'If Samuel had been a just man he would, in establishing the rights of the king, have also fixed the balance of his duties, what constituted the rights of the people: he would have imposed upon him, {135} as is practised in Egypt, the duties of temperance in all things, of abstinence from luxury, of repressing his passions, of overseeing his agents, of discountenancing flatterers, of resolution to punish, and of impartiality to judge between his subjects. But the priest Samuel was irritated at having wrested from him the sceptre which his knavery had obtained. The most to be regretted in this affair is, that Saul was not endowed with sufficient means or sufficient spirit to counteract this perfidious protector. He could, by feigning to hold Samuel strictly to his order, by obliging him to explain it clearly, have thrown back upon him the checks which he imposed, and thus, in the eyes of the people, he would have had the merit of liberating them. David did not fail; but Saul, altogether a brave warrior, and not suspecting the policy of the temple, became the dupe and the victim of a consummate Machiavelism. 'According to Samuel, the royal statute was a pure and severe despotism, a genuine tyranny. According to Moses, it was quite another thing. To be convinced of this, it is sufficient to read the precept recorded in the 17th chapter of Deuteronomy, verse 14, etc. It says, literally, "When you shall have entered into the land which Jehovah your God has given you, and which you shall possess and inhabit, and you shall say I will establish over me a king like all the people that surround me, you shall establish him who shall choose Jehovah your God; you shall take him from among your brethren (Jews); you shall not take a stranger who is not your brother; and this king shall not possess many horses; he shall not make the people return to Egypt to have many horses; he shall not multiply wives, that his heart turn not away; he shall not amass treasures of gold and silver, and when he shall sit upon the throne he shall write for himself a copy of the law in a book before the priests and the Levites, and this copy shall be in his hands; he shall read it every day of his life to learn to fear Jehovah his God, and to practise all his precepts." What a difference between this statute of Moses and that of Samuel! Mark well the words: the king shall be one of your brethren, a man entirely as one of you; and he shall be submissive to the will of the nation. How happens it that Samuel was not intimate with, or did not mention, a single word of an ordinance of the legislator so precise and radical? How was it that no person made the least mention of it? Was this law of Moses unknown or forgotten? or was it by some chance not yet inserted? These are reasonable suspicions in this respect.' (_Vide_ Volney.) Dr. Giles observes that:--