While colonization and the assignment of land individually to citizens, which Gaius planned on an extensive scale, as will soon be noticed, were to provide for the agricultural population at the expense of the state, and while the nobles and knights continued to reap an unfailing harvest of wealth in the administration of the provinces, the democratic reformer could think it only just and expedient to subsidize the populace of the capital. The artificial growth of Rome as a political centre, with no sound economic basis but with a most unfavorable geographical situation, rendered the problem of living difficult for the masses even in time of prosperity; and recently circumstances had so diminished the grain supply that relief from the government seemed the only resource against threatening famine.[2297] Before the time of the Gracchi on occasions of especial scarcity or of especial plenty the state had sold grain at a reduced rate; and the aediles, we know not how often, had made similar reductions at their own expense.[2298] There can be no doubt, too, that individual nobles in a private capacity often distributed free or cheap grain among the poor to secure their support in elections. Attached by such means to the nobles and the senate, the rabble had been in the main conservative. There was a certain degree of justice in giving the populace a share in the profits of empire and some wisdom in substituting system for the existing irregularity. A political result, we may also say aim, of the frumentarian plebiscite of Gaius was to disattach the city populace from its conservative moorings and to enlist it in the service of reform. His measure, the first frumentarian law in Roman history, provided for the monthly sale to every citizen who applied for it—practically to those only who resided in or near Rome—of a fixed number of modii of wheat at six and a third asses a modius,[2299] which was probably about half the average market price. The law won for him the good will of the populace,[2300] but his opponents complained that it depleted the treasury and excited the mob to seditions.[2301] It set an example for further reductions at the expense of the state. Hence notwithstanding some good features the effect of the law was pernicious, as it tended to increase the number of idlers, to make the populace improvident, and to encourage demagogism. It must be said, on the other hand, that had Gaius lived to carry out his wide scheme of colonization, he would have so relieved the capital of its semi-pauper population as to render frumentations unnecessary, whereupon the law would naturally have been repealed.[2302]