reproaches upon your conduct. You will be scattered over the
whole world, and will, as slaves, entirely fill both sea and
land; and when once you have had the experience of what I now
say, you will repent, and remember the laws you have broken, when
it is too late. Whence I would advise you, if you intend to
preserve these laws, to leave none of your enemies alive when you
have conquered them, but to look upon it as for your advantage to
destroy them all, lest, if you permit them to live, you taste of
their manners, and thereby corrupt your own proper institutions.
I also do further exhort you, to overthrow their altars, and
their groves, and whatsoever temples they have among them, and to
burn all such, their nation, and their very memory with fire; for
by this means alone the safety of your own happy constitution can
be firmly secured to you. And in order to prevent your ignorance
of virtue, and the degeneracy of your nature into vice, I have
also ordained you laws, by Divine suggestion, and a form of
government, which are so good, that if you regularly observe
them, you will be esteemed of all men the most happy."

3. When he had spoken thus, he gave them the laws and the
constitution of government written in a book. Upon which the
people fell into tears, and appeared already touched with the
sense that they should have a great want of their conductor,
because they remembered what a number of dangers he had passed
through, and what care he had taken of their preservation: they
desponded about what would come upon them after he was dead, and
thought they should never have another governor like him; and
feared that God would then take less care of them when Moses was
gone, who used to intercede for them. They also repented of what
they had said to him in the wilderness when they were angry, and