Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 | Page 3

progress we have made, as evidenced in the existence here of a
starving population! One hardly knows whether to fret or to smile over
so provoking a specimen of congratulation. Certainly, if a nation cannot
grow old without bringing the producing classes to beggary, the best
thing that could happen to it would be to die young, like men loved of
the gods, according to the ancient idea. Whether such is the inevitable
course of national life or not, we are confident that what took place a
few months ago in New York had nothing to do with Agrarianism in
reality,--using the word after the manner of the alarmists. It belonged to
the ordinary bald humbug of American politics. It so happened that one
of those "crises" which come to pass occasionally in all business
communities occurred at precisely the time when a desperate political
adventurer was making desperate efforts to save himself from that
destruction to which he had been doomed by all good men in the city
that he had misgoverned. What more natural than that he should seek to
avail himself of the distress of the people? The trick is an old one,--as
old as political contention itself. Was it not Napoleon who attributed
revolutions to the belly?--and he knew something of the matter. The
"bread riots" were neither more nor less than "political
demonstrations," got up for the purpose of aiding Mr. Wood, and did
not originate in any hostility to property on the part of the people. It is
not improbable that some of those who were engaged in them were
really anxious to obtain work,--were moved by fear of starvation; but
such was not the case with the leaders, who were "well-dressed,
gentlemanly men," according to an eye-witness, with excellent cigars in

their mouths to create a thirst that Champagne alone could cure. The
juste milieu of brandy, so favored in 1832, if we can believe Mr.
Hamilton, was not thought of in 1857. A quarter of a century had made
a change in the popular taste. Perhaps the temperance reformation had
had something to do with it. The whole thing was as complete a farce
as ever was seen at an American or an English election, and those who
were engaged in it are now sincerely ashamed of their failure. If
foreigners will have it that it was an outbreak of Agrarianism, the first
in a series of outrages against property, so be it. Let them live in the
enjoyment of the delusion. Nations, like individuals, seem to find
pleasure in the belief that others are as miserable as themselves.
Of that feeling which is known as Agrarianism we believe there is far
less in the United States now than there was at the time when Mr.
Hamilton was here, and for a few years after that time. From about the
year 1829 to 1841, there was in our politics a large infusion of
Socialism. We then had parties, or factions, based on the distinctions
that exist in the social state, and those organizations had considerable
influence in our elections. The Workingmen's party was a powerful
body in several Northern States, and, to an observer who was not
familiar with our condition, it well might wear the appearance of an
Agrarian body. No intelligent American, however, fell into such an
error. It was evident to the native observer, that the Workingmen's
party, while aiming at certain reforms which it deemed necessary for
the welfare of the laboring classes, had no felonious purposes in view
to the prejudice of property,--and this for the plain reason, that most
workingmen were property-owners themselves. Few of them had much,
but still fewer had nothing, and the aggregate of their possessions was
immense. They would have been the greatest losers, had there been a
social convulsion, for they would have lost everything. Then they were
intelligent men in the ordinary affairs of life, and knew that the
occurrence of any such convulsion would, first of all, cut off, not only
their means of acquisition, but the very sources of their livelihood.
Industry wilts under revolutionary movement, as vegetation under the
sirocco, and they bring to the multitude anything but a realization of
Utopian dreams. In the long run, there has rarely been a revolution
which has not worked beneficially for the mass of mankind; but the
earliest effects of every revolution are to them bad, and eminently so. It

is to this fact that we must look for an explanation of the slowness with
which the masses move against any existing order of things, even when
they are well aware that it treats them with singular injustice. For
nothing can be better established than that no revolution was ever the
work of the body of the people,--of the majority. Revolutions