His greatest constructive work he aimed to achieve through colonization and through the extension of the franchise. His colonial law, 123, proposed to establish many settlements in Italy,[2358] two of which at least should be made up of men of the best character, not the neediest but traders and workmen of moderate means.[2359] The two actually founded were Scolacium and Neptunia,[2360] both in situations favorable for commerce. Several other settlements in Italy are attributed to his colonial or agrarian statute.[2361] As his colonies were exclusively citizen,[2362] if any aliens took part, they must by virtue of the colonial law have obtained the Roman rights. The statute of his colleague Rubrius the same year (123) provided for the founding of Junonia on the site of Carthage.[2363] But the most liberal and statesmanlike measure was reserved for his second tribunate, 122. It was a proposal to grant full citizenship to the Latins and the ius Latii to the remaining allies.[2364] The rejection of the bill by a popular vote proved the leader far too liberal and too progressive for his supporters. Deceived by the spurious proposals of M. Livius Drusus,[2365] a colleague of Gaius, for the founding of twelve colonies, the members of which were to hold their lots by fee simple and consequently exempt from rents, and for depriving the Roman magistrates of the right to inflict corporal punishment on Latins even when in military service under their commands,[2366] the populace, readily accepting the new proposals,[2367] turned against their true champion, and defeated him in the election for the tribunate for the ensuing year.[2368] It was probably the same measure of Gaius for extending the citizenship which alienated from him the equites, who in every crisis pursued their own selfish ends.[2369] In the ensuing struggle between the senate and Gaius they took the side of the former.[2370] In the tribunate of Gaius Gracchus the life of the comitia reached the highest point of intensity. The two years of his administration afford evidence of what the assembly could accomplish when directed by the personality of a great statesman.[2371] The sum total of the measures adopted should be estimated not as a completed work, but as a foundation to be strengthened at defective points and to be built upon till the whole structure of the state and empire should be reconstituted and freshly vitalized. These results might have been achieved, had Gaius lived out his natural life and retained the support of the populace and the knights.[2372] His failure proved the comitia a weak, unsafe instrument for constructive statesmanship. II. _The Aristocratic Reaction and the Popular Recovery_ 122-103