ants of Jewish masters, or the masters
of Jewish servants.

II. The disabilities of the servants from the Strangers, were
exclusively _political_ and _national_.

1. They, in common with all Strangers, _could not own the soil_.

2. They were _ineligible to civil offices_.

3. They were assigned to _employments_ less honorable than those in
which Israelitish servants engaged; agriculture being regarded as
fundamental to the prosperity and even to the existence of the state,
other employments were in far less repute, and deemed _unjewish_.

Finally, the condition of the Strangers, whether servants or masters,
was, as it respected political privileges, much like that of
unnaturalized foreigners in the United States; no matter how great their
wealth or intelligence, or moral principle, or love for our
institutions, they can neither go to the ballot-box, nor own the soil,
nor be eligible to office. Let a native American, who has always enjoyed
these privileges, be suddenly bereft of them, and loaded with the
disabilities of an alien, and what to the foreigner would be a light
matter, to _him_, would be the severity of _rigor_.

The recent condition of the Jews and Catholics in England, is a still
better illustration of the political condition of the Strangers in
Israel. Rothschild, the late English banker, though the richest private
citizen in the world, and perhaps master of scores of English servants,
who sued for the smallest crumbs of his favor, was, as a subject of the
government, inferior to the veriest scavenger among them. Suppose an
Englishman, of the Established Church, were by law deprived of power to
own the soil, made ineligible to office, and deprived unconditionally of
the electoral franchise, would Englishmen think it a misapplication of
language, if it were said, "The government rules over that man with
rigor?" And yet his life, limbs, property, reputation, conscience, all
his social relations, the disposal of his time, the right of locomotion
at pleasure, and of natural liberty in all respects, are just as much
protected by law as the Lord Chancellor's. The same was true of all "the
strangers within the gates" among the Israelites: Whether these
Strangers were the servants of Israelitish masters, or the masters of
Israelitish servants, whether sojourners, or bought servants, or born in
the house, or hired, or neither--_all were protected equally with the
descendants of Abraham._

Finally--As