or a cheapening of the rates at which it was supplied; but the Gracchan system seems hardly to have admitted of extension, so far as the number of recipients was concerned, and cheaper sales would hardly have been encouraged by a government, which, anxious as it was to secure popularity, was responsible for the financial administration of the State and looked with an anxious eye upon the existing drain on the resources of the treasury.[773] Perhaps the new revenues were held up to the people as a guarantee that the sale of cheap corn would be continued, and public confidence was increased when it was pointed out that there was a special fund available for the purpose. If we abandon the view that the promised employment of the revenues in the interest of the people referred to the distribution of corn, there remains the possibility that it had reference to the acquisition of fresh land for assignation. This promise would indeed have rendered practicable the partial realisation of the shadowy schemes of Drusus, which had never been officially withdrawn; but it is doubtful whether it would have done much to strengthen the hold of the government upon the urban voter; for the whole scheme of this new land law seems to prove that the agrarian question was viewed with indifference, and no pressure seems to have been put on the government to carry their earlier promises into effect. Apart from the welcome prospect implied in the abolition of the agrarian commission, no positive guarantee against disturbance had yet been given to the Latins and Italians. This was formally granted, in terms unknown to us, at the appropriate hands of Marcus Livius Drusus during his tenure of the consulship.[774] The senate, now that it had satisfied the larger proprietors and the urban proletariate, and could boast that it had at least not injured the smaller cultivators, completed its work of pacification by holding out the hand of fellowship to the allies. It was tacitly understood that the new friend was not to ask for more, but he might be induced to look to the senate as his refuge against the rapacity of the mob and the recklessness of its leaders.