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

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, and has proved a powerful disturbing cause on several occasions. One of these occasions has fallen under