Here let it be observed, that both Israelites and Strangers, belonged indiscriminately to _each_ class of the servants, the _bought_ and the _hired_. That those in the former class, whether Jews or Strangers, were in higher estimation, and rose to honors and authority in the family circle, which were not conferred on _hired_ servants, has been already shown. It should be added, however, that in the enjoyment of privileges, merely _political_ and _national_, the hired servants from the _Israelites_, were more favored than either the hired, or the bought servants from the _Strangers_. No one from the Strangers, however wealthy or highly endowed, was eligible to the highest office, nor could he own the soil. This last disability seems to have been one reason for the different periods of service required of the two classes of bought servants--the Israelites and the Strangers. The Israelite was to serve six years--the Stranger until the jubilee[A]. [Footnote A: Both classes may with propriety be called _permanent_ servants; even the bought Israelite, when his six-years' service is contrasted with the brief term of the hired servant.] As the Strangers could not own the soil, nor even houses, except within walled towns, most of them would choose to attach themselves permanently to Israelitish families. Those Strangers who were wealthy, or skilled in manufactures, instead of becoming servants themselves, would need servants for their own use, and as inducements for the Strangers to become servants to the Israelites, were greater than persons of their own nation could hold out to them, these wealthy Strangers would naturally procure the poorer Israelites for servants. See Levit. xxv. 47. In a word, such was the political condition of the Strangers, the Jewish polity furnished a strong motive to them, to become servants, thus incorporating themselves with the nation, and procuring those social and religious privileges already enumerated, and for their children in the second generation, a permanent inheritance. (This last was a regulation of later date. Ezekiel xlvii. 21-23.) Indeed, the structure of the whole Mosaic polity, was a virtual bounty offered to those who would become permanent servants, and merge in the Jewish system their distinct nationality. None but the monied aristocracy among them, would be likely to decline such offers.