ernments of the people and for the people, but imperial creations for the glory of the despots who ruled them. Colossal empires lifted their brazen splendour before the world, each struggling for supremacy, and belching forth its armies for conquest or defeat, as so many desolating floods of lava from the mouth of a volcano. The modern idea of co-existing States with defined boundaries, between which diplomatic intercourse may be maintained, and strictly preserving the balance of power between them all, did not enter as an element in Asiatic statesmanship. The State was an engine either of triumph for the conqueror, or of luxury for the voluptuary— and always of oppression to the subject. The gorgeous Palaces and Temples, such splendid ruins as those of Babylon and Thebes, the massive Pyramids, could never have been achieved except through concentration of wealth and power in a single hand. In their melancholy silence they all testify to the abject wretchedness of suffering millions, upon which alone the monuments of despotism could possibly be reared.

Just here let the significant fact be considered that upon the threshold of this Asiatic history, with its constituent nations existing only in the germ and not yet crystalized into States, the Hebrew Commonwealth was planted in the bosom of them all, with the singular advantage of a revealed political Constitution. In this Constitution the central idea is that the Supreme Being is the Governor of nations, even as He is Lord of the conscience. This is a creative principle. It organizes the moral system of the Universe after the analogy of the material. It announces the great law of attraction which binds human governments to the throne of God, like that which binds these created orbs to their central sun. Subjection to law is found to be the essential condition of moral activity and freedom. Human legislation, postulated upon the Divine supremacy, is brought under the direction of the Divine wisdom and authority. The personal relations of the individual are mapped out as the sphere of obligation, in the one jurisdiction as in the other; and are protected in the one

But we

by the guarantees which are furnished in the other. must not rush with premature haste into the heart of our subject. Let it be added here that the Hebrew Commonwealth with this Constitution was placed, as it were, in the crossroads of ancient history-exactly in the path travelled by these old-world empires in their march to victory; where, of necessity, it was drawn into the vortex of all the revolutions, and became entangled in the fortunes of every kingdom in its turn. Thus was the leaven of political truth brought in contact with the inert mass of Asiatic despotism; against which it could at least protest, if it could not regenerate. We do not wonder that the typical Hebrew is proud of his lineage and of its history. To no other race was such a destiny ever committed by immediate revelation from Heaven, to be through fifteen centuries the exponent and champion of both human and Divine rights. If splendid traditions and glorious memories can oblige to virtue and excellence, the Hebrew people ought to move upon the highest plane to which the ambition of man can aspire.

The thesis of this article requires us now to prove that THE HEBREW COMMONWEALTH ENSHRINED THE FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES OF POLITICAL AND CIVIL LIBERTY; WHICH MODERN NATIONS HAVE ONLY REPRODUCED, AND UNDER OTHER FORMS HAVE APPLIED. In this analysis, we acknowledge our indebtedness to the authorities who have written upon Biblical Archæology, and especially to Dr. Wines' "Commentaries upon the Laws of the Ancient Hebrews", who has carefully compiled all the facts herein adduced.

1. Let it be noted, first of all, that it was the only government in those ancient times with a written Constitution. Through an entire year after the deliverance from Egypt, Israel was encamped at the foot of Sinai for the reception of the Law. Never was a Constitution prepared and ratified under circumstances of equal solemnity. In the solitude of the wilderness, amid the awful symbols of Jehovah's presence

upon the Mount which was consecrated as His earthly throne, Moses, their leader, went up into the cloud and talked face to face with the thunder. The entire code under which the people were to live, was there announced. Their religious ritual, their offerings and sacrifices, their Priesthood and the altars they should serve, their ceremonies of purification, their social customs, their sanitary laws and dietetic rules, their departments of government with the whole civil administration, their jurisprudence and courts of adjudication, their foreign policy and their domestic industries—every minute detail was authoritatively communicated, and reduced to record. "And it came to pass, when Moses had made an end of writing the words of this law in a book, until they were finished, that Moses commanded the Levites which bare the ark of the Covenant of the Lord, saying, Take this book of the law and put it in the side of the ark of the Covenant, that it may be there for a witness against thee." (Deut. 31:24-26.) We do not here speak of the People's acceptance of this Constitution, which will be better exhibited in another connexion; but press the simple fact that Israel was from the beginning under a Constitutional government, in which the relations and duties of all parties under its protection were accurately defined. Such an instrument becomes not only a regulative code, but also a charter of rights. After centuries of conflict to obtain it, modern sagacity has discovered no greater safeguard of political and civil freedom.

2. The people themselves were the proprietors of the soil. It is one of the maxims of political science that property in the soil is the natural fountain of power. It would seem to be a necessary inference that they who own the products of the soil must be in possession of the wealth of a country, and must therefore control its destiny. Thus it has often happened in English history that the popular branch of the Legislature has imposed a solid check upon the arbitrary power of the throne, by simply withholding supplies from its schemes of reckless ambition. Our own country furnishes a stronger il

lustration still of the power of the masses, the pledge of whose patriotism is found at last in the interest engendered by their possession of the soil, as an immovable landed estate.

Not only is the division of the land into small freeholds a guarantee for the permanence of a government; but, wherever it obtains, it is the source of a recuperative energy, which is a constant astonishment to the reader of history. Let France, through the whole of her distinguished career, be taken for an example. Engaged through centuries in successive wars, often lying exhausted and panting under disaster and defeat, she has required only a brief breathing spell of peace to spring up in her original elasticity and strength. A conspicuous instance of this marvellous recuperation is furnished in her late conflict with Prussia. The heavy indemnity exacted by the conqueror, added to the cost of a war which laid her prostrate in the dust, was a burden that should have crushed her at once into a secondary European power. Our own grand country with its inexhaustible and diversified resources could not sooner than France have thrown off this incubus, nor risen more proudly to an erect posture. The banks from which she drew the loans to meet these obligations, were the stockingfeet in which her own freeholders had secreted the small profits of their industry. Myriads of rivulets poured their golden sands into the treasury of the State, which was quickly rehabilitated through the economy and patriotism of her people who could not afford to see their country perish, every rood of which was owned and cultivated by themselves.

This distribution of the soil obtained in none of the Asiatic Empires; where, on the contrary, it was divided between the King, the Priests, and the warriors. The tiresome monotony of Asiatic history teaches this warning to modern times, that it is always a fearful power which cuts off the bread even with the teeth between which it is chewed. In Palestine, all Communistic and Agrarian tendencies were averted by the equal distribution of the land between the Tribes'; each family holding its portion in fee-simple, and rendered incapable of alien

ation by the readjustment in the year of Jubilee. Political science, after the experience of thirty centuries, has suggested no improvement of this economy.

3. The suggestive principle of the Hebrew Polity, as opposed to the intense centralism of the Asiatic despotisms, was the local jurisdiction of the several Tribes and the consequent distribution of power. Even where chartered rights exist, there is a tendency in power to steal from the many to the few; until, at length, government becomes so compact that the individual is nothing but a spoke in the great wheel. The tribal distinction, therefore, with recognized self-government in the smaller bodies into which society is distributed, has been in all ages the asylum of popular freedom. It was the haughty independence of the Germanic tribes, which offered the most stubborn resistance to the Roman arms sweeping on to universal supremacy. And when that bloated empire sank into decrepitude through its own debaucheries, it was the Northern tribes with their robust barbarism that burst through the empty crust-the rude material of that Congress of European States which at length emerged from the chaos.

It would require too much space to exhibit in detail the autonomy of the Hebrew Tribes, and the complete control of local interests in each. It is sufficient to mention the weakness of the general administration arising from the excess of this independence. It wrought such disasters during the period of the Judges, as almost to necessitate the Monarchy as the remedy for their divisions. It would be pleasant just here, to show the parallelism between the Hebrew Commonwealth and our own: which is so striking that in reciting the history of the one, we seem to be drawing the picture of the other. The twelve Tribes of Israel almost re-appear in the States of this Republic; and the weakness in the government from tribal independence was reproduced with us, compelling as in their case a closer Federal union. All this must, however, be pretermitted to make room for the statement that, in the