and efficaciously did they use it, till the consulship, the praetorship, the censorship, the priesthood, the senatorial dignity, and all the other offices of executive power, were within their grasp. This was the goal, at which they were constantly aiming. This was what they meant in all their proposals for relieving the people of their debts, for diminishing the rate of interest, and for dividing among the people the lands taken from the enemy. These were all equitable and excellent proposals; but, unfortunately for the people, as made by their tribunes, they were only pretences, devised to cover and conceal schemes of personal ambition. To these selfish views and aims they continually made the cause of the people subservient. That this is not mere assertion, but fact, we have clear proof in the manner in which they procured for themselves the right of admission to the consulship. Availing themselves of what was called an interregnum, that is, a time when there happened to be no magistrates in the state but themselves, they brought three propositions before the comitia of the tribes, viz. one for regulating the rate of interest, another for limiting the quantity of land that could be held by a citizen, and a third requiring that one of the two consuls should be taken from among the plebeians. The tribes voted in favor of the first two measures, but against the last. The tribunes declared, that the three bills must be accepted or rejected together. The most violent commotions. followed, and lasted through an entire year. The tribunes clung to the consulship, and at length triumphed. Livy truly observes, that, on this occasion, it was quite manifest which of the laws in question were most agreeable to the people, and which to those who proposed them. The tribunes were so intent upon personal advantages, that they were willing to sacrifice to them the most weighty interests of their constituency. "A few tribunes, indeed, did at times apply themselves seriously, out of real virtue and love of their duty, to remedy the grievances of the people; but their

fellow tribunes, and the whole body of those men, upon whom the people had, at different times, bestowed consulships, aedileships, censorships, and other dignities without number, united together with the utmost vehemence against them; and the real patriots, as Fulvius and the Gracchi, constantly perished in the attempt." (De Lolme.)

If the laws concerning the liberty of the citizens were imperfect in themselves, the execution of them was still more defective. Soon after the expulsion of the kings, a law was passed, confirming the right of the citizens,-a right previously enjoyed by them,-of appealing to the people from decrees of death passed upon them. The consuls, however, paid little attention to such appeals, but as we learn from Dionysius and Livy, sported with the lives of the citizens in the most arbitrary manner. The same law was introduced into the twelve tables; but it was as little respected by the decemvirs, and the magistrates who succeeded them, as it had before been by the consuls. About a hundred and forty years later, this law concerning an appeal to the people was enacted for the third time; but to no better purpose than on the previous occasions. It was continually violated by the different magistrates of the republic; and once the senate, of its own authority, ordered four thousand citizens to be put to death, despite the urgent remonstrances of the tribunes against so summary and severe an exercise of public justice. According to the constitution, no war could be waged, without the sanction of the people in the curiae or centuries. But instances occur, in which the senate alone declared war, levied armies, and carried on hostilities. Neibuhr is of the opinion, that the agrarian law was actually passed under Spurius Cassius; but if so, it is certain, that the people did not enjoy the benefit of it. Nor did the magistrates content themselves with perpetrating acts of injustice in their political capacity. They added the most shameless extortions. First they plundered the provinces. But Italy itself did not escape.

The disease at length reached the very heart of the republic. And here a new disorder arose. The judges proved as corrupt, as the magistrates had been oppressive. As early as the times of the Gracchi, it had become a general complaint, that no man, who had money, could be brought to punishment. Cicero says, that in his time, the same opinion was universally received; and his orations abound with lamentations over the levity and infamy of the public judgments.

Thus, on a review and recapitulation of what has been said concerning the Roman constitution, it appears, that the principal assembly of the people, the comitia centuriata, was constituted in such a manner, as to give a preponderating influence to rank and riches; that an exact and well defined division of powers was wanting; that there was no adequate system of checks and balances; that the patricians were at the greatest pains to give the people wrong notions of liberty; that a tyrannical and frightful power was exercised by creditors over debtors; that the tribuneship was radically defective in its constitution; that, by the use of a great variety of arti fices, the senators and great men of the state held the people always under their control; that the tribunes themselves were not faithful defenders of liberty, but continually betrayed those who confided in them; that the judicial power was a mere instrument of tyranny; that the senate, consuls, and dictators possessed an arbitrary power over the lives of the citizens; that the tribunal of censors was a mere piece of state-craft, devised as an additional prop to patrician and senatorial power; that almost all the revolutions and public commotions at Rome ended in advancing the power and interests of the few, while the grievances of the many remained unredressed; and that imperfect as the laws concerning the liberty of the citizens were, the execution of them was still more defective. Let any one attentively consider these things, and say, whether popular liberty in ancient Rome was any thing

more than a name, a dream, a gilded blind, cunningly contrived to conceal from vulgar eyes the real tyranny of aristocratic rulers.

I deny not that there were elements in the Roman, Grecian, Egyptian, and even Asiatic polities, worthy of praise and imitation. But the point which I have aimed to establish is this, that civil liberty, founded on equal rights, and acting through the popular will, was a blessing unknown to the whole ancient gentile world. When we turn from the dreary prospects, on which our eyes have rested through this chapter, where tyranny rules, the hour and the scene each moment is imbued in blood, to the green vales and vine-clad hills of Palestine, we shall see millions of freemen reposing, in happiness and security, beneath the sheltering aegis of a polity, stamped, in its every lineament, with the signatures of its divine original. This favored people were not more distinguished, during their journeyings and encampments in the wilderness, by the mysterious shechinah, which shot its fiery splendors up to mid-heaven, symbolizing the divine presence among them, than they afterwards were by their civil constitution; a constitution containing the elemental principles of all just, wise, and equal legislation, and bearing indubitable marks of a divine wisdom in its formation.

CHAPTER IX.

Geographical Limits and Population of Palestine.*

THE principal passages in the Pentateuch and other historical books of the Old Testament, relating to the boundaries of the holy land, are the following:-Gen. 15: 18-21. Exod. 23: 31. Numb. 34: 1-29. Deut. 1: 6-8. 11: 24. Josh. 11: 16-17. 13: 1-7. 19: 24-31. 15: 47. Judg. 1:31. 2 Sam. 8: 3. 1 Kings 4: 21-24. 2 Chron. 8: 1-6. 9: 26. The reader is requested, before he proceeds further, to peruse these passages, and compare them together. On a careful examination of them, the first thing, which strikes the mind, is an apparent inconsistency in their statements respecting the eastern and southern limits of the Israelitish territories. In the thirty-fourth chapter of Numbers, where the boundary line is described with great minuteness, the river Jordan is mentioned as the east border; and an irregular curve, extending across the desert, from the southern extremity of the Dead Sea to the river of Egypt, forms the south border. But in all the other passages, where the boundaries are spoken of, viz. Gen. 15, Exod. 23, Deut. 1, 11, 2 Sam. 8, 1 Kings 4, and 2 Chron. 8, 9,-eight passages in all, the Euphrates is mentioned as the eastern limit; and in Exod. 23: 31, the bounds of Israel are spoken of as stretching to the southward, as far as the Red Sea.

*See on the subject of this chapter Mich. Com. on the Laws of Moses, Arts. 19-28.