Scipio had paid the first instalment to that treasury of hatred, which was soon to prove his ruin and to make his following a thing of the past. Such was the position of Scipio when he was approached by the Italians. His interest in their fortunes was twofold. First he viewed them with a soldier's eye.[451] They were tending more and more to form the flower of the Roman armies abroad: and, although in obedience to civic sentiment he had employed a heavier scourge on the backs of the auxiliaries than on those of the Roman troops before Numantia,[452] the chastisement, which he would have doubtless liked to inflict on all, was but an expression of his interest in their welfare. Next he admired the type for its own sake. The sturdy peasant class was largely represented here, and he probably had more faith in its permanence amongst the federate cities than amongst the needy burgesses whom the commissioners were attempting to restore to agriculture. He could not have seen the momentous consequences which would follow from a championship of the Italian allies against the interests of the urban proletariate; that such a dualism of interests would lead to increased demands on the part of the one, to a sullen resistance on the part of the other; that in this mere attempt to check the supposed iniquities of a too zealous commission lay the germ of the franchise movement and the Social War. His protection was a matter of justice and of interest. The allies had deserved well and should not be robbed; they were the true protectors of Rome and their loyalty must not be shaken. Scipio, therefore, took their protest to the senate. He respected the susceptibilities of the people so far as to utter no explicit word of adverse criticism on the Gracchan measure; but he dwelt on the difficulties which attended its execution, and he suggested that the commissioners were burdened with an invidious task in having to decide the disputed questions connected with the land which they annexed. By the nature of the case their judgments might easily appear to the litigants as tinged with prejudice. It would be better, he suggested, if the functions of jurisdiction were separated from those of distribution and the former duties given to some other authority.[453] The senate accepted the suggestion, and its reasonableness must have appealed even to the people, for the measure embodying it must have passed the Comitia, which alone could abrogate the Gracchan law.[454] Possibly some recent judgments of the commissioners had produced a sense of uneasiness amongst large numbers of the citizen body, and there may have been a feeling that it would be to the advantage of all parties if the cause of scandal were removed. Perhaps none but the inner circle of statesmen could have predicted the consequences of the change. The decision of the agrarian disputes was now entrusted to the consuls, who were the usual vehicles of administrative jurisdiction.