The closing events of the life of Tiberius Gracchus prove how difficult it was to secure the attendance of the country voter even when an election of known political import was in prospect; while Caius realised that the best security for the popular leader, whether as a legislator or a candidate, was to attach the urban resident to himself by the ties of gratitude and interest. We can scarcely admit, in the face of facts like these, that the agriculturist created by the Gracchan reforms was likely to render any signal political assistance to his city. It is true that the existence of a practically disfranchised proletariate may have a modifying influence on politics. It could not in Rome serve the purpose, which it sometimes fulfils in the modern world, of moulding the opinion of the voter; but even in Rome it suggested a reserve that might be brought up on emergencies. A state, however, does not live on emergencies but on the constant and watchful activity of its members. Such activity could be displayed at Rome only by the leisured senator or the leaders of the city mob. The forces that had worked for oligarchy in the past might under changed conditions produce a narrow type of urban democracy; but they presented no hope of the realisation of a true popular government. It might be hoped, however, that the newly created farmer might add to the military, if not the political, strength of the State. The hope, so far as it rested on the agriculturist himself, was rendered something of an anachronism by the present conditions of service. Even in the old days a campaign prolonged beyond the ordinary duration of six months had often effected the ruin of the peasant proprietor; and now that the cautious policy of the protectorate had been so largely abandoned and Rome's military efforts, no longer limited to wars of defence or aggression, were directed to securing her ascendency in distant dependencies by means of permanent garrisons, service in the legions was a still more fatal impediment to industrial development. Rome had not yet learnt the lesson that an empire cannot be garrisoned by an army of conscripts; but she was becoming conscious of the inadequacy of her own military system, and this consciousness led her to take the easy but fatal step of throwing far the larger burden of foreign service on the Latins and Italian allies. Any increase in the number and efficiency of her own military forces would thus remove a dangerous grievance, while it added to the strength which, in the last resort, could alone secure the permanence of her supremacy even in Italy. Such an increase was finally effected in the only possible manner--by the adoption of a system of voluntary enlistment and by carrying still further the increasing disregard for those antiquated conditions of wealth and status, which were a part of the theory that service was a burden and wholly inconsistent with the new requirement that it should become a profession.