the word Agrarianism, as an obnoxious political term, is
somewhat curious. It is one of the items of our inheritance from the
Romans, to whom we owe so much, both of good and evil, in politics and
in law.

The Agrarian contests of that people were among the most interesting
incidents in their wonderful career, and are full of instruction,
though, until recently, their true character was not understood; and
their explanation affords a capital warning against the effects of
partisan literature. The common belief was,--perhaps we should say
is,--that the supporters of the Agrarian laws were, to use a modern
term, _destructives_; that they aimed at formal divisions of all landed
property, if not of all property, among the whole body of the Roman
people. Nothing can be more unfounded than this view of the subject,
which is precisely the reverse of the truth. No Roman, whose name
is associated with Agrarian laws, ever thought of touching private
property, or of meddling with it, illegally, in any way. Neither Spurius
Cassius, nor Licinius Stolo, nor the Gracchi, nor any other Roman whose
name is identified with the Agrarian legislation of his country, was
a destructive, or leveller. Quite the contrary; they were all
conservatives,--using that word in its best sense,--and the friends of
property. The lands to which their laws applied, or were intended to
apply, were public lands, answering, in some sense, to those which are
owned by the United States. When Spurius Cassius, a quarter of a century
after that revolution which is known as the expulsion of the Tarquins,
proposed a division of a portion of the public land among the poor
commons, he did no more than had often been done by the Roman kings,
with good effect, and with strict legality. Much of the public land was
_occupied_ by wealthy men, as tenants of the state; and some of these
his law would have ousted from profitable spots, while the rest were to
be forced to pay their rents, which they had done very irregularly or
not at all. The operation of all Agrarian laws like that of Cassius was,
undoubtedly, a matter well to be considered; for, after a man has long
occupied a piece of land, he regards it as an act of injustice to be
peremptorily removed therefrom, and he ought to have, at least, the
privilege of buying it, if its possession be necessary to his support.
This feeling must have been the stronger in the bosom of the Roman
occupant in proportion to his poverty,