The economic evils consequent on the conscription must have been felt with hardly less severity by such of the Italian allies as lived in the regions within which the _latifundia_ were growing up. To these were added the pecuniary burdens which Rome had been forced to impose during the Second Punic War. These burdens were for the most part indirect, for Rome did not tax her Italian _socii_, but they were none the less severe. Every contingent supplied from an allied community had its expenses, except that of food during service, defrayed from the treasury of its own state,[220] and ten continuous years of conscription and requisition had finally exhausted the loyalty even of Rome's Latin kindred.[221] It is true that the Italians were partially, although not wholly, free from the economic struggle between the possessors of the public land and the small freeholders; but there is no reason for supposing that those of Western Italy were exempt from the consequences of the reduction in price that followed the import of corn from abroad, and the drain on their incomes and services which had been caused by war could scarcely have fitted them to stand this unexpected trial. Rome's harsh dealings with the treasonable South, although adopted for political motives, was almost unquestionably a political blunder. She confiscated devastated lands, and so perpetuated their devastation. She left ruined harbours and cities in decay. She crippled her own resources to add to the pastoral wealth of a handful of her citizens. In the East of Italy there was a far greater vitality than elsewhere in agriculture of the older type. The Samnites in their mountains, the Peligni, Marrucini, Frentani and Vestini between the Apennines and the sea still kept to the system of small freeholds. Their peasantry had perhaps always cultivated for consumption rather than for sale; their inhabitants were rather beyond the reach of the ample supply from the South; and for these reasons the competition of Sicilian and African corn did not lead them to desert their fields. They were also less exposed than the Romans and Latins to the aggressions of the great _possessor_; for, since they possessed no _commercium_ with Rome, the annexation of their property by legal means was beyond the reach even of the ingenious cupidity of the times.[222] The proof of the existence of the yeoman in these regions is the danger which he caused to Rome. The spirit which had maintained his economic independence was to aim at a higher goal, and the struggle for equality of political rights was to prove to the exclusive city the prowess of that class of peasant proprietors which she had sacrificed in her own domains.