15°  THE  ECONOMIC  BACKGROUND

necessity  was  just  as  existent  in  the  fourth  as  in  the  fifth
century  various  passages  in  Demosthenes  plainly  show.^
But  the  purchasing  power  of  the  state  as  a  whole  was  equal
to  that  necessity.  Manufactures,  the  export  of  the  products
of  the  vine  and  olive,  and  the  profits  of  the  carrying  trade,
still,  as  in  the  fifth  century,  provided  the  means.  The
difficulty  was  evidently  that,  owing  to  the  tendency  of
capital  and  wealth  generally  to  become  concentrated  in  a
few  hands — a  concentration  which  necessarily  resulted  from
the  exploitation  of  slave  labour^ — the  purchasing  power,
though  adequate  in  the  aggregate,  was  in  the  hands  of  a
few  ;  and  had  financial  circumstances  been  allowed  to  take
their  course,  a  large  proportion  of  the  population  would  not
have  possessed  that  power.  Circumstances  had  not  been
allowed  to  take  their  course.  The  wealth  of  the  country
had  been  in  the  past  artificially  re-distributed  by  means  of
state  pay  and  public  burdens  laid  upon  the  wealthy.  The
true  interest  of  the  treatise  is  to  show  that  the  burden  on
the  allies  may  be  removed  without  necessitating  a  recurrence
to  the  system  of  the  earlier  part  of  the  fourth  century.  It
is  in  the  interests  of  the  well-to-do  classes  that  the  treatise
is  written.  That  being  so,  it  is  somewhat  striking  to  find
that  in  his  opening  sentences  the  author  admits  that  the
original  plea  upon  which  the  policy  was  brought  into
existence  was  the  poverty  of  the  proletariate.  '  Since  some
of  those  who  have  been  prominent  in  Athenian  politics  were
wont  to  assert  that  they  had  as  sound  a  knowledge  of
justice  as  any  men,  but  alleged  that  they  were  compelled,
owing  to  the  poverty  of  the  proletariate,  to  be  something
less  than  just  with  regard  to  the  states  (of  the  league),  I
have  consequently  attempted  to  consider  whether  the
citizens  could  possibly  be  supported  throughout  from  their
own  country,  the  most  just  source  of  such  support,  feeling
that,  if  this  could  be  so,  a  remedy  would  have  been  found
both  for  their  poverty  and  for  the  suspicion  with  which  the

'  Cf.  Dem.,  Steph.  254.  21,  amongst  other  passages,  where  Demos-
thenes says  that  no  other  state  requires  so  much  foreign  corn.
