Twenty-five years have elapsed since Mr. Hamilton put forth this alarming question, and some recent events have brought it to men’s minds, who had laughed at it in the year of grace 1833.  We have seen Agrarian movements in New York, demonstrations of “Workies,” but nothing was said by those engaged in them of that great leveller, brandy, though its properties are probably better known to them than those of water.  They have been dignified with the name of “bread riots,” and the great English journal that exercises a sort of censorship over governments and nations has gravely complimented us on the national progress we have made, as evidenced in the existence here of a starving population!  One hardly knows whether to fret or to smile over so provoking a specimen of congratulation.  Certainly, if a nation cannot grow old without bringing the producing classes to beggary, the best thing that could happen to it would be to die young, like men loved of the gods, according to the ancient idea.  Whether such is the inevitable course of national life or not, we are confident that what took place a few months ago in New York had nothing to do with Agrarianism in reality,—­using the word after the manner of the alarmists.  It belonged to the ordinary bald humbug of American politics.  It so happened that one of those “crises” which come to pass occasionally in all business communities occurred at precisely the time when a desperate political adventurer was making desperate efforts to save himself from that destruction to which he had been doomed by all good men in the city that he had misgoverned.  What more natural than that he should seek to avail himself of the distress of the people?  The trick is an old one,—­as old as political contention itself.  Was it not Napoleon who attributed revolutions to the belly?—­and he knew something of the matter.  The “bread riots” were neither more nor less than “political demonstrations,” got up for the purpose of aiding Mr. Wood, and did not originate in any hostility to property on the part of the people.  It is not improbable that some of those who were engaged in them were really anxious to obtain work,—­were moved by fear of starvation; but such was not the case with the leaders, who were “well-dressed, gentlemanly men,” according to an eye-witness, with excellent cigars in their mouths to create a thirst that Champagne alone could cure.  The juste milieu of brandy, so favored in 1832, if we can believe Mr. Hamilton, was not thought of in 1857.  A quarter of a century had made a change in the popular taste.  Perhaps the temperance reformation had had something to do with it.  The whole thing was as complete a farce as ever was seen at an American or an English election, and those who were engaged in it are now sincerely ashamed of their failure.  If foreigners will have it that it was an outbreak of Agrarianism, the first in a series of outrages against property, so be it.  Let them live in the enjoyment of the delusion.  Nations, like individuals, seem to find pleasure in the belief that others are as miserable as themselves.