The Evansville daily journal. [volume] (Evansville, Ia. [i.e. Ind.]) 1848-1862, 1860-07-27

IlneQ IOr the subsistence OF the poor
"The rich and the mighty con-
trived to possess themselves of the lands Of
their poor neighborS. At first they held
these acquisitions under borrowed names;
afterwards openly in their own. To cult
vate the farms, they employed foreign
slaves so that Italy was in danger OF los
ing its inhabitants of free condition, (who
had no encouragement to marry, no means
to educate children, and of being overrun
with slaves and barbarians, that bad neither
affection for the Republic, nor interest in
her preservation.
"TI6srius Gracious, now Tribune Of the
people, undertook to remedy these disor-
"Never, says PLutarch, was proposed
law more mild and gentle against iniquity
and oppression; yet the rich made a mighty
clamor about the hardship of being stript OF
their houses, their lands, their inheritances,
the burial places of their ancestors
The poor, en- the other hand, complained
of the extreme Indulgence to which they
were reduced, and OF their inability to bring
up any children. They enumerated the
many battles where they had fought in de-
fence of the Republic; Notwithstanding
which they were allowed no share Ct the
public lands nay, the usurpers, to Guilt
J
ers and slaves than citizens of Rome
Gracchus's view was not to make the poor
men rich, but to strengthen the Republic by
an increase of useful members, upon which
| he thought the safety and welfare of Italy
depended. The insurrection and war of the
slaves in Sicily, who were not yet quelled,
furnished him with sufficient argument for
expatiating on the danger of filling Italy
with slaves X :
"He asked the rich whether they prefer
red a slave to a citizen man unqualified to
serve in war to a soldier an alien to a
member of the Republic and which they
thought would be more Jealous for its in
| terest Then, as to the misery of the poor :
The wild beasts of Italy have caves and
dens to shelter them but the people who
expose their lives for the defence of Italy,
are allowed nothing but the light and air !;
they wander up and down with their wives
and children, without house and without
habitation. Our generals mock the soldiers,
when, in battle, they exhort them to fight
for their sepulchres and their household
gods for, amongst all that great number of
! Romans, there is not one who has either G
domestic altar or a sepulchre of his ances-
tors. They fight and die, solely to maintain
! the riches and luxury of others ; and are
styled the lords of the universe, while they
have not single foot of ground in their
possession"
Smith, in the second volume, page 29l,
of his Greek and Roman Biographical Die
tionary, speaking of Tiberius Gracious,
and the reason for his proposed legislation,
/ says:
/ :" His brother Caius related, in some OF
| his works, that TIberus, on his march to
| Spain, in O.. O. 1871, ~ he was passing
| through Etrulia, observed with grief and
Indignation the deserted state of that fertile
country thousands Of foreign slaves in
chains were employed in cultivating the
land and tending the focks upon the i'm
mense estates of the wealthy, while the
poorer classes of Roman citizens, who were
thus thrown out of employment, had scarce
ly their daily bread, or n clod of earth to
call their own. He is said to have been
reused through that circumstance 10 exert
himself in endeavOring to remedy this evil
Had the policy advocated by Gracious,
of distributing the public lands among the
landless citizens of the nation, been adopt
ed, the Roman fields would have been cuti-
waited by free men instead of slaves, and
there would have been race of men to
stay the ravages of the barbarian. The
Eternal City would not then have fallen an
easy prey to the Goth and Eandal but the
star of her empire might have waved in
triumph long after the ivy twined her
broken columns.
With homes and fresides to defend, the
arms and hearts of an Independent yeoman-
ry are a surer and more impreguable defence
than battlement wall, or tower. While
the population of a country are the propri-
etors of the land which they till, they have
an interest to surround their fresides with
IL
great incentive to industry, frugalty, and
sobriety. 1t is such habits alone that give
security TO a Government, and form the
real elements of national greatness and
power.
National disasters are not the growth of n
day, but the fruit of long years of injustice
and wrong. The seeds planted by false,
pernicious legislation, often require ages to
germinate and ripen into their harvests of
ruin aud death. The most pernicious of all
the baleful seeds of national existence. is
policy that degrades its labor. Whenever
agricultural labor becomes dishOnorab!e, it
will, Of course, be confined to those who
have no interest in the soil they till; and
/ when the laborer ceases to have any inter
/ est in the land he cultivates he ceases 10
/ have stake in the advancement and good
| order of society, for he has nothing 20 lose
! nOtnlnE 10 uelenu, nothing 10 nope Tor. L he
associations of an independent freehold are
eminently calculated TO ennoble and elevate
the possessor. 1t is the lite-spring of a
manly national character, and of a gener-
Gus patriotism; patriotism that rushes to
the defence of the country and the vindica-
ton of its honor, with the same zeal and
slacrity that it guards the hearthstone and
/ the Preside. Wherever Freedom has I'M
/ furled her banner, the men who have rallied
around to sustain and uphold it, have come
| from the workshop and the field, where, in
ured TO heat and cold, and to all the inclem-
/ encies of the seasons, they have acquired
/ the hardihood necessary to endure the tri-
ais and privations of the camp. An indie
| pendent yeOmanry, scattered over our vast
domain, is the best and surest guaranty for
/ the perpetuity of our liberties; for their arms
are the citadel of n nations power, their
/ hearts the bulwarks of liberty. Let the
/ public domain then, be set apart as the pat
/ rimony of labor, by preventing its absorb