AGRA'RIAN LAW. With the name of A. L. used to be associated the idea of the abolition of property in land, or at least of a new distribution of it. This notion of the A. laws of the Romans was not only the popular one, but was also received by most scholars. The French convention, in 1793, passed a law punishing with death any one who should propose an A. L., understanding by the term an equal division of the soil among all citizens. Now, it would have been strange if the Romans, with whom private property was so sacred, could ever have been brought to sanction any measure of the kind. It was the German scholars, Heyne, Savigny, and especially Niebuhr, who first explained the true nature and character of the Roman A. laws. There are still sonic disputed points this matter, but one thing seems made out—that those laws had no reference to private lands held in absolute property, but to public or state lands.
As the dominion of Rome extended, a portion more or less of each conquered terri tory was confiscated to the state, and became public domain. All laws respecting the disposition of these lands were called A. laws; which are therefore of various kinds. What made these laws be so long mistaken for an interference with private rights, and excited such opposition to them at the time, was the use which was made of the public domains while unappropriated: " It was the practice at Rome," says Dr. Arnold, "and doubtless in other states of Italy, to allow individuals to occupy such lands, and to enjoy all the benefits of them, on condition of paying to the state the tithe of the produce, as an acknowledgment that the state was the proprietor of the land, and the individual merely the occupier. Now, although the land was undoubtedly the property of the state. and although the occupiers of it were in relation to the state mere tenants-at-will, yet it is in human nature that a long undisturbed possession should give a feeling of owner ship; the more so as, while the state's claim lay dormant, the possessor was, in fact, pro prietor, and the land would thus be repeatedly passing by regular sale from one occupier to another."
The state, however, was often obliged to interfere with these occupiers of the public lauds, and resume its rights. The very idea of a citizen, in ancient times, involved that of a landholder, and when new citizens were to be admitted, they had each to receive their portion out of the unallotted public domain; which was attended, of course, with the ejection of the tenants-at-will. It appears, also, that the right to enjoy the public lands in this temporary way was confined to the old burghers or patricians. This, taken in conjunction with the tendency, strong at all times, of larger possessions to swallow up smaller, kept up an ever-increasing number of landless commons, whose destitution and degradation came from time to time to such a pitch that alleviation was necessary to prevent the very dissolution of the state. It is easy, however, to see what motive the patricians, as a body, had to oppose all such measures, since it was their interest, though not their right, to keep the lands unallotted.
The enactment of A. laws occasioned seine of the most memorable struggles in the internal history of Rome. Most of the kings of Rome are said to have carried an A. L., that is, to have divided a portion of the public land among those whom they admitted to the rights of citizenship. "The good king." Servius Tullius, may be looked upon as the first victim of the hostility of the nobles to A. laws. About twenty-four years after the expulsion of the Tarquius, the distress of the commons called aloud for remedy, and the consul, Spurius Cassius, proposed an A. L. for a division of a certain proportion of the public land, and for enforcing the regular payment of the rent or tithe from the occupiers of the remainder. The aristocracy, however, contrived to defeat the proposal, and when the year of his consulship was out, Cassius was accused of trying to make himself king, was condemned, scourged and beheaded, and his house razed to the ground.