170 HEREDITY. 



to create an industrious class of agriculturists of the 

 middle rank. The lands on which he saw slaves in 

 chains performing manual labor were public, not 

 private, property. The senators were long misled 

 by thinking the Roman Gracchi proposed to dis- 

 tribute private lands among the poor. They pro- 

 posed only to redistribute the public lands. Grac- 

 chus sought to enforce, as we all recollect, a law by 

 which no more than five hundred acres of the public 

 land could belong to a single individual. If he had 

 sons, two hundred and fifty acres for each son were 

 added to the estate governed by the family. Of 

 course these provisions drew down upon Gracchus 

 the opposition of the wealthy class; and he was 

 finally murdered, in his thirty-fifth year, during an 

 election riot in Rome. 



Had Tiberius Gracchus, his mother Cornelia, and 

 Shakspeare, with all the ideas that are uttered 

 through the mouth of Coriolanus, beheld the pro- 

 cession of five thousand workingmen in Boston last 

 Saturday, they would have been profoundly inter- 

 ested and moved; but they would have proposed 

 somewhat different measures than the workingmen 

 themselves indorse. Nevertheless we must beware 

 of thinking that every thing spouted for by de- 

 formers is nonsense. One of the things most needed 

 in modern times is a machine for sifting deformer's 

 proposals. Under universal suffrage it is important 

 to listen to every outcry from men who are hungry. 



If we sift the demands made upon the mayor by 

 this Boston procession, we shall find that the con- 



