words. Then I consulted with myself, and I rebuked the nobles, and the rulers, and said unto them, Ye exact usury, every one of his brother. And I set a great assembly against them. And I said unto them, We after our ability have redeemed our brethren the Jews, which were sold unto the heathen; and will ye even sell your brethren? or shall they be sold unto us? Then held they their peace, and found nothing to answer. Also I said, It is not good that ye do: ought ye not to walk in the fear of our God because of the reproach of the heathen our enemies? I likewise, and my brethren, and my servants, might expect of them money and corn: I pray you, let us leave off this usury. Restore, I pray you, to them, even this day, their lands, their vineyards, their oliveyards, and their houses, also the hundredth part of the money, and of the corn, the wine, and the oil, that ye exact of them. Then said they, We will restore them, and will require nothing of them; so will we do as thou sayest.”
The Hebrew Lawgiver founds a people of peasant proprietors, among whom the land is equally divided. Such seemed the surest way of producing a moral, religious, and patriotic nation. And the paramount object of the property law is to preserve these peasant proprietors, and prevent their homesteads from being engrossed, as the homesteads of the peasant proprietors in Italy were engrossed, by the rich capitalists, “who join house to house and lay field to field, till there be no place, that they may be placed alone in the midst of the earth.” “The Land is Mine” warns off the
