- 
430 
of the grossest misrepresentation, they 
are in the habit of carrying those prin- 
ciples, even into subjects of ancient 
literature, we were not a little sur- 
prised to find so fully, and so correctly 
treated: we mean the subject of the 
Agrarian Laws—which have generally 
been treated by English writers as a 
system of plunder, invading the legal 
hereditary property of the patricians, to 
swell the popularity and influence of un- 
principled demagogues, and gratify the 
cupidity of the levelling multitude; but 
which the Quarterly essayist, very cor- ° 
rectly and satisfactorily, shews to have 
been, on the part of the agitators, legal, 
equitable and constitutional efforts to 
redeem, from the plundering and usurp- 
ing patricians, a part of that property 
of the state and people, which, by va- 
rious means of encroachment and op- 
pression, those patricians had illegally 
appropriated—or, more properly, had 
seized, and were still holding by force 
and by fraudulent connivance, without 
pretence of title, in direct opposition to 
the laws of acquisition and inheritance. 
It is true, that at the end of all this 
clear demonstration, there comes a 
casuistical salvo, or qualification of ex- 
pediency ; and the propriety of attempt- 
ing to do justice to the people (the issue 
of which proved that the nobility had 
slaves enough, into whose hands they 
were also ready enough to put arms for 
the{massacre of those who called out for 
justice) is sagaciously called in question. 
“Tn its principle, therefore, the Agra- 
rian law of Tiberius Gracchus was just and 
wise ; and his proposal to allow a compen- 
sation to the occupiers of national lands 
for the loss of possessions absolutely illegal 
in their extent, and held, even within the 
limits fixed by the Licinian law, only 
during the pleasure of the people, was a 
concession more liberal than they were 
strictly entitled to demand. It is another 
question how far it was politic to bring the 
measure forward, considering the actual 
strength of the aristocracy ;—the power of 
the nobility had so long suspended the exe- 
cution of an Agrarian law in Italy, that 
they had derived advantage from their own 
wrong, and seemed to have gained the sanc- 
tion of time for their encroachments, be- 
cause they had for so many years prevented 
the people from questioning them.” 
We leave it to the reader to give to 
these temporizing suggestions whatever 
weight his sanguine, or his more phleg- 
matic temperament may assign to them. 
In the mean time we admit that this 
whole passage, from p. 72 to 77, contains 
the best summary, or exposition of the 
Roman History.— Jurisprudence. 
[Dec. I, 
important subject of the Agrarian Laws 
that we have ever met with in any En- - 
glish work; and as it is much too 
long for quotation, the reader cannot do 
better than turn to it in the Review it- 
self. The Reviewer, however, if should 
be observed by the way, takes a little 
more credit tohimself, in this exposition, 
than he is entitled to: for’ if Hnglish 
historians, as they call themselves, have 
been content to follow each other in the 
beaten path of error in this respect, 
those of France have not always done 
the like; and there is really very little in 
the pages we have been thus conimend- 
ing, but what will be found in Vertot’s 
Revolutions Romaines ;: — a work not 
any-thing like as much known, ex- 
cept in title, as it deserves ; but which is 
worthy of a familiar and elegant transla- 
tion (there exists an indifferent one), that 
it might be an universal school-book, in 
every seminary in which history is at- 
tended to as a branch of liberal educa- 
tion. 
Into the long disquisition, Art. IV., 
on the Origin of Equitable Jurisdiction, 
it would be futile to enter, unless we 
could afford a long disquisition also. It 
takes for its basis, or rather its pretence, 
—1l. Hammonn’s Digest of Reports in 
Equity ;—2. Jerrmy’s Analytical Di- 
gest of Cases in Common Law and Equity ; 
—3. Fraruer’s Supplement to Bridg- 
man’s Digested Index of Reported Cases. 
It is an article that has more of the pe- 
dantic appearance, than of the fidelity of 
research; anda single instance may ex- 
pose, at once, its purpose and its worth. 
The writer informs us that “ under the 
Lancastrian kings, England had changed 
much more than her ruling dynasty.”— 
“To the commons now belonged the 
unquestioned right of sharing in the en- 
actment of every law.” 
Into the history of the rise, progress 
and metamorphoses of that thing we 
call a House of Commons, we will not 
now enter; but if the Quarterly, jurist 
means to persuade us, as the result of 
his antiquarian researches, that, till the 
time of the Lancastrians, the Commons 
never had any thing to do with the laws 
“but to obey them,” we must tell him 
that he is either grossly ignorant of the 
more remote periods of our history and 
institutions, or persuades himself that 
his readers are so; and that even.the 
documents in the appendix. to,Lord 
Lyttleton’s Hist. of Henry IL: (tezsay 
nothing of authorities less open:to popu- 
lar access) would furnish satisfaetory 
proofs of a very different stateniené,” ~ 
Art. 
