[54] Why, in the midst of this passion for accumulation, did not the possession of the public land, like private property, become concentrated in a few hands?
By law, the domain of the State was inalienable, and consequently possession was always revocable; but the edict of the praetor continued it indefinitely, so that finally the possessions of the patricians were transformed into absolute property, though the name, possessions, was still applied to them.

This conversion, instigated by senatorial avarice; owed its accomplishment to the most deplorable and indiscreet policy.

If, in the time of Tiberius Gracchus, who wished to limit each citizen's possession of the ager publicus to five hundred acres, the amount of this possession had been fixed at as much as one family could cultivate, and granted on the express condition that the possessor should cultivate it himself, and should lease it to no one, the empire never would have been desolated by large estates; and possession, instead of increasing property, would have absorbed it.

On what, then, depended the establishment and maintenance of equality in conditions and fortunes?
On a more equitable division of the ager publicus, a wiser distribution of the right of possession.
I insist upon this point, which is of the utmost importance, because it gives us an opportunity to examine the history of this individual possession, of which I said so much in my first memoir, and which so few of my readers seem to have understood.

The Roman republic--having, as it did, the power to dispose absolutely of its territory, and to impose conditions upon possessors--was nearer to liberty and equality than any nation has been since.