'These last expressions point out a party of malcontents. Their spirit and tone of disdain indicate the low rank and condition in which Saul was born, and perhaps also the mediocrity of his talents already known to his neighbours, without exposing a secret infirmity, which we shall soon see developed. We perceive, then, that these malcontents were of a class distinguished by birth and by wealth, who are in the text denominated "evil ones," because the writer was a believer, a devotee, imbued with the ideas of the priest, his hero, and that of the superstitious majority of the nation. 'The book of royal statutes, written by Samuel, is worthy of some attention. The Hebrew word mashfat [------] which it is designated, signifies sentence rendered--law imposed. What was this law, this constitution of royalty? The answer is not doubtful. It was the same mashfat mentioned in the 8th chapter and 11th verse, where Samuel being angry, says to the people--Here is the mashfat of the King; who will reign over you: he will take your children; he will employ them in the service of his chariots and his horses; they will run before him and before his chariots of war; he will make them captains over thousands and captains of fifties; he will employ them as labourers in his fields to gather his harvest, to make his instruments of war, and his chariots. He will take your daughters and make them perfumers (or washerwomen), his cooks, and his bakers. He will take your corn fields, your olive orchards, and your vineyards; he will give them to his servants; he will take the tenth of your grain and of your wine to give to his eunuchs and servants; he will take away your slaves, male and female, as well as your asses; and the best of your goods will be for his use; he will decimate your cattle, and of your own persons he will make slaves. 'Those will be deceived who take this for menaces only. It is simply the picture of what passed among the neighbouring people who had kings. It is an instructive sketch of the civil, political, and military state of those times when we see chariots, slaves, eunuchs, tithes, tillages of different kinds, companies and battalions of thousands and fifties, etc., as in later periods. Such were the evils resulting from the theocratic _régime_, or government of priests in the name of God, that the Hebrews preferred to it a military despotism, concentrated in a single person; who at home had the power of maintaining peace, and abroad to repel aggression and the intrusion of strangers.