AGRARIAN LAW (bat. leges agra•im). Laws regulating the division or holding of the public lands lager publicus) of the Roman do main. With the name of agrarian laws was for merly associated the idea of the abolition of property in land, or at least of a new distribution of it. This notion of the agrarian laws of the Romans was not only the popular one, but was also received by most scholars. The French Con vention, in 1793, passed a law punishing with death any one who should propose an agrarian law, understanding by the term an equal division of the soil among all citizens. Nov- 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. Ileyne. Sa vigny, and especially Niebuhr, who first explained the true nature and character of the Roman agra rian laws. There are still sonic disputed points in this matter; but one thimg seems settled— 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 territory was confiscated to the State, and became public do main. All laws respecting, the disposition of these lands were called agrarian laws, which are therefore of various kinds. What caused these laws to be so long mistaken for an interfer ence with private rights, and excited such oppo sition to them at the time, was the use which was made of the public domains while unappro priated. "It was the practice at Rome." says Dr. Arnold. "and doubtless in other States of Italy, to allow the 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 individ ual 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 ownership; the more so as, while the State's claim lay dormant, the pos sessor was, in fact, proprietor, and the land would thus be repeatedly passing by regular sale from one occupier to another."
The State, however, was often obliged to inter fere with these occupiers of the public lands and to 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, each one had to receive his portion ont of the unallotted public domain; which was attended, of course, with the ejection of the ten ants-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 •ommons,whose destitution and degrada tion came from time to time to such a pitch that alleviation was necessary to prevent the very dis solution of the State. It is easy, however, to see what motive the patricians. as a body, bad to oppose all such measures, since it was their inter est, though not their right, to keep the lands nnallotted.
The enactment of agrarian laws occasioned some of the most remarkable struggles in the internal history of Rome. \lost of the kings of Rome are said to have carried an agrarian law; that is, to have divided a portion of the public land among those whom they admitted to the rights of citizenship. About twenty-four years alter the expulsion of the Tarquins, the distress of the commons called aloud for remedy, and the consul Spurius Cassius proposed an agrarian law for a division of a certain proportion of the public land, and for enforcing the regular pay ment of the rent or tithe from the occupiers of the remainder. The aristocracy, however, con trived 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.