APPENDIX III 



In Chapter XIX attention is drawn to the dangers to which 

 this country is subjected by having to rely on foreign sources 

 for supplies of food, and a passing reference is made to 

 ancient Rome when she was in a similar position. Historical 

 parallels are difficult to draw and are often misleading, 

 because the conditions existing in the two countries com- 

 pared are so different. But there are certain principles 

 which are applicable to all time and certain actions that, by 

 a natural law, are bound to produce similar results, no matter 

 when or where they are carried out. 



If some abler pen than mine were to trace the proceedings, 

 legal and illegal, connected with land in old Rome, it would 

 be found that these proceedings both in kind and effect were 

 curiously alike to those which have been carried out in our 

 own country. Popular histories of Rome, like those of 

 England, deal too much with wars, foreign conquests, revo- 

 lutions, party strife, changes of the constitution, etc. They 

 too often treat effects as causes and ignore the root reasons 

 of both the evil and the good. The solid qualities and 

 virtues of the Romans were dominant while Rome was a 

 nation of farmers. From the yeoman and other agricultural 

 classes came the warriors who conquered Italy and after- 

 wards the world. Weakness and decline of the Empire ac- 

 companied step by step the gradual destruction of these 

 classes. The vast provinces, the great limbs of the Empire, 

 dropped off when the centre and heart became rotten and 

 nerveless through the decay of agriculture. As the effect of 

 the change in her land system Rome had to abandon Britain 

 after four centuries of beneficent occupation. From the 

 same cause a landless proletariat appeared ; a class with vast 



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