390 KEEPERS OF THE HERD OF SWINE x 



who believes, on the strength of his interpretation 

 of the fourth commandment, that it is a deadly sin 

 to work on the " Lord's Day," sees a fellow Puritan 

 yielding to the temptation of getting in his harvest 

 on a fine Sunday morning is the former justified 

 in setting fire to the latter's corn ? Would not 

 an English court of justice speedily teach him 

 better ? 



In truth, the government which permits private 

 persons, on any pretext (especially pious and 

 patriotic pretexts), to take the law into their own 

 hands, fails in the performance of the primary 

 duties of all governments ; while those who set 

 the example of such acts, or who approve them, or 

 who fail to disapprove them, are doing their best 

 to dissolve civil society : they are compassers of 

 illegality and fautors of immorality. 



I fully understand that Mr. Gladstone may not 

 see the matter in this light. He may possibly 

 consider that the union of Gadara with the 

 Decapolis,by Augustus, was a " blackguard " trans- 

 action, which deprived Hellenic Gadarene law of 

 all moral force ; and that it was quite proper for a 

 Jewish Galilean, going back to the time when the 

 land of the Girgashites was given to his ancestors, 

 some 1500 years before, to act, as if the state of 

 tilings which ought to obtain, in territory which 

 traditionally, at any rate, belonged to his fore- 

 fathers, did really exist. And, that being so, I 

 can only say I do not agree with him, but leave 



