work which is in the house of the Lord, to repair the breaches of the house.”[1]
There is not, it is believed, in the Hebrew annals any trace of the existence of a slave-market, nor anything else indicating a trade in slaves. Sion, therefore, probably presented no counterpart to the auctions and advertisements of the South.
In Slave States labour is always looked upon by freemen as a degradation. No Spartan would have thought of engaging in any work but war. Even at Athens, which was much less of a Slave State than Sparta, the name mechanic was, as in nations infected with feudal sentiments, a term of reproach.[2] The poor freeman at Rome despised labour, and lived by selling his suffrage at elections, by sponging on a rich patron, and by the dole which he received out of the tribute paid by the provinces to the conquering people. No member, however indigent, of a feudal aristocracy would have stooped to touch a plough. The poor whites of the South in like manner refuse to do the same work as the negro, and subsist as dependants of the great planters, or by occupations which, however wretched and precarious, are not those of the slave. There is not a trace of any such sentiment in the records of the Hebrew nation, any more than in those of its patriarchal sires. On the contrary, every mention of labour indicates that it was had in honour. “Blessed is every one that feareth the Lord; that walketh in His ways. For thou shalt eat the labour of thine hands: happy shalt thou be, and well shall it be with
