Here, too, there is something wonderful in his discernment of the true elements of prosperity in a commonwealth. He lived in an age when war was the business and delight of man ; when hardly any thing was respected in nations, or in men, in comparison with military fame; when public virtue and civil wisdom dwindled into nothing before the splendid sins of war. In such an age he saw the hollowness of such glory; he saw, and the verdict of our republic has confirmed his wisdom, that the greatness of a nation consisted not in its memorable victories, or its extended bounds, but in the amount of individual prosperity and happiness spread through the dwellings and hearts of the land.

His object was to make all citizens soldiers sufficiently trained for all purposes of defensive war, and he anticipated no other. This militia system was more efficient in his age than it is in ours, for then every man had more or less of the hardy qualifications of the soldier. These were to be drawn out by an impartial system of conscription, and thus a force could be gathered at once upon any point exposed to invasion. His principle in these respects was the same with ours. But all his calculations were defeated, as the best designs are often defeated, by those whom they were meant to serve. He conducted the Israelites in a direct path to the promised land, intending to take peaceable possession, if possible, of the land of their fathers. But the spirit of the nation had sunk so low during their long period of bondage, that they dared not enter the land; and, had they entered it, would not have had vigor and virtue enough to be free. He was compelled to withdraw them in disappointment and sorrow; and to wait till a generation had been formed by the hardships of the wilderness, energetic enough to enter and take possession of the land. But the very process by which they were prepared for this service, unfitted them in about the same proportion for the arts of peace, which were essential to their prosperity in the land when they had once possessed it.

Much fault has been found with the treatment of the Canaanites under his directions, and with the severity of his war laws. They were not his; they were the customs of the age, to which every statesman must of necessity conform. Suppose that a Christian statesman feels obliged, under all the circumstances, to consent to a declaration of war. What shall he do? Shall he order the troops to strike soft in battle, and be care

ful not to hurt any body with their arms? The idea of conducting such operations in a mild and pleasant manner, — such as shall be agreeable to all parties, is absurd. The least reflection on the subject shows, that, whatever a statesman's private feelings may be, his military operations must be carried on after the fashion of the day. He did not consider the va

grant tribes, who happened to be upon the soil, as established tenants of the country. It does not appear that he ever meant to dislodge them; for it is certain that many Canaanites remained and were protected long after the Hebrews took possession. Whenever he had occasion, in his wanderings, to pass through a settled country, he asked permission; if it was not granted, he took some other way, except in cases of great insult and outrage, and then for the sake of example he avenged his wrongs. These things were forced upon him; any one can see, that they were against his policy, against his maxims of civil wisdom. He saw, that when a taste for conquest gained possession of a republic, that moment it was undone; it had no longer any claim to existence. If the merchant ves

sel becomes a pirate, she cannot founder or become a wreck too soon. He foresaw all that actually happened in succeeding times. David, a gallant and successful warrior, extended his dominions from the Euphrates to the Red Sea, and bound all the subject nations into as firm and vigorous an empire as the world ever saw. But it could only be ruled by a hand as vigorous as his own; and its fate was like that of the Roman Empire. The oppressed barbarians rose at last, and not only reclaimed their own, but bore down and overwhelmed their masters. Moreover, while it existed, the property of individuals was sacrificed to the glory of the whole; the empire was great, but no member of it was happy. It was an unnatural state; and, by a common retribution, no one suffered more than he whose ambition overthrew the institutions of that wise statesman, who thought that an hour of freedom was worth an eternity of fame.

Another maxim of his policy was that of giving every citizen a right and interest in the soil. Nobles and landlords. there were none; every other country had its privileged orders; but in order to give to his commonwealth as proper a character as was possible, he made every man a landholder. When the soil of Canaan was first appropriated, it was parcelled out among the families of every tribe; genealogies and

When a

registers were kept with the most sacred regard. man died, his property was divided among his sons; not all given to the eldest, though respect for the patriarchal feelings of the day compelled him to give the eldest son, the presumptive head of the family, two parts, where each of the others had one. This arrangement secured to every man an interest in the soil, by assigning him either a field, a vineyard, an olive-yard, or a garden. Thus local attachment, the feeling on which patriotism so much depends, was formed among the Jews. It was a great undertaking thus to change the whole social system, to make those who had been wandering shepherds, going wherever they pleased, content with institutions that restricted them, each to a narrow enclosure; but he knew it could be done, and it was done. These wanderers became afterwards renowned for the deep devotion of their attachment to their own land; witness their lament under the weeping willows of Babylon. Their feeling is expressed in all its strength and beauty by one of their prophets, speaking of their exile: "Weep not for the dead. Oh no, weep not for him; but weep sore for him that goeth away; for he shall never return; he shall never again behold his native country.'

In order still further to secure this equality in the condition of the people, Moses provided, that, every fiftieth year, all the lands which had been sold should revert to the original owner or his heirs. This was in fact rendering lands inalienable; since the lands reverted on the year of Jubilee, it was evident that all which the owner could really part with was the produce of the soil for a term of years, longer or shorter according to the time when the next Jubilee was to come. The effect of this arrangement was to render it impossible for any man to be miserably poor; he or his heirs always retained their claim to the land of their fathers. They could raise money upon it if they were in want; but they could neither part with nor lose their right, since the registry, kept by the scribes, would always show to whom the land belonged. It rendered it impossible, also, for any man to become a great proprietor, and thus to gain the influence which a feudal lord possesses over his tenants at will. In that day, when the great were so apt to be usurpers, and the small to be slavish in their feeling, the power of great proprietors of land would have endangered the

public liberties, in a thousand times greater proportion than would be possible now.

The objection which would suggest itself to this arrangement is, that the land would soon be so much subdivided as to render the hereditary estate too small to support its proprietor. But this statesman, when he determined that every rood of ground should support its man, was not embarrassed by any popular system of political economy. Moses evidently believed, that, with a favorable social system, the soil would support all who came upon it:-not by its own products perhaps; nor was this necessary, since commerce with foreigners was not prohibited within the bounds of Palestine. He evidently calculated also, that the means of subsistence would grow with the population, since enterprise, art, and industry would be developed so as to increase the resources of the country full as fast as they were wanted. So it always will be in every well-governed state,-every state that gives man a fair field, secures him the profits of his labor, and then leaves the race to the swift and the battle to the strong. The little province of Palestine supported its millions, and it seldom became necessary to apply the remedy of famine to keep down. their numbers.

Such were some of the maxims upon which his institutions were founded. We will now look at the frame-work of his government; and it will be enough to show its free character, to point out its general resemblance to our own.

In the first place, it was a union of separate tribes, differing in many respects of position, habits, manners, and feelings; each with its own government to conduct its internal concerns, the municipal arrangements of every tribe being left entirely in its own hands. He did not attempt to bind together these separate states by a confederacy; such a government, even if it would have held them together, would not have been vigorous and decided enough in its action. He therefore drew up a Constitution, which applied not to each tribe as a body, but to the individuals in the tribe. He made it bear on every individual in every tribe; thus giving each one a personal interest in the national concerns, making him as much a member of the nation as he was of his own tribe. There was a strong feeling of ambition, and sometimes of rivalship, in each separate tribe. Judah, the ancient dominion, found the superiority which it assumed, more than once warmly contested;

but, while each Hebrew was strongly concerned to maintain the honor of his tribe, the Constitution of the general government gave him an almost equal interest in the honor of his country.

Situated as the Hebrews were, with marauding tribes upon their borders, it was not possible in all cases to wait for all to unite in a declaration of war, Wherever invasion came, it must be resisted; and thus it happened that sometimes one or two tribes would carry on a war, in which the nation had no concern. But this concession to the separate tribes did not extend so far as to allow them to conduct their own foreign relations. All were bound to unite against the common enemy; and so strong was the national feeling, that, instead of complaining that they were summoned to fight the battles of the nation, the tribes rather felt aggrieved and insulted when they were not called upon to aid the common cause. Indeed this was a neglect by which their harmony was more than once endangered, since, in the hurry of military preparations, the forms of public intercourse were sometimes disregarded.

This political organization was not without its disturbing forces. The tribes occasionally magnified their reserved rights, and betrayed a strong disposition to nullify the laws of the land. But it was understood, that in such cases the tribe did it at its peril, and the history of an act of nullification on the part of Benjamin showed, that there needed no force-bill there to sustain the authority of the national law. That tribe was prophetically described as a ravening wolf, —a figure very descriptive of its warlike and savage fierceness. A Levite, in travelling peaceably through, had one member of his family abused in such a manner as to cause her death. He made his appeal for retribution to all the other tribes. They assembled at once in convention at Mizpeh, heard the appeal to their justice, and sent a summons to the tribe of Benjamin to deliver up the delinquents according to the law. That tribe refused, and determined rather to dissolve the union, than to submit to the dictation of the majority. The rest of the tribes declared them in a state of rebellion, and proceeded against them accordingly. So stubborn and unbending was the spirit of the nullifying tribe, that the national army was twice defeated; but, in the third battle, Benjamin was routed with the loss of twenty-five thousand men. And there was no danger of the offence being repeated; for the offending city