from having it in their power to obtain a sufficiency of free-hold for a house and garden. As land cannot be increased in quantity, the Romans seem to have thought it in the highest degree unjust, to allow one person to monopolize as much as would enable two or three hundred families to live independently.

BUT no person can consider this as a levelling law, any more than those men may be called levellers, who, to preserve a balance of power amongst the nations in Europe, endeavour to prevent any nation from acquiring such extensive territory as might endanger general liberty. And Tiberius Gracchus, and many other Romans, thought that it was necessary to prevent any of their countrymen from engrossing too much land, lest they should by that means rise to absolute power; as the proprietors of land have necessarily much power over the occupiers.

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TIBERIUS Gracchus, grandson of the great Scipio, who conquered Hannibal, got himself elected a tribune in the 620th year of Rome, with a view to enforce the law of Licinius; and he got it renewed, notwithstanding the opposition of the rich, and offered himself as candidate for the tribuneship next year, to carry the law into practice. But the senators and rich men, detesting the law, determined to oppose his re-election by force, and ordered all their clients and retainers to attend them at the election, armed with clubs.

On the day of election, the senate ordered the consul to seize Tiberius; but he answered, that it was contrary to law to seize a tribune not condemned, or engaged in any illegal act. Upon this refusal, Scipio Nasica (a cousin of Tiberius) as leader, with the greatest part of the senators, went in a body, and being joined by their dependants and others of their party, immediately attacked the people with clubs,

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and murdered Tiberius and about three hundred of his friends.

HOWEVER hard this law might bear upon some individuals, who had unadvisedly purchased these lands, they had themselves to blame, as they knew that such purchase was contrary to law. Nor was it any greater hardship than numbers of individuals are obliged to submit to under every government, who, after launching out into different branches of business, a monopoly is granted, or a prohibition. takes place, or a heavy tax is laid on, which ruins the trade and all concerned in it. Even under the mild government of England, great numbers of labourers who had built houses, and taken in pieces of commons, have, after long possession, been deprived of them, because they had no legal right; and many people have bought possessions of stalls in markets, which have, for the good of the town, been taken from them, without any compensation.

But when a majority of the Roman people, legally convened, enacted a law to oblige every one to give up certain possessions which they held in defiance of a former law, as the effects of this law fell upon the senators and rich men, instead of submitting peaceably, as they expected poor men to do in like cases, these proud men murdered the person who took the lead in enacting the law, and those who supported him.

No king, or other member of a government, could be safe for a moment, if such sanguinary vengeance were to be taken by individuals, when injured in that way.

THIS is the first blood that was shed in the Roman public assemblies, notwithstanding the very great number of people that had voted at them for 620 years. The magistrates, instead of making inquiry to find out the perpetrators of these atrocious murders, banished many

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citizens for having voted for the law, which was destroying the right of voting, and all legal order, and introducing force and anarchy into the public assemblies.

HISTORIANS say, that the senators meant, by the terror of these acts, to deter any person from reviving these laws for the future.

BUT this example which was set by the senators, of murdering the proposer and supporters of a law, when they despaired of opposing them effectually by votes, gave a deep wound to the constitution, perplexing the people's ideas of what was legal, and holding up a most pointed invitation to every bold party, or individual, to repeat the crime.

AFTER these violent proceedings, no person ventured to enforce the Agrarian law, until Caius Gracchus, brother of Tiberius, was elected tribune of the people, about nine years