posterity.
Their agrarian laws were such whereby their lands ought to
have been divided among the people, either without mention of a
colony, in which case they were not obliged to change their
abode; or with mention and upon condition of a colony, in which
case they were to change their abode, and leaving the city, to
plant themselves upon the lands so assigned. The lands assigned,
or that ought to have been assigned, in either of these ways,
were of three kinds: such as were taken from the enemy and
distributed to the people; or such as were taken from the enemy,
and, under color of being reserved to the public use, were
through stealth possessed by the nobility; or such as were bought
with the public money to be distributed. Of the laws offered in
these cases, those which divided the lands taken from the enemy,
or purchased with the public money, never occasioned any dispute;
but such as drove at dispossessing the nobility of their
usurpations, and dividing the common purchase of the sword among
the people, were never touched but they caused earthquakes, nor
could they ever be obtained by the people; or being obtained, be
observed by the nobility, who not only preserved their prey, but
growing vastly rich upon it, bought the people by degrees quite
out of those shares that had been conferred upon them. This the
Gracchi coming too late to perceive found the balance of the
commonwealth to be lost; but putting the people (when they had
least force) by forcible means upon the recovery of it, did ill,
seeing it neither could nor did tend to any more than to show
them by worse effects that what the wisdom of their leaders had
discovered was true. For quite contrary to what has happened in
Oceana, where, the balance falling to the people, they have
overthrown the nobility, that nobility of Rome, under the conduct
of Sylla, overthrew the people and the commonwealth; seeing Sylla
first introduced that new balance which was the foundation of the
succeeding monarchy, in the plantation of military colonies,
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