though not regularly observed, did not become a dead letter. We have its practical effect in Nehemiah, ch. v.: "And there was a great cry of the people and of their wives against their brethren the Jews. For there were that said, We, our sons, and our daughters, are many: therefore we take up corn for them, that we may eat, and live. Some also there were that said, We have mortgaged our lands, vineyards, and houses, that we might buy corn, because of the dearth. There were also that said, We have borrowed money for the King's tribute, and that upon our lands and vineyards. Yet now our flesh is as the flesh of our brethren, our children as their children: and, lo, we bring into bondage our sons and our daughters to be servants, and some of our daughters are brought into bondage already: neither is it in our power to redeem them; for other men have our lands and vineyards. And I was very angry when I heard their cry and these words. Then I consulted with myself, and I rebuked the nobles, and the rulers, and said unto them, Ye exact usury, every one of his brother. And I set a great assembly against them. And I said unto them, We after our ability have redeemed our brethren the Jews, which were sold unto the heathen; and will ye even sell your brethren? or shall they be sold unto us? Then held they their peace, and found nothing to answer. Also I said, It is not good that ye do: ought ye not to walk in the fear of our God because of the reproach of the heathen our enemies? I likewise, and my brethren, and my servants, might expect of them money and corn: I pray you, let us leave off this usury. Restore, I pray you, to them, even this day, their lands, their vineyards, their olive-yards, and their houses, also the hundredth part of the money, and of the corn, the wine, and the oil, that ye exact of them. Then said they, We will restore them, and will require nothing of them; so will we do as thou sayest."

The Hebrew Lawgiver founds a people of peasant proprietors, among whom the land is equally divided. Such seemed

the surest way of producing a moral, religious, and patriotic nation. And the paramount object of the property law is to preserve these peasant proprietors, and prevent their homesteads from being engrossed, as the homesteads of the peasant proprietors in Italy were engrossed, by the rich capitalists, "who join house to house and lay field to field, till there be no place, that they may be placed alone in the midst of the earth." "The Land is Mine" warns off the cupidity of the capitalist, and places each little inheritance under the guardianship of God. But a system of small properties is not only adverse, but fatal, to slave culture, which can be profitably carried on only by large gangs of slaves working upon great estates, like the Roman latifundia or the plantations of the South.

for

The interests of the free laborer are guarded with as much care as that of the small proprietor. "Thou shalt not defraud thy neighbor, neither rob him: the wages of him that is hired shall not abide with thee all night until the morning." * “Thou shalt not oppress an hired servant that is poor and needy, whether he be of thy brethren, or of thy strangers that are in thy land within thy gates; at his day thou shalt give him his hire, neither shall the sun go down upon it; he is poor, and setteth his heart upon it: lest he cry against thee unto the Lord, and it be sin unto thee."† The spirit of these precepts lived in the nation. Jeremiah denounces "Woe unto him that buildeth his house by unrighteousness, and his chambers by wrong; that useth his neighbor's service without wages, and giveth him not for his work." And so in Malachi (iii. 5), "I will come near to you to judgment; and I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, and against the adulterers, and against false swearers, and against those that oppress the hireling in his wages, the widow, and the fatherless, and that turn aside the stranger from his right, and fear not Me, saith the Lord of hosts." To "use your neighbor's † Deut. xxiv. 14, 15. Jer. xxii. 13.

*Levit. xix. 13.

service without wages," and thereby degrade the free laborer into a serf, was the practice of feudal kings and tyrants as well as of the Oriental despots round Judæa. The Statutes of Laborers passed by the feudal Parliaments of England to compel the Laborer to serve at old rates in spite of a rise in prices and in the value of labor, were an instance of a kind of oppression which has widely prevailed when the lower classes have been in the power of the higher. And these parts of the Mosaic law are not to be read as vague moral precepts or general sentiments, but as specific provisions pointed against the besetting evils of society in that age.

The following law also shows the most tender and touching care for the interests, and even for the dignity, of the poor "When thou dost lend thy brother anything, thou

man:

shalt not go into his house to fetch his pledge. Thou shalt stand abroad, and the man to whom thou dost lend shall bring out the pledge abroad unto thee. And if the man be poor, thou shalt not sleep with his pledge: in any case thou shalt deliver him the pledge again when the sun goeth down, that he may sleep in his own raiment, and bless thee: and it shall be righteousness unto thee before the Lord thy God.” *

"If there be among you a poor man of one of thy brethren within any of thy gates in thy land which the Lord thy God giveth thee, thou shalt not harden thine heart, nor shut thine hand from thy poor brother: but thou shalt open thine hand wide unto him, and shalt surely lend him sufficient for his need, in that which he wanteth. Beware that there be not a thought in thy wicked heart, saying, The seventh year, the year of release, is at hand; and thine eye be evil against thy poor brother, and thou givest him naught; and he cry unto the Lord against thee, and it be sin unto thee. Thou shalt surely give him, and thine heart shall not be grieved when thou givest unto him: because that for this thing the Lord thy God shall bless thee in all thy works, and in all

* Deut. xxiv. 10-13.

that thou puttest thine hand unto. For the poor shall never cease out of the land: therefore I command thee, saying, Thou shalt open thine hand wide unto thy brother, to thy poor, and to thy needy, in thy land." * This and the like precepts of charity and liberality all tend not only to save the poor from the destitution which led to bondage, but to throw round their persons a religious sanctity which would guard them from the indignity of being made serfs or slaves. The same is the tendency of the injunctions in favor of the gleaner: "When thou cuttest down thine harvest in thy field, and hast forgot a sheaf in the field, thou shalt not go again to fetch it it shall be for the stranger, for the fatherless, and for the widow that the Lord thy God may bless thee in all the work of thine hands. When thou beatest thine olivetree, thou shalt not go over the boughs again: it shall be for the stranger, for the fatherless, and for the widow. When thou gatherest the grapes of thy vineyard, thou shalt not glean it afterward; it shall be for the stranger, for the fatherless, and for the widow. And thou shalt remember that thou wast a bondman in the land of Egypt: therefore I command thee to do this thing.” †

The ordinance requiring the appointment of regular judges throughout the nation, and enjoining them to "judge righteously between every man and his brother," "not to respect persons in judgment," "not to be afraid of the face of man, for the judgment is God's," would also, besides its more obvious benefit, tend to preserve the independence of the poor; since it assured them the protection of the law in place of the protection of great men, which in unsettled and dangerous times they are tempted to purchase, and in the early feudal period did habitually purchase, at the price of their personal liberty.

"Let our Legislature," says The Southern Democrat, "pass a law that whoever will take these parents (parents Ibid., xxiv. 19-22.

*Deut. xv. 7-11.

unable to educate their children out of their own pockets), and take care of them and their offspring, in sickness and in health, clothe them, feed them, and house them, shall be legally entitled to their services." "We have got," says the same journal, "to hating everything with the prefix free, from free negroes up and down through the whole catalogue, free farms, free labor, free society, free will, free thinking, and free schools. But the worst of all these abominations is the modern system of free schools." "We have asked the North," says The Richmond Inquirer, "has not the experiment of universal liberty failed, are not the evils of free society insufferable? Still no answer. Their universal silence is a conclusive proof, added to many others we have furnished, that free society in the long run is an impracticable form of society. It is everywhere starving, demoralizing, and insurrectionary. Policy and humanity alike forbid the extension of the evils of free society to new people and coming generations." Free society, according to a kindred authority, is nothing but "a conglomeration of greasy mechanics, filthy operatives, small-fisted farmers, and moonstruck theorists."

It appears that the author of the Hebrew Law was not of this opinion. It appears from his enactments that he did not think free labor, to use the phrase of another Southern writer, "the great cancer " and "the offensive fungus" of civilized society,* though he was as well aware as any advocate of Slavery that the lot of the free laborer was precarious, and that the poor would be always in the land.

"The institution of slavery operates by contrast and comparison; it elevates the tone of the superior, adds to its (sic) refinement, allows more time to cultivate the mind, exalts the standard in morals, manners, and intellectual endowments; operates as a safety-valve for the evil-disposed, leaving the upper race purer, while it really preserves from degradation, in the scale of civilization, the inferior, which we see is their uniform destiny when left to themselves. The slaves constitute essentially the lowest class, and society is immeasurably benefited by having this class, which constitutes the offensive fungus, the great cancer of civilized life,—a vast burden