'I. THE INSTITUTION OF -LANDED PROPEUTY IN ISRAEL. According to the Law, each of the twelve tribes was to have its la.i;ided possessions, and each particular household WRS to have its definite portion of the land belonging to the tribe; and this was to be nn foali1:mable herit.age. Among an agricultural people it is most necessary that each family should thus have a fixed foothold on _the land, a home, a centre of toil and acquisition; and that thus its members should be firmly bound to their native land and to their fellow-countrymen. In a. conquered land, a.gain, it was equitable that the fields should be divided among those who took part in the burdens of war, and who desired to cultivate the conquered land in peace. In many passages of the Law we find the impress of this institution of real property. In the year of jubilee every man was to be restored to his patrimony (Lev. xxv. 13). The land was never to be sold, because in fact it belonged to Jehovah (ver. 23), and the people were but his stewards. In the interesting case of the daughters of Zelophehad (Numb. xxvii. 1-11), who had died in the_ desert, we find it laid down that the children, or nearest relatives of one who had died without coming into his portion, were to possess it in his stea.d. .A.gain, the m1;1n_ of Reuben and of Gad refused to go to war until every man of them had received his inherit1p;1ce (Numb. xxxii. 16, sqq.). And Moses agreed to their conditions. Jn :the same book we read the direction, "Ye shall divide the land by lot for an inheritance among your families: and to the more ye shall give the more inheritance, !Ind w the fewer ye shall give the less inheritance" (Numb. xxxiii. 54). The land, it w:ill _be see:n; was considered as in tenure from Jehovah himself, the only landlord. And how ,attached an Israelite would become to his- ancestral estate, is seen from the i;tory of Na})Qth, .who will not give up his even for a better one, and at the king's request (1 Kings xxi. ?, sqq.; 2 Kings ix. 10, 25, sqq.). The virtues of patriotism struck deep root in this relation to the soil of Palestine. These facts help us to under- stand the moral and national evils springing from selfish greed, which threatened this institution of properly, of which the prophet here complains. II. THE VICE OF COVETOUSNESS. The root of the vice is a. thorough-going selfishness. '.l'he rich m~n use .the means at- their cpmmand unj1113tly to absorb the laud into their ,o,wn possession; .,- The: Tesult must Qe, the hppeless misery and degradation of the mass of the ]>Cople. An instructive parallel to the state or things described by the ptophet :is to be found- in ~he. history of Sparta, at the time of the great lawgiver, -Lycurgus. Plutarch tells, us that the disorders which he found existing in the state aro&e in great measure from the grp~s inequality of property, and from the long avarice and rapacity of the rich,-who had thus·a.dded house to house and field to field. The lawgiver, therefore, redistributed the whole territory of Sparta. In Roman letters we read allusions to the habit of forming latifundia, or "broad farms," with its unsocial consequences. "How far," indignantly exclaims Seneca, " will ye extend the bounds of:your possessions; not content to circumscribe the area o( your estates by the sowing •of. provinces? The broad acres· own one lord; the people crowd into a narrow field. 'l'he courses of bright streams flow through private estates; great rivers, bounds of great nations,. from the source to the mouth, all are yours. And this is nothing unless you have girdled your broad farms with seas; unless across the Hadriatic, the Ionian, and the lEgean your bailiff reigns; unless islands, domiciles of great dukes, are reckoned amongst the,commonest of things. Sbi,.11 there be no lake over which the roofs or your villas hang not? no stream whose banks are not covered by. your buildings?" (Ep. luxviii.). In his beautiful 'Deserted Village,' Goldsmith says- · (• '. ·, I
"DI fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, Where weo.lth accumulates and men decay."
·Too. weli ~e know what inappeasable discontent and seeming incurable misery has ,been begotten in Ireland of past selfishness and injustice of_ the few. Surely it is the pn,rt -0f every patriotic Christlnn man to forward all legislation which throws open Gou'd hni<l ~o tillage, and breaks up selfish monopolies. III, Tm: l'ONISHMEX'r OF CQVETOUS~ESll. 1. Itsfolly is uposed. One would think, from oieir conduct, that these grasping men desired to dwell alone ami,lst a waste! J3utJ as tho old agricultural poet of Greece says, "The man who frames ills against 11nothe1i fra~e,:1 them against himself, and ill oounsel turns out worat for him who 88 TRE BOOK OF TR:e PROPRET lSAtAll.