masters. His library comprises more than 50,000 volumes, and is said to be the finest private library in the world.

"The Duke of Richmond's home farm (Goodwood) consists of 23,000 acres. His whole domain at Goodwood is 40,000 acres. He has a summer retreat in Scotland of between 200,000 and 300,000 acres. Of the beauty and magnificence of this establishment,' says Mr. Colman, I cannot give you any adequate idea; -extensive parks through which you ride for miles and milesherds of deer, sheep, and cattle. The Duke has more than forty race horses, and sixty grooms and hostlers. His salmon fisheries at the Gordon Castle used to be let for £10,000, and now lets for £7,000 per annum, or $35,000.

"The annual income of the Duke of Devonshire, the proprietor of Chatsworth, is said to be £200,000, or one million of dollars. This is said to be the most splendid nobleman's seat in the kingdom. His arboretum, covering many acres, contains one or more specimens of every tree that can be acclimated; the kitchen gar den covers twelve acres; a conservatory, 387 feet long, 117 wide, 67 high, with a carriage-way. This conservatory is covered with 7,600 square feet of glass, and warmed with hot water, passing through an extent of seven miles. The fountain at Chatsworth throws the water to an height of 276 feet.

"Mr. Colman gives an account of several noblemen whose annual income varied from £100,000 to £150,000; that is, from $500,000 to $750,000. Speaking of Lord Yarborough, he says that his Lordship has an indefinite number of hunters, &c.' and adds- It was the custom at this place for his Lordship, (and his guests were always invited to accompany him,) at nine o'clock precisely, in the evening, to visit the stables where the hunting and riding horses were kept, which were reached by a covered passage way from the house. The stables presented all the neatness of a house parlor, and the grooms were more than a dozen in number, all drawn up in a line to receive the company.' Lord Yarborough has more than 60,000 acres in his plantation; he has 600 tenants, and you can ride thirty miles in a direct line upon his estate. Many of the tenants of Lord Yarborough pay 1,000 and 1,400 guineas a year rent, and several of them live like noblemen, keeping their dogs, horses, carriages, and servants in livery.'

“After alluding to a court ball, at which one lady wore £60,000

or $300,000 worth of diamonds, Mr. C. remarks- The Duchess of Roxburgh, whom I do not know, appeared most splendidly; and well she might, as the annual income of the Duke is stated to be £300,000.""

We might add several others to the vast estates which he has enumerated. The property of the Dukes of Gordon, for instance, in the counties of Banff, Moray, Aberdeen, and Inverness, covers 422,000 acres; and if to this we add their estates on the Dee, their whole possessions will exceed 550,000 acres. The large estates in land held by proprietors in Ireland are a great obstacle in the way of the noble efforts which are made to elevate and improve the condition of the overstocked population in that island. We cannot too highly commend, the efforts now made to remedy the evil, and to put the waste lands under cultivation by men who will have permanent interest in the soil.

NOTE P.-LECTURE 5, 178.

Since the foregoing pages were in type, the Legislature of the State of New-York has passed a law for the exemption of the Homestead.

There were some exceptions to the law restoring the landed inheritance on the year of Jubilee, but not such as to impair its general effect; while to prevent the exceptions from being carried too far, they were defined with great care. In Lev. 27: 16-21, it is enacted, that in case a man had consecrated a field to God, he might redeem it on paying the value of the crops till the coming Jubilee, and one fifth more to the priests. Otherwise, at the Jubilee, the field, instead of reverting to its former owner, became a part of the

inheritance of the priesthood, as a thing devoted to the Lord.

There is an interpretation often given to the law in Deut. 15: 1–11, which in this connection is deserving of attention. The enactment is considered by some as cancelling all debts due from one Hebrew to another every seventh year. Others consider the privilege ensured to the debtor every seventh year, as merely "a release" from a claim for payment on that year, in consequence of allowing his land to lie fallow, as the law required. Michaelis, in his commentary on this law, says:

"One privilege only did Moses concede to the debtors, and among a nation of husbandmen it was, indeed, an indispensable one. In the seventh year, during which all the land lay fallow, no debt could be exacted from a poor man, because then he had no income whence to pay it. To debtors not poor, this privilege did not apply; for the words immediately following in ver. 4 are, save when he is not one of the poor among you, fc. on which words others have put this strange construction, as if Moses, in a law enacted in favor of the poor, had promised there should be no poor among the Israelites; but they thus get into an embarrasment, in comparing one passage with another; since, in ver. 11 of this very chapter, he says, that there should always be poor persons among the Israelites. This law, besides, applied only to the Israelites, and not to strangers who possessed no land, and of course were not in the seventh year differently circumstanced, from what they were during the other six. Them, therefore, creditors might then sue for the payment of debt, with all rigor.”

How far and how often the government of a country should interfere or enact laws for the release of debtors, has long been viewed as a very doubtful and difficult question of political economy. It has repeatedly occupied the attention of statesmen in our own nation, and much diversity of opinion respecting it prevails to this day. I will therefore

make some further extracts from Michaelis, showing how a man of his mind and learning viewed the subject. In his commentary on the law above quoted, he adds:

"Many have been inclined so to understand this law, as if, in the seventh year, all debts were to be cancelled; and the Talmud has actually adopted this explanation, endeavoring withal to guard against the evils of the year of release, by all manner of moral considerations.

"That every seventh year all debts should be extinguished, is a law so absurd, so unjust, and so destructive to the interests of all classes of the community, that we are not warranted to ascribe it to a legislator, nor even to a turbulent tribune of the people, unless he has enacted it in terms the most express, and such as leave not the shadow of a doubt as to his meaning.

"There may, I grant, extraordinary cases occur, which render the extinction of all debts necessary; particularly when, by the charge of immoderate and usurious interest, or by any other artifices of moneyed men, they have become so enormous as that the state can no longer subsist under them. Thus among the Romans, Nova Tabula were sometimes projected; a measure, however, which, by reason of the great confusion which it must have made in the commonwealth, was dreaded by every good citizen, and even by those that were themselves debtors, as a very great evil. I will farther admit, and therefore, I am here sufficiently liberal, that it may be a problem in politics, whether it might not be expedient that all debts should be extinguished every fifty or a hundred years; in order to avoid law-suits, which extend to so long a period, to secure property more effectually, and to prevent children and grandchildren from groaning under the heavy burdens of the debts of their forefathers? Such a periodical extinction of debts, in regard to which, however, to make it just, we must presuppose an expeditious administration of justice, in order to bring law-suits to an end before the year of remission, would have a strong resemblance to legal prescription; nor should I have had anything to object to it, if Moses (and thus Josephus explains him) had ordained the extinction of debts only every fiftieth year. But a septennial extinction of

debts with Nova Tabulæ, (a phrase which made the Roman state to tremble, when a tribune of the people but uttered it,) how great would be its injustice, and the misery it would occasion! Under such a law, none would be so foolish as to lend; so that those who stood in need of loans would only be in a worse predicament, through the mistaken clemency of the legislator. But what, above all, would be the absurdity of the exhortation in ver. 9, 10, to lend to the poor, and not to entertain the base thought of the near approach of the seventh year; but however near it were, to let him have whatever he wanted, were all debts cancelled every seventh year? Neither property nor honor could be secure, were such an exhortation respected. The poor might then, in the sixth year, impose the greatest hardships on the rich, and borrow from them to any extent, without repaying a farthing.

"Of the injustice of such a law, I shall say nothing; for of that every one will be sensible, who places himself in the situation of a person aware that to-morrow all debts become legally cancelled, to whom comes a poor man to-day, not asking an alms at the good pleasure of the giver, but demanding a loan determined in its magnitude by himself, and which, he is reminded, the law enjoins him not to be so hard-hearted and selfish as to refuse. I only ask this question: What country could subsist under such a law? Who could have any inclination to industry, or the acquisition of riches, if every seventh year his earnings lay at the mercy of every beggar? A country where laws so unjust prevailed, every man of wealth would be either compelled to leave, (and the sooner he did so the better;) or else, as is necessary under tyrannical governments, where the greedy despot seeks to lay hold of the property of his subjects, under every possible pretext, he must affect poverty, and live like a beggar. In either case, the poor, who most generally derive their subsistence from the rich, will be placed in circumstanstances truly deplorable.

"Has Moses, then, by the tenor of any of his other laws, deserved to have the reproach of such an absurdity cast upon him? By no means, in my judgment; and therefore it would be but fair to put upon his law concerning the seventh year, not an irrational, but a rational construction. The word Schemitta (AD