The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 03, No. 18, April, 1859. Various
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 are made by minorities, by orders, by classes, by individuals, but never by the people. The people may be dragged into them, but they never take the initiative even in those movements which are called popular, and which are supposed to have only popular ends in view. That very portion of mankind who are most feared by timid men of property are those who are the last to act in any of the great games which mark the onward course of the world. Complain they do, and often bitterly, of the inequalities of society, but action is not their strong point.
The American observer of 1829-41 would have seen, too, in the Workingmen's party, and in other similar organizations, only sections of the Democratic party. They were the light troops of the grand army of Democracy, the velites who skirmished in front of the legions. They never controlled the Democratic party; but it is undeniable that they did color its policy, and give a certain tone to its sentiment, at a very important period of American history. The success of President Jackson, in that political contest which is known as "the Bank War," was entirely owing to the support which he received from the workingmen of some two or three States; and it is quite probable that the shrewd men who then managed the Democratic party were induced to enter upon that war by their knowledge of the exalted condition of political opinion in those States. For their own purposes, they turned to account sentiments that might have worked dangerously, if they had not been directed against the Bank. One effect of this was, that the Democratic party was compelled to make use of more popular language, which caused it to lose some of its influential members, who were easily alarmed by words, though they had borne philosophically with violent things. For five years after the veto of the Bank Bill, in 1832, the Democratic party was essentially radical in its tone, without doing much of a radical character. In 1837, the monetary troubles came to a head, and then it was seen how little reliance could be placed on men who were supposed to be attached to extreme popular opinions. It was in the very States which were thought to abound with radicals that the Democracy lost ground, and the way was prepared for their entire overthrow in the memorable year 1840. That year saw American politics debauched, and from that time we find no radical element in any of our parties. The contest was so intense, that the two parties swallowed and digested all lesser factions. Since then, a variety of causes have combined to prevent the development of what is termed Agrarianism. The struggle of the Democracy to regain power; the Mexican war, and the extension of our dominion, consequent on that war, bringing up again, in full force, the slavery question; and the discovery of gold in California, which led myriads of energetic men to a remote quarter of the nation;—these are the principal causes of the freedom of our later party-struggles from radical theories. From radical practices we have always been free, and it is improbable that our country will know them for generations.
The origin of 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, but to legal possession he could make no claim. The position he held was that of tenant at will to the state, and he could be legally ejected at any moment. But it was not from poor occupants of the public domain, whose number was necessarily small, that opposition was experienced. It came from the rich, who had all but monopolized the use of that domain; and, in the time of Spurius Cassius, it was complicated with that quarrel of caste which we denominate the contest between the Patricians and the Plebeians. Property and political power were both involved in the dispute. The Patricians