrarian law was a proposal to make an assignment of portions of the public lands to the people, and to limit the quantity of national land that could be farmed by any particular patrician.[1] Such a law may have been frequently impolitic, because it may have disturbed ancient possessions, but it could never have been unjust; for the property of the land was absolutely fixed in the state.