385 



ADDITIONAL NOTES TO CHAPTER L. 



I cannot lose this opportunity of referring to a very interesting little book 

 by M. Auge-Laribe, revolution de la France agricok [Paris 1912]. Much of it 

 bears directly on the labour-question, and sets forth the difficulties hindering 

 its solution. It is peculiarly valuable to a student of the question in the 

 ancient world, because it lays great stress on the effect of causes arising from 

 modern conditions. Causes operating in both ancient and modern times are 

 thereby made more readily and clearly perceptible. Such modern influences 

 in particular as the vast development of transport, the concentration of machine- 

 industries in towns, and the constant attraction of better and more continuous 

 wage-earning, by which the rustic is drawn to urban centres, are highly sig- 

 nificant. The difference from ancient conditions is so great in degree that it 

 practically almost amounts to a difference in kind. So too in the material re- 

 sources of agriculture: the development of farm-machinery has superseded 

 much hand-labour, while Science has increased the possible returns from a 

 given portion of soil. 



Most significant of all from my point of view is the author's insistence on 

 the irregularity of wage-earning in rustic life as an active cause of the flitting 

 of wage-earners to the towns. This brings it home to a student that a system 

 of rustic slavery implies a set of conditions incompatible with such an economic 

 migration; and also that the employment of slaves by urban craftsmen would 

 not leave many eligible openings for immigrant rustics. It is fully consistent 

 with my view that the wage-earning rustic was a rare figure in the Greco- 

 Roman world. 



It is perhaps in the remedies proposed by the author for present evils (and 

 for the resulting depopulation of the countryside) that the contrast of ancient 

 and modern is most clearly marked. Bureaucratic the French administrative 

 system may be : but it is not the expression of a despotism that enslaves its- 

 citizens in the frantic effort to maintain itself against pressure from without- 

 For individuals and organizations are free to think speak and act, and so to 

 promote what seems likely to do good. Initiative and invention are not 

 deadened by the fear that betterment will only serve as a pretext for increase 

 of burdens. Stationary by instinct the French peasant proprietor may be : but 

 he is free to move if he will, and no one dare propose to tie him to the soil 

 by law. 



Nor can I omit a reference to a paper of the late Prof Pelham on The 

 Imperial domains and the Colonate (1890, in volume of Essays, Oxford 1911). 



The simplicity of the solution there offered is most attractive, and the 



general value of the treatise great. But I do not think it a final solution of the 



problem. Not only are there variations of detail in the domains known to us 



from the African inscriptions (some of them found since 1890). That some of 



\ the regulations may have been taken over from those of former private owners 



is a point not considered. And there is no mention of the notable requisition 



I of the services of coloni as mere retainers, to which Caesar refers without 



comment (above pp 183, 254). Therefore, while I welcome the proposition 



| that the system of the Imperial domains had much to do with the creation of 



the later Colonate, I still think that earlier and more deep-seated causes cannot 



. safely be ignored. Perhaps this is partly because I am looking at the matter 



! from a labour point of view. 



H. A. 25 



