Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 | Page 6

was strictly conservative in its nature, and whatever of internal
evil Rome afterwards experienced was owing, not to the adoption of
the Licinian law, but to the departure by the state from the practice
under it which it was intended permanently to establish.
The last great Agrarian contest which the Romans had was that which
takes its name from the Gracchi, and which began at the
commencement of the fourth generation before the birth of Christ. On

the part of the reformers, it was as strictly legal a movement as ever
was known. Not a single acre of private land was threatened by them;
and whoever pays attention to the details of their measures cannot fail
to be struck with the great concessions they were ready to make to their
opponents,--the men who had literally stolen the public property, and
who pretended to hold it as of right. Perhaps it was too late for any such
reform as that contemplated by the Gracchi to succeed, the condition of
Rome then being in no important respect like what it had been in the
time of Licinius Stolo; but one of the most interesting chapters in the
history of things which might have been is that which relates to the
possible effect of the Sempronian legislation. Had that legislation been
fairly tried, Roman history, and therefore human history, must have
taken an entirely different course, with an effect on the fortunes of
every man born since that time. Whether that effect would have been
good or bad, who shall say? But one thing is certain, and that is, that
the Gracchi and their supporters were not the enemies of property, and
that their measures were not intended to interfere with the private estate
of any citizen of the Roman Republic.
Such was the Agrarianism, and such were the Agrarian laws and the
Agrarian contests of Rome, which were so long misunderstood; and
through that misunderstanding has the word Agrarian, so proper in
itself, been made to furnish one of the most reproachful terms that
violent politicians have ever used when seeking to bespatter their foes.
It will be seen that the word has been applied in "the clean contrary
way" to that in which it should have been applied, and that, strictly
speaking, an Agrarian is a conservative, a man who asks for
justice,--not a destructive, who, in his desire to advance his own selfish
ends or those of his class, would trample on law and order alike. It is
only within the last seventy years that the world has been made to
comprehend that it had for fifty generations been guilty of gross
injustice to some of the purest men of antiquity; and it is not more than
thirty years since the labors of Niebuhr made the truth generally
known,--if it can, indeed, be said to be so known even now. The
Gracchi long passed for a couple of demagogues, who were engaged in
seditious practices, and who were so very anxious to propitiate "the
forum populace" that they were employed in perfecting plans for the
division of all landed property amongst its members, when they were

cut off by a display of vigor on the part of the government. "The
Sedition of the Gracchi" was for ages one of the common titles for a
chapter in the history of Republican Rome; yet it did not escape the
observation of one writer of no great learning, who published before
Heyne's attention was drawn to the subject, that, if there were sedition
in the affair, it was quite as much the sedition of the Senate against the
Gracchi as it was the sedition of the Gracchi against the Senate.[A]
[Footnote A: We have taken for granted the soundness of the views of
Niebuhr on the Roman Agrarian contests and laws, that eminent
scholar having followed in the track of Heyne with distinguished
success; but it must be allowed that in some respects his positions have
been not unsuccessfully assailed. Those who would follow up the
subject are recommended to study Ihne's _Researches into the History
of the Roman Constitution_, in which some of Niebuhr's views are
energetically combated. The main points, however, that the Agrarian
laws were not directed against private property, or aimed at placing all
men on a social equality, may be considered as established. Yet it must
in candor be admitted that the general subject is still involved in doubts,
the German commentators having thrown as much fog about some
portions of the Roman Constitution as they have thrown light upon
other portions of it.]
The feeling that was allowed to have such sway in Rome, and the
triumph of which was followed with such important consequences, has
often manifested itself in modern times, in the course of great political
struggles,