This law, the worst of those proposed by the Gracchi, was destined to have the greatest influence of any of those laws upon the course of development of Roman history. It is a peculiar phenomenon to be observed in the study of the psychology of dishonesty that while the beneficiaries of any system of "graft" will fight to the last extremity against any infringement upon their interests, sometimes even, as was the case with French nobility at the time of the French Revolution, carrying their resistance to such limits as to involve themselves and their country in a common ruin; nevertheless, it is often easy to induce these favored interests to assist in the establishment of some other system of "graft" for the benefit of certain classes of their opponents. When a class has become so blinded to the true standard of right and wrong, and of relative values, as to look upon special privileges for the few against the many, and long-continued systems of dishonesty, as "vested interests," it seems to be much easier for them to submit to wrongful exactions from others than to cease from such wrongful exactions themselves. Thus, in the case of the grain laws at Rome, the aristocratic party, unrelenting in their opposition to the agrarian laws of the Gracchi, which would put an end to long-continued robbing of the state and go far toward building up again a class of free yeoman landowners, without opposition acquiesced in the establishment of a system of wholesale exploitation of the state for the maintenance at the public expense of a lazy, worthless, and corrupt mob. The fatal idea contained in the grain law, having obtained a foothold in the Roman policy, rapidly developed. Fifty years after the law of Gaius Gracchus it was necessary to limit the amount of grain which could be purchased by any one citizen to five modii (about one and a quarter bushels) per month; at this period forty thousand citizens were regular purchasers of grain from the state. At a little later period it was provided that five modii per month should be given without charge to such citizens as might require it. At one time the number of Roman citizens receiving this free allowance of grain rose to three hundred and twenty thousand. The Emperor Augustus fixed the maximum number to whom such allowance should be given at two hundred thousand. The permanent and continuing effect of these grain laws was to further demoralize free labor in Italy and the character of the Roman citizen, and to bring about a constantly increasing use of slave labor in agriculture and of mercenaries in war. One of the minor laws introduced by Gaius Gracchus was that which fixed the minimum age for military service at seventeen, and provided that the uniform and arms of the soldiers should be furnished by the state.