These debates followed the first abortive meeting of the Assembly. As the decisive moment approached, streams of country folk had poured into Rome to register their votes in favour of the measure.[357] The Contio had given way to the Comitia, the people had been ready to divide, and Gracchus had ordered his scribe to read aloud the words of the bill. Octavius had bidden the scribe to be silent;[358] the vast meeting had melted away, and all the labours of the reformer seemed to have been in vain. To accept a temporary defeat under such circumstances was in accordance with the constitutional spirit of the times. The veto was a mode of encouraging reflection; it might yield to a prolonged campaign, but it was regarded as a barrier against a hasty popular impulse which, if unchecked, might prove ruinous to some portion of the community. Gracchus, however, knew perfectly well that it was now being used in the interest of a small minority, and he held the rights which it protected to be non-existent; he believed the question of agrarian reform to be bound up with his own personality, and its postponement to be equivalent to its extinction; he had no intention of allowing his own political life to be a failure, and, instead of discarding his weapons of attack, he made them more formidable than before. Perhaps in obedience to popular outcries, he redrafted his bill in a form which rendered it more drastic and less equitable.[359] It is possible that some of the _douceurs_ given to the possessors by his original proposal were not really in accordance with his own judgment. They were meant to disarm opposition. Now that opposition had not been disarmed, they could be removed without danger. The stricter measure had the same chance of success or failure as the less severe. We do not know the nature of the changes which were now introduced; but it is possible that the pecuniary compensation offered for improvements on the land to be resumed was either abolished or rendered less adequate than before.