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He was taken from the care of his sheep, to be placed in authority, over the agriculturists of Israel. It was to shepherds that the glad tidings of peace to man on earth were first revealed. And it was from that primitive occupation that the Savior himself was pleased to take his favorite figure for the divine employment in which he was engaged. He was & is the great shepherd of his people. Thus, so far as the sacred volume speaks, the marked preference is not for the agricultural, but for the nomadic tribes. Will this writer object that the aborigines of America were not shepherds but hunters? The answer has been anticipated. If the argument be false as to shepherds, it is equally false as to hunters: for it is to tillers of the earth, that he assigns the right of expulsion and subjugation, over all who are not tillers of the earth, but wanders, at large, over its surface, depending on its spontaneous production, and not incorporating their labor with the soil; a description just as applicable to shepherds as to hunters. It is not, therefore, in that part of this divine command which directed our first parents to subdue the earth, that this author can find a warrant from Heaven for the arbitrary power which he asserts for agriculturalists over the nomadic tribes. Is there any such warrant in the other part of the command which orders them to "increase & multiply to replenish the earth?" This order was not given to agriculturalists, for Adam and Eve were not agriculturalists, nor was it intended that they should be so, while they retained their innocence. The order was not issued to them, therefore, with any reference to agricultural character or pursuits, as the means of obeying the command. Nor can it be pretended that the order was restricted to tillers of the earth. It was to the nomadic Abraham the promise was made that his posterity should be as the stars of Heaven. But by what process of reasoning can the divine command "to increase and multiply and replenish the earth" be perverted into an authority to depopulate an entire hemisphere! If