really be of a nature calculated to make the tenure of property more secure than ever.  Even the charge of irreligion has not been found more effective against the advocates of improvement or change than that of Agrarianism,—­by which is meant hostility to existing property institutions, and a determination, if possible, to subvert them.  Of the two, the charge of Agrarianism is the more serious, as it implies the other.  A man may be irreligious, and yet a great stickler for property, because a great owner of it,—­or because he is by nature stanchly conservative, and his infidelity merely a matter of logic.  But if there be any reason for charging a man with Agrarianism, though it be never so unreasonable a reason, his infidelity is taken for granted, and it would be labor lost to attempt to show the contrary.  Nor is this conclusion so altogether irrational as it appears at the first sight.  Religion is an ordinance of God, and so is property; and if a man be suspected of hostility to the latter, why should he not be held positively guilty towards the former?  Every man is religious, though but few men govern their lives according to religious precepts; but every man not only loves property and desires to possess it, but allows considerations growing out of its rights to have a weight on his mind far more grave, far more productive of positive results, than religion has on the common person.  If there be such a thing as an Agrarian on earth, he would fight bravely for his land, though it should be of no greater extent than would suffice him for a grave, according to the strictest measurement of the potter’s field.  Would every honest believer do as much for his religion?

But what is Agrarianism, and who are Agrarians?  Though the words are used as glibly as the luring party-terms of the passing year, it is no very easy matter to define them.  Indeed, it is by no means an easy thing to affix a precise and definite meaning to any political terms, living or dead.  Let the reader endeavor to give a clear and intelligible definition of Whig and Tory, Democrat and Republican, Guelph and Ghibelline, Cordelier and Jacobin, and he will soon find that he has a task before him calculated to test his powers very severely.  How much more difficult, then, must it be to give the meaning of words that are never used save in a reproachful sense, which originated in political battles that were fought nearly two thousand years ago, and in a state of society having small resemblance to anything that has ever been known to Christendom!  With some few exceptions, party-names continue to have their champions long after the parties they belonged to are as dead as the Jacobites.  Many Americans would not hesitate to defend the Federalists, or to eulogize the Federal party, though Federalism long ago ceased even to cast a shadow.  The prostitution of the Democratic name has lessened in but a slight degree the charm that has attached to it ever since Jefferson’s