ed,
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 al