CHAPTER I. 



TROUBLES OF THE AGRICULTURISTS OF ANCIENT 



TIMES. 



In a former chapter we suggested a desire to make the 

 inquiry as to whether we have set about a solution of an 

 old difficulty. A careful survey of the histories of the 

 nations of antiquity, such as that of Israel, Greece, and 

 Rome, will convince the student that the agrarian ques- 

 tion and trouble to land properties has been an extremely 

 old subject of national, as well as individual, concern. 



The husbandmen of Israel had their days of glory, 

 when the whole land of Palestine, to use the description 

 of one of England's great writers, was " a magnified copy 

 of our finest ideal of landscape gardening, " " laughingly 

 beauteous," "sumptuously rich," "lavishly varied." 

 But we find that, though with its mountain-clad vine- 

 yards, its olive groves, its palm plantations, its orchards 

 of dates, its pomp of fruit, and with its boundless store 

 to its votaries, yielding its " thirty to one hundred-fold," 

 it finally failed to be the land of prosperous, happy homes 

 for intelligent men. 



The hills of Benjamin and Judah, with once a "teem- 

 ing population" of husbandmen, are now the home of 

 wild beasts ; fertile Esdraelon and luxuriant Carmel are 

 inhabited by a few unintelligent beings ; and the high- 

 lands of Galilee, " with no appearance of life except the 



31 



