QUOTE
It was not an empire such as had reached full development in Egypt, or existed in rudimentary patriarchal form in the tribes around, that Moses aimed to found. Nor was it a republic where the freedom of the citizen rested on the servitude of the helot, and the individual was sacrificed to the state.
It was a commonwealth based upon the individual – a commonwealth whose ideal it was that every man should sit under his own vine and fig tree, with none to vex him or make him afraid. It was a commonwealth:
- in which none should be condemned to ceaseless toil; in which, for even the bond slave, there should be hope; and
- in which, for even the beast of burden, there should be rest.
- A commonwealth in which, in the absence of deep poverty, the many virtues that spring from personal independence should harden into a national character–
- a commonwealth in which the family affections might knit their tendrils around each member, binding with links stronger than steel the various parts into the living whole.
It is not the protection of property, but the protection of humanity, that is the aim of the Mosaic code. Its sanctions are not directed to securing the strong in heaping up wealth as much as to preventing the weak from being crowded to the wall. At every point it interposes its barriers to the selfish greed that, if left unchecked, will surely differentiate men into landlord and serf, capitalist and working person, millionaire and tramp, ruler and ruled.
- Its Sabbath day and Sabbath year secure, even to the lowliest, rest and leisure.
- With the blast of the Jubilee trumpets the slave goes free, the debt that cannot be paid is cancelled, and a re-division of the land secures again to the poorest their fair share in the bounty of the common Creator.
- The reaper must leave something for the gleaner;
- even the ox cannot be muzzled as he treadeth out the corn.
Everywhere, in everything, the dominant idea is that of our homely phrase: "Live and let live!"
UNQUOTE
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