392 POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS. 



legislation &quot;provided for traders and artizans a new homo at 

 Athens, giving tlio first encouragement to that numerous 

 town-population, both in the city and in the Peirrcus, which 

 we find actually residing there in the succeeding century.&quot; 

 The immigrants who flocked into Attica because of its greater 

 security, Solon was anxious to turn rather to manufacturing 

 industry than to cultivation of a soil naturally poor ; and one 

 result was &quot; a departure from the primitive temper of Atti 

 cism, which tended both to cantonal residence and rural occu 

 pation ; &quot; while another result was to increase the number of 

 people who stood outside those gentile and phratric divisions, 

 which were concomitants of the patriarchal type and of per 

 sonal rule. And then the constitutional changes made by 

 Solon were in leading respects towards industrial organiza 

 tion. The introduction of a property-qualification for classes, 

 instead of a birth-qualification, diminished the rigidity of the 

 political form ; since aquirement of wealth by industry, or 

 otherwise, made possible an admission into the oligarchy, or 

 among others of the privileged. By forbidding selr-enslave- 

 ment of the debtor, and by emancipating those who had been 

 self-enslaved, his laws added largely to the enfranchised class 

 as distinguished from the slave-class. Otherwise regarded, 

 this change, leaving equitable contracts untouched, prevented 

 those inequitable contracts under which, by a lien on himself, 

 a man gave more than an equivalent for the sum lie borrowed. 

 And with a decreasing number of cases in which there existed 

 the relation of master and slave, went an increasing number 

 of cases in which benefits were exchanged under agreement. 

 The odium attaching to that lending at interest which ended 

 in slavery of the debtor, having disappeared, legitimate lending 

 became general and unopposed ; the rate of interest was free ; 

 and accumulated capital was made available. Then, as co 

 operating cause, and as ever-increasing consequence, came the 

 growth of a population favourably circumstanced for acting 

 in concert Urban people who, daily in contact, gather one 

 another s ideas and feelings, and who, by quickly -diffused 



