'What a barbarous scene! horrible it must be confessed; but I know some more horrible still pass before eyes in our day. Suppose that Samuel had brought Agag to Ramatah; that there he had confined him in a dungeon at the bottom of a cistern; that he had come {143} every day with an attendant to make him undergo various tortures, to burn his feet--his hands, to stretch him upon a wooden horse, to dislocate him, etc. etc.; all this with honied terms, saying that it was all for his good; would not the lot of the victim have been a thousand times more dreadful? Ah! much better the open cruelty of the Hebrew priest, compared with the charity of the priests and monks which bless Rome! Yet the European Governments authorise and suffer such abominations! But did Samuel commit such an act without motive--without a projected object? That would not be in conformity to his deep and calculating character. We will examine these motives. 'For ten or twelve years Saul, by his victories, did not cease to flourish and strengthen his credit in the minds of all the nation. Samuel, finding himself eclipsed, took occasion to flatter the vindictive passion of the Hebrews against the Amalekites. The victory of Saul, and taking king Agag in disobedience to the command of God, who had ordered the extermination of the Amalekites, furnished Samuel with a pretence for striking the audacious blow of anointing a substitute to rival Saul. He thought it necessary to strike terror into their minds by a preliminary imposing step, which would make Saul dread the falling upon him of some new celestial anathema. It is certain that this manoeuvre of Samuel succeeded, since Saul did not dare to use any act of violence against him. 'In considering the action of Samuel in a general point of view, political and moral, it presents an astonishing union of pride, audacity, cruelty, and hypocrisy; a little orphan upstart, to decree from his caprice the extermination of a whole nation, even to the last living being! to insult--to abuse a king covered with laurels, become legitimate by his victories, and by the assent of the nation grateful for the peace and respect which he had procured for them! a priest to trouble this whole nation by a change of the prince, by the intrusion of a new elect of his choice. Here is found the first germ of that political division of the Hebrews which, suppressed under David and Solomon, broke out under the imprudent Rheoboam, and prepared the fall of the nation by rending it into two kingdoms.