X KEEPERS OF THE HERD OF SWINE 389 



swineherds of the " country of the Gadarenes " 

 were erring Jews, doing a little clandestine busi- 

 ness on their own account. The endeavour to 

 justify the asserted destruction of the swine by the 

 analogy of breaking open a cask of smuggled 

 spirits, and wasting their contents on the ground, 

 is curiously unfortunate. Does Mr. Gladstone 

 mean to suggest that a Frenchman landing at 

 Dover, and coming upon a cask of smuggled brandy 

 in the course of a stroll along the cliffs, has the 

 right to break it open and waste its contents on 

 the ground ? Yet the party of Galileans who, 

 according to the narrative, landed and took a walk 

 on the Gadarene territory, were as much foreigners 

 in the Decapolis as Frenchmen would be at Dover. 

 Herod Antipas, their sovereign, had no jurisdic- 

 tion in the Decapolis they were strangers and 

 aliens, with no more right to interfere with a pig- 

 keeping Hebrew, than I have a right to interfere 

 with an English professor of the Israelitic faith, if 

 I see a slice of ham on his plate. According to 

 the law of the country in which these Galilean 

 foreigners found themselves, men might keep pigs 

 if they pleased. If the men who kept them were 

 Jews, it might be permissible for the strangers to 

 inform the religious authority acknowledged by the 

 Jews of Gadara; but to interfere themselves, in such 

 a matter, was a step devoid of either moral or legal 

 justification. 



Suppose a modern English Sabbatarian fanatic, 



