Spirit of Jefferson. [volume] (Charles Town, Va. [W. Va.]) 1844-1948, 1868-03-17
The Year of Jubilee,

Under the Hebrew dispensation every
| fftieth year was the year of Jubilee. We
| give mastery passage descriptive of that
great institution from 4Salathiei, the wonder
| ful romance of Mr. CRoLY. We doubt wheth-
er any of our wisest and best statesmen have
| a suitable conception Of the value and infu-
ence of that universal emancipation from pub
lie and private debts, and the restoration of
| debtors to the rights and estates they had
conveyed to their creditors:
"T6e year of jubilee arrived. Abolished
| as the chief customs of Judes had been by
the weakness and guilt of idolatrous kings
and generations, they were still observed by
/ all who honored the faith of their fathers.
The law of jubilee was sacred in our nouns
tains. It was the law of wisdom and benev-
olence above man,
Its peculiar adaptation to Israel, its pro-
vision for the virtue and happiness of the
individual, and its safeguard of the public
strength and constitutional integrity, were
unrivalled among the finest ordinances of the
ancient world.
On the entrance of the Israelites into Ca
naan, the land was divided, by the inspired
ordinance, among the tribes, according to
their numbers. To each family q portion
was given as gift from heaven. The gift
was to be inalienable. The estate might be
sold for period: but at the fftieth year, in
the evening of the atonement, in the month
Tisri, the sound of the trumpets from the
sanctuary, echoed by thousands from every
mountain top, proclaimed the Jubilee. Then
returned every family to its original possess
! ions. All the more abject degradations of
poverty, the wearing out of families, the hope
less ruin, were obviated by this great law.
| The most undone being in the limits of Ju-
dea had still a hold in the land. His ruin
could not be final, perhaps could not extend
beyond few years; in the last extremity he
could not be scorned as one whose birth right
was extinguished; the Jubilee was to raise
him up, and place the outcast in the early
rank of the sons of Israel. All the higher
feelings were cherished by this incompatible
hope. The man, conscious of his future pos
sessions, retained the honorable pride of pow
erty under the sternest privations. The time
was hurrying on, when he should stand on
an equality with mankind, when his worn
spirit should begin the world again with
fresh vigor, if he were young; or when he
should sit under the vine and fig tree of
his fathers, if his age refused again to strug-
gle for the distinctions of the world.
The agrarian laws of Rome and Sparta, fee
BILE efforts to establish this true foundation of
personal and political vigor, showed at once
the natural desire, and the weakness, of hu.
man wisdom. The Roman plunged the peo-
pie in furious dissensions, and perished almost
at its birth. The Spartan was secured for
time only by barbarian prohibitions of money
and commerce-a code which raised an iron
wall against civilization, turned the people
into perpetual soldiery, and finally by the
result of perpetual war, overthrow liberty, do
minion, and name.
The Jubilee was for peculiar people, re-
stricted by divine interposition from in
crease beyond the original number. But
who shall say how far the same benevolent
interposition might not have been extended
to all nations, if they had revered the compact
of Heaven with man2 how far through the
earth the provisions for each mans wants
might have been secured; the overwhelming
superabundance of beggared and portionless
life that fills the world with crime have been
restrained; and tyranny, that growth of des-
perate abjectness of the understanding, and
gross corruption of senses, have been repelled
by manly knowledge and native virtue? But
the time may come