In a pastoral country, such as that beyond the river Jordan especially, where the desert in most parts bordered upon the cultivated soil, the limits of the several possessions could not at all times be distinctly marked. It is well known, besides, that the native inhabitants were never entirely expelled by the victorious Hebrews, but that they retained, in some instances by force, and in others by treaty, a considerable portion of land within the borders of all the tribes,--a fact which is connected with many of the defections and troubles into which the Israelites subsequently fell. CHAPTER II. _History of the Hebrew Commonwealth_. Form of Government after the Death of Joshua; In Egypt; In the Wilderness; Princes of Tribes and Heads of Families; Impatience to take Possession of Promised Land; The Effects of it; Renewal of War; Extent of Holy Land; Opinions of Fleury, Spanheim, Reland, and Lowman; Principle of Distribution; Each Tribe confined to a separate Locality; Property unalienable; Conditions of Tenure; Population of the Tribes; Number of Principal Families; A General Government or National Council; The Judges; Nature of their Authority; Not ordinary Magistrates; Different from Kings, onsuls, and Dictators; Judicial Establishments; Judges and Officers; Described by Josephus; Equality of Condition among the Hebrews; Their Inclination for a Pastoral Life; Freebooters, like the Arabs; Abimelech, Jephthah, and David; Simplicity of the Times; Boaz and Ruth; Tribe of Levi; Object of their Separation; The learned Professions hereditary, after the manner of the Egyptians; The Levitical Cities; Their Number and Uses; Opinion of Michaelis; Summary View of the Times and Character of the Hebrew Judges. Learned men have long exercised their ingenuity with the view of determining the precise form of the social condition which was assumed by the Israelites when they took possession of the Promised Land. The sacred writer contents himself with stating, that "it came to pass a long time after the Lord had given rest unto Israel from all their enemies round about, that Joshua waxed old and stricken in age; and he called for all Israel, for their elders, and for their heads, and for their judges, and for their officers." The purport of the address he delivered on this occasion, and which is given at length in the twenty-third chapter of the book which bears his name, was solely to remind them of their religious obligations as the chosen people of Jehovah, and of the labors that they had yet to undergo in subduing the remainder of Canaan. Neither in this speech, nor in the exhortation with which he afterward at Shechem endeavoured to animate the zeal and constancy of his followers, did he make any allusion to the form of government that it behoved them to adopt; declining even to direct their choice in the appointment of a chief, who might conduct their armies in the field, and preside in the deliberations of the national council.