This class had suffered long under the judicial system of the patricians, who decided all causes according to a code of laws unknown to the inferior orders; but still greater was the oppression felt from another source. It is undoubtedly true that there existed a scale of social importance among the patrician landholders themselves, and that the possessions of many of them did not exceed those of the better situated among the plebeians; yet in other directions there were open to them opportunities from which the plebeians were debarred. Many of the larger property owners among the patricians could be reckoned--there having as yet arisen in Rome no great and independent commercial class--as capitalists. The trade in products of the soil was entirely in the hands of these rich proprietors, who in common with the other patricians besides realised all the profits resulting from the exploitation of the public lands. A considerable portion of these lands could, with the consent of the government, be “temporarily” occupied and cultivated by patrician landowners on payment of a yearly rental--such domains never to lose their character as state property, nor the government to release the right of remanding them at any time. As a matter of fact, however, these terms were rarely kept, and the state domains were given away, sold, bequeathed or hypothecated exactly as though they had been private property. Apart from the illegality of such proceedings, they worked considerable harm to the plebeians, who deeply and bitterly resented the injustice shown by the authorities in exempting these estates from payment of rent and taxation. Whenever the situation of the state made it necessary to tax the patricians, it was their private property only that was assessed, and this made their condition, by reason of their large tax-free domains, greatly superior to that of the plebeians, who possessed only assessable lands. There was further the extreme severity shown in leaving free from impost the money capital of the patricians, while in the case of the plebeians no allowance was made for mortgages on their property. We touch now upon the darkest spot in the situation of the poorer plebeians. The conflicts that had repeatedly broken out since the fall of the Tarquins, between the Roman populations and the neighbouring peoples, had pressed hard upon the plebeians. The successive calls to arms, the devastation of their lands, the plundering of their belongings, together with the heavy war-tax, formed an almost unsupportable burden, which was but little lightened by the declaration that the increase in impost would be looked upon by the government as a mere temporary advance and would be returned at a later period.