thee.” “Wealth gotten by vanity shall be diminished: but he that gathereth by labour shall increase.” “And also that every man should eat and drink, and enjoy the good of all his labour, it is the gift of God.” Not only the honoured founders of the nation, as we have said, but its heroes, kings, and prophets were sons of labour, and had taken part in the work of that class which American Slave-owners call the fungus and cancer of society. Gideon, when the angel of the Lord appeared to him, was threshing wheat by the winepress.[1] Saul was in search of his father’s asses when he was anointed king of Israel. David was taken from following the flocks. Elisha was called from the plough. Amos was a herdsman.
The spirit of a slave-owning aristocracy is insolent, as we know by the example of Lacedæmon and of the Southern States. But that of slave-owners under a despotism is doubly slavish, as we know by the example of Imperial Rome. The spirit of the Hebrew people in its dealings with its kings is high and free. Solomon in all his power does not dare to treat them as bondmen, and they at once break the yoke of his tyrant son. Their undying patriotism, their unfailing hope for their country, the tenacity of national life which brings them back from Babylon and restores their Commonwealth and Temple, would never, it may safely be said, have been found in a Slave State. Nothing of the kind was shewn even by the indomitable Roman when once his character had been corrupted by the possession of wealth and a multitude of slaves.
