The agrarian law of Rome and Sparta, feeble efforts to establish this true foundation of personal and political vigor, showed at once both the natural impulse and the weakness of human wisdom. The Roman plunged the people into furious dissensions, which perished almost in their birth. The Spartan was secured for a time only by barbarian prohibitions of money and commerce—a code which raised an iron wall against civilization, turned the people into a perpetual soldiery, and finally, by the mere result of continual war, overthrew liberty, dominion, and name.
The Jubilee was for a peculiar people, restricted by a divine interposition from increase beyond the original number. But who shall say how far the same benevolent interposition might not have been extended to all nations, if they had revered the original compact of heaven with man? How far throughout the earth the provisions for each man’s wants might not have been secured—the overwhelming superabundance of portionless life that fills the world with crime might not have been restrained; how far despotism, that growth of desperate abjectness of the understanding and gross corruption of the senses, might not have been repelled by manly knowledge and native virtue? But the time may come.
In the first allotments of the territory, ample domains had been appointed for the princes and leaders of the tribes. One of those princedoms now returned to me, and I entered upon the inheritance of the leaders of Naphtali, a large extent of hill and valley, rich with corn, olive, and vine. The antiquity of possession gave a kind of hallowed and monumental interest to the soil. I was master of its wealth, but I indulged a loftier feeling in the recollection of those who had trod the palace and the plain before me. Every chamber bore the trace of those whom the history of my country had taught me to reverence; and often, when in some of the fragrant evenings of summer I have flung myself among the thick beds of bloom that spread spontaneously over my hills, the spirits of the loved and honored seemed to gather round me. I saw once more the matron gravity and the virgin grace; even the more remote generations, those great progenitors who with David fought the Philistine; the solemn chieftains who with Joshua followed the Ark of the Covenant through toil and battle into the promised land; the sainted sages who witnessed the giving of the law, and worshiped Him who spake in thunder from Sinai; all moved before me, for all had trod the very ground on which I gazed. Could I transfer myself back to their time, on that spot I should stand among a living circle of heroic and glorious beings before whose true glory the pomps of earth were vain; the hearers of the prophets themselves; the servants of the man of miracle, the companions of the friend of God; nay, distinction that surpasses human thought, themselves the chosen of heaven.