SOVEREIGNTY. 53 



tliat connection with naluiv wiiicli is so do.siral.>lo, Ï was 

 about to say so essential, to the idea of home. 



Now in Israel, as in some other countries, pul^lic 

 authority did not always respect the rights of private 

 life. The book of Kings informs us that in the time of 

 Ahab, a certain man had a vineyard in Jezreel, hard by 

 the palace of the king. Ahab wanted this vineyard for 

 a garden, and went himself to see Xaboth, and said to 

 him : *' Give me thy vineyard and I will give thee for 

 it a better vineyard ; or, if it seemeth good to thee, I 

 will give thee the worth of it in money."'* 



And Xaboth said to Ahab, '' The Lord forbid it me 

 that I should give the inheritance of my fathers unto 

 thee." To the mind of this simple man, full of the 

 spirit of earlier days, it would have been an act of im- 

 piety to abandon the family home. The king of Israel 

 paused and trembled before this assertion of the right 

 of the fiimily. ''He came into his house," says the 

 sacred text, '"heavy and displeased; and he laid him 

 down upon his bed, and turned away his face, and 

 would eat no bread.-' Then his wife, Queen Jezebel, 

 came in and asked the occasion of his trouble. And 

 the king told her of his generous offer, and how it had 

 been refused by that obscure working-man, and how 

 that worthless bit of property had set itself in insurrec- 

 tion against the exigences of court splendor. '• Truly," 

 says Jezebel, with superb irony, "it's a marvellous 

 authority that you hold, and grandly you govern the 

 kingdom of Israel. Arise and eat bread, and I will 

 give yon the vineyard of Xabotli the Jezreelite." So 

 she wrote letters in Ahab's name, and sealed them with 

 his seal, and commanded the elders of the city to exe- 

 cute swift and severe justice on a certain seditious per- 



* 1 Kings», xxi. 1, 2. 



