stewards heartlessly wringing profit for their masters out of human flesh
and blood. But we must not ignore two considerations which suggest that
the root of the evil lay not in the caprice or greed of individuals but
in the attempt to carry on rural industry by slave labour at all. In
the country, opportunities of escape were many; the slave-prison and
the fetters could hardly be dispensed with if you meant to keep your
farm-hands at disposal. And manumission, as a means of encouraging good
service, was evidently not of much avail in country places. For after
long years of exhausting labour the worn-out slave would be unable to
earn a living by hard bodily work; and he knew no other. He had been
bought as a flesh-and-blood machine; as such, to manumit him while still
efficient would be a sacrifice of sunk capital for which nobody was
prepared. It seems that the ordinary practice was to keep him at work
till he could work no longer, and then to let him linger on the estate
as an invalid retainer, feeding on what he could get and decaying in
peace. But the industrializing of agriculture, heartlessly selfish in its
aims, tempted landlords to shirk the unprofitable maintenance of spent
labourers. When a slave was no longer worth his keep, it might pay to
sell him at once for what he would fetch. There was thus a mouth less
to be fed, and the problem of how to turn the remnant of his strength
to account was shifted on to his new owner. This plan, approved by the
elder Cato as a detail of farm-economy, marks the change of relations
between master and slave in rustic life. The old domestic relation has
disappeared in the brutal exploitation of a human animal for immediate
profit. The crudely industrial system reproduced on great estates the
horrid phenomena of the quarry and the mine.
That humane and thoughtful men should be disgusted with such doings was
inevitable, and disgust was soon reinforced by reasonable alarm. For
tillage was not the sole occupation of rustic enterprise. It was found
that in many districts grazing paid better than tillage, and the two
could be worked together remuneratively on a large scale. The charge of
flocks and herds, shifting their pasture according to seasons, led to
employment of able-bodied slaves in a duty responsible and at the same
time removed from immediate control for months together. These slave
herdsmen, hardy and used to a free life in wild uplands, had to face
wolves and robbers, and therefore to bear arms. We need not dwell on the
danger from such a class menacing the peace of a country unprotected by
rural police. It was real enough. Being slaves, they had nothing but
their lives to lose, and their lives it was their owners’ interest to
protect. Meanwhile the unescorted traveller was at their mercy, and any
peasants within reach would pay blackmail to escape their raids. Yet
nothing was done to get rid of the nuisance and peril of this state of
things. Servile risings were clumsily put down with appalling bloodshed,
and left to recur. Meanwhile the free population of the countryside
diminished, and prosperity could not be restored by new slave-gangs.
Such was notoriously the condition of a great part of rural Italy under
the later Republic, and contemporary evidence clearly shews that the
improvement effected under the Empire was slight.
Now, when experience had proved the blighting influence of slavery,
why was there no movement to do away with the system altogether? Truth
is, there was at present no basis to start from. The moral enthusiasm,
often sincere, that has inspired such movements in modern times, had no
effective existence. Moral considerations were almost entirely confined
to a section of rich or cultivated society. It was not expected that the
common herd should rise above the meanest motives of crude self-interest.
The artisan, who either employed, or hoped soon to employ, a slave or
two, was not likely to condemn slavery: the parasitic loafer was not
likely to welcome a mass of new competitors for the doles and bribes that
he undeservedly enjoyed. During the last century of the Roman Republic
no opposition to slavery as an institution could have arisen from the
urban populace. And the wealthier classes were interested in slavery.
Religion did not touch the question. A few scrupulous and thoughtful men
might have supported an anti-slavery movement, had there been one; but we
have not the smallest reason to think that any individual ever dreamt of
starting humanitarian propaganda on his own account and at his own risk.
There was no place in the ancient world for the reformer of this type.
Even those leaders whose policy offered advantages to the free masses,
such as the Gracchi or some Spartan kings, did not so fare in their
enterprises as to encourage imitation. As for appealing to the slaves
themselves, it was only desperate adventurers who did so, and that only
to use their force in promoting criminal designs. Such cases only served
to justify the cruel execution of cruel laws for protecting masters and
the state in general from the imminent slave-peril. If we turn from the
city, in which what passed for politics ran its troubled and futile
course, to the countryside, we are at once in a scene from which all
political life had departed. The farmer-citizens grew fewer and fewer,
and the great majority of them were virtually disfranchised by distance.
Nor were they likely to favour any movement that seemed to be for the
benefit of slaves.
The establishment of the Empire did not, indeed could not, produce any
material change in the way of arousing effective sentiment hostile to
slavery. But it did much to promote internal order and far-reaching
peace. Under the new model of government the corrupt circles of nobles
and greedy capitalists were no longer in absolute control of the
civilized world, and it might seem that there was now some chance of
dealing with the canker of slavery. But no such movement was the result.
Old notions remained in full vigour. Augustus had his hands too full,
and the need of conciliating private interests was too pressing, for
him to disturb them, even had he been minded to do so. And who else
could take the initiative? But the fate of two moral influences is
worth noting. Stoicism, the creed of not a few ardent spirits, might
profess to rise superior to worldly distinctions and advantages and
assert the potential dignity of man even in the humblest condition of
life. But it was always a creed of the few: its aloofness, tending to
a certain arrogance, made it unfitted[1809] to lead a great reform: it
neither would nor could furnish the machinery of zealous propaganda.
In the earlier Empire we find it politically allied with malcontent
cliques in which smouldering resentment at the restraints on ‘freedom’
expressed itself by idealizing the Republic and hoping for a reaction.
Thus it lost itself in impracticable dreams, and the hand of emperors
under provocation sometimes fell heavily on its most virtuous men. The
spread of Christianity came later, and was not diverted from its aims
by a social affinity with the upper classes. Slaves bore no small part
in its expansion to the West, and it was free to operate steadily as a
humanitarian influence. But its claim to universality naturally exposed
it to grave suspicion in a world that knew religion only as an affair
of each several community, with a sort of overlordship vested in the
conquering gods of Rome. Though it was a Church and not a philosophic
system, though meant for all mankind and not for a cultivated few, it
could only win its way by accepting civilization[1810] in the main as it
stood. Therefore it was compelled to accept slavery as an institution,
and to content itself with inculcating humanity on masters and
conscientious devotion to duty on slaves. If Abolitionism was to spring
from this seed, a long time had to be spent in waiting for the harvest.
Yet the establishment of the Empire did lead to effects that in their
turn served as contributory causes undermining the old slave-system,
particularly[1811] in agriculture. In a more peaceful age fewer slaves
were brought to market, and this meant higher prices and put a premium
on the economical employment of bought labour. To meet the situation,
agricultural policy was developed on two lines, each of which was the
improvement or extension of an existing practice. One was the more
scientific organization of the labour-staff, so as to get better results
from an equal amount of labour. The other was a more frequent resort to
the plan of letting farms to tenants, whenever that arrangement seemed
favourable to the landlord’s interest. Of these developments we have
direct information from Columella, who still prefers the former plan
wherever feasible. But it was with the system of tenancies on various
conditions that the future really lay. I have endeavoured above to sketch
the process[1812] by which tenants were gradually reduced to a condition
of dependency on their landlords, and the difficulty of finding and
keeping good tenants that was the other side of the movement. A very
significant detail is the fact that slaves were put into farms[1813] as
tenants: that this was no unusual practice is clear from the way in which
the classical jurists refer to it as a matter of course. And so things
slowly moved on, with ups and downs, the tenants slave or free becoming
more and more bondsmen of the land, liable to task-services and not
free to move at will. Thus by usage, and eventually by law, a system of
serfdom was established, while personal slavery declined.
Looked at from an Abolitionist point of view, we are here dealing with
a sheer evasion of the slavery-question. But this was inevitable. The
imperial government, which alone had the power necessary for attempting
solutions of grave problems, was doomed to become more and more
mechanical. Under great strains in the third century it lost its vital
forces to such a degree that it was powerless for internal betterment.
The later despotic Empire, seeing the failure of past policy, could find
no better way than to do as before[1814], only more mechanically and more
thoroughly. What little of freedom of movement and of self-disposal still
remained to the toiling classes accordingly disappeared. Once a certain
number had been slaves; now none were practically free. Diminution of
personal slavery had not increased personal freedom. The attempt to
confine all labour to fixed grooves and rigid rules was a last desperate
effort to control and employ the resources of ancient civilization, in
the hope of thus finding means sufficient to endure the ever-growing
strain upon the empire. This system might serve its purpose for the
moment, but it was a vain device, killing enterprise and working out
its own ruin through its own stagnation. In agriculture, on which the
whole fabric rested, its effects were particularly ruinous: for in no
occupation is there greater need of constant forethought and loving care,
which the prospect of private advantage alone can guarantee. All these
phenomena may assure us that as yet there was no clear understanding of
the value of free self-disposal as the economic basis of society. From
the moral point of view no genuine progress was to be looked for in a
stagnant age. The transition from normal slavery to gild-bondage and
normal land-serfdom does not seem to have been affected by the spiritual
levelling of Christianity. But that as she gained power, the Church
did something to mitigate[1815] the hardness of the time, is not to be
doubted.
I need not dwell at length on the contrast presented by modern
anti-slavery movements. The influence of religion, personal and
humanitarian, is alone enough to account for the new spirit aroused
and organized by Clarkson and Wilberforce. To put down the slave-trade
because it was wrong was a momentous step, and emancipation its
inevitable corollary, costly though it might be. That the reform was
carried out two generations before the handworking masses of England
gained political power is a most notable fact. For it is not possible
to connect the achievement with the natural jealousy of free labour
objecting to competition of slave labour. In the United States the
motives for Abolition were necessarily more mixed, but sincere fanatics,
religious and violent, were the leaders of the crusade. But the
repugnance of free labour to the recognition of slavery in any part of
the Republic (and it was this sentiment that furnished the necessary
voting-power) was not so purely philanthropic. Students of American
history are well aware of the moral change brought about by a single
mechanical invention in the southern states. The economic advantages
of the cotton-gin made slavery so profitable that existing tendencies
towards emancipation died out in the South. A new life was given to a
confessed evil, and the developed plantation-system, industrialized
for the profit of a few, went down the road of fate to end in tragedy.
The result of the great civil war at all events settled one question.
Henceforth labour was to stand on a footing of self-disposal and
wage-earning, with freedom to improve its conditions on those lines. The
solution, obtained at an awful cost, was final for the time: what will
be its ultimate outcome is at present (1919) a matter of some doubt, for
reasons not to be discussed here.
The fact that Abolitionism is a phenomenon of the modern[1816] world,
and not of the ancient, will not seem insignificant to those who have
read widely in the ancient writers and remarked how very little we hear
of free wage-earning labour. If we deduct the references to independent
artisans practising trades on a small scale (and their cases are not
relevant here), what we hear of mere wage-earners is very little indeed.
And of this little again only a part concerns agriculture. I take it
that we may fairly draw one conclusion from this: the wishes of the
free wage-earning class, whatever their numbers may have been, were
practically of no account in the ancient world. From first to last the
primitive law of superior force, the ‘good old rule’ of which slavery was
a product, was tacitly accepted. Civilization might undergo changes of
character, periods of peace might alternate with periods of war: still
bondage and labour were closely connected in men’s minds, and honest
labour as such commanded no respect. How could it? Of a golden age, in
which all men were free and slavery unknown, we have nothing that can
be called evidence. The curtain rises on a world in which one man is at
the full disposal of another. What is at first a small domestic matter
contains the germ of later developments; and in the case of agriculture
we see clearly how demands of an industrial nature transformed single
bond-service into the wholesale and brutal exploitation of human chattels
in slave-gangs. We have no good reason to believe that men ever in the
ancient world abstained from employing slave labour out of humanitarian
scruples. Scarcity of slaves, or lack of means to buy them, were
certainly the main restrictive influences. The institution was always
there, ready for extension and adaptation as changing conditions might
suggest. If ancient civilization did not rest on a basis of slavery, on
what did it rest? Assuredly not on free self-disposal. The man free to
dispose of himself claimed the right to dispose of others, up to the
limits of his own power and will. In this there is nothing wonderful.
We need not flatter ourselves that the rule of force is now extinct.
True, personal bondage to individuals is forbidden by law, but effective
freedom of self-disposal, perhaps an impossible dream, is not yet
realized: only its absence is dissembled under modern forms.
When I say that ancient civilization rested on a basis of slavery, the
condition present to my mind is this. A social and political structure
requires for its stability a reasonably sound economic foundation. This
foundation is found in the assured and regular use of natural resources.
And this use implies the constant presence of an obedient labour-force
that can be set to work and kept working as and when needed. This force
is now more and more supplied by machinery, the drudge that cannot
strike. Antiquity made the slave its quasi-mechanical drudge: the more or
less of slavery at a given moment simply depended on circumstances.
In returning to my original questions, whether the growth of Greco-Roman
civilization was in fact achieved through the system of slavery, and
whether it could conceivably have been accomplished without slavery, I
have I think given my answer to the first, that is, so far as agriculture
is concerned. And agriculture was the vital industry, on which the whole
fabric principally rested. As to the second question, I can give no
satisfactory answer. For my part, I agree with those who hold that, in
the conditions of antiquity as depicted in our traditions and inferred by
modern inquirers, slavery in some form and degree was an indispensable
condition of progress. States, organizations of a lasting kind, had
to be established by force. Captive labour, added to the resources of
conquerors, seems to be a powerful means of increasing their economic
strength and abridging the wasteful periods of conflict. But, once the
stage had been reached at which a state was sufficiently stable and
strong to provide for order within and to repel invaders, a slave-system
became a canker, economic, social, ultimately political. I believe that
the maladies from which the old Greco-Roman civilization suffered, and
which in the end brought about its decay and fall, were indirectly or
directly due to this taint more than to any other cause. I know of no
case ancient or modern in which a people have attained to a sound and
lasting prosperity by exploiting the servitude of other men. Serfdom or
slavery, it matters not. So far as human experience has gone, it appears
that all such conditions are eventually ruinous[1817] to the rulers.
For it is not merely the degradation of manual labour that results from
slavery. The deadening of inventive genius and economic improvements
is fatally promoted through the tendency to remedy all shortcomings by
simply using up more flesh and blood. Man abdicates a most important
function of his reason, and accepts a mere superiority of animal over
animal. This is surely not following the true law of his development. It
is from this point of view that the great scientific inventions of modern
times present an encouraging spectacle, as the earlier abuses of their
exploitation are gradually overcome, and the operative citizen vindicates
his claims as a human being. That ancient slavery did in some ways
act for good by guaranteeing leisure to classes some of whom employed
it well, may be freely admitted. But I do not think we can sincerely
extend the admission to include the case of Politics, whatever Greek
philosophers may have thought. Nor can we without reservations apply
it in the field of Art. On the other hand Literature surely owed much
to the artificial leisure created by slavery. Even in its most natural
utterances Greco-Roman literature is the voice of classes privileged
because free, not restrained by the cramping influences of workaday life
and needs. Its partisan spirit is the spirit of the upper strata of
society, ignoring the feelings, and often the existence, of the unfree
toilers below. In the main aristocratic, it tells us next to nothing
of the real sentiments of even the free masses, particularly on the
labour-questions that have now for some time increasingly occupied the
public mind. That we are, for good or for evil, viewing all matters of
human interest on a different plane from that of the ‘classic’ writers,
is a consideration that students of the Past are in duty bound never to
forget.
But, when we are told[1818] that ancient civilization in its early stages
(as seen in the Homeric poems etc) may fairly be labelled as Medieval,
while it may be called Modern when in its full bloom, we shall do well to
pause before accepting a dogma that may imply more than we are prepared
to grant. That mankind had to make a fresh start in the Middle Ages,
ancient civilization having run its course and failed, is a proposition
dangerously true. If it implies that the ‘free’ labour of modern times
is not a direct development from ancient slavery, so far good. If we
are to hold that ancient slave labour and modern free labour, when and
so far as each is a factor of economic importance, are practically
identical phenomena of capitalism eager to make a profit out of cheap
labour, we may ask—is the parallelism so exact as it is thus represented
to be? When we are told that the capitalist would nowadays prefer to
employ slave labour if it were to be had, and that the legal form in
which labour is supplied is a secondary consideration from the economic
point of view, we begin to hesitate: is this really true? Was not the
ineffectiveness of slave labour detected in ancient times? Was it not
proved to demonstration in America, as attested by the evidence of both
Northern and Southern witnesses? To reply that what capital wants is
not mere slave labour but efficient slave labour, would be no answer.
Capital is not, and never was, blind to the inefficiency of slave labour
as compared with free labour. In the pursuit of profit it needs a supply
of labour at its immediate and certain disposal; therefore it takes what
it can get. In the ancient world the unquestioned institution of slavery
offered a source of supply, not ideal, but such as could be relied on.
Therefore capital employed slavery to extend its operations, simply
turning existing conditions to account. And the admission, that the
most flourishing period of Greco-Roman civilization was also the period
in which slavery reached its greatest development, is surely a virtual
denial that the basis of that civilization was free labour. That is, free
wage-earning labour. For the independent farmer or artisan had nothing to
do with the matter: he worked for himself, not for another, and was on a
different plane from either wage-earner or slave. If he did not employ
either wage-earner or slave, it was because he found such help too costly
or a doubtful boon.
The case of agriculture at once reveals what was found to be the strong
point of slave labour, the feasibility of employing it in large masses.
Much of the work consisted in the mere mechanical use of brute force,
and one overseer could direct many hands. In operations dependent on
the seasons, the labour must be at hand to utilize opportunities. The
choice lay between slaves not working with a will and free wage-earners
not likely to be on the spot when wanted. Why were slaves preferred?
Because their presence in sufficient number could be relied on in the
existing conditions of the world. The history of industrial agriculture
was a long tale of effort so to organize slave labour as to get out of
it the greatest possible margin of profit. Not that slavery was thought
preferable in itself; but a means of wholesale cultivation had to be
found, and the then available resources of civilization offered no other.
When the supply of slaves began to fail, landlords sought a remedy in
letting some or all of their land to tenant farmers (extending an old
practice), not in attempting to farm on their own account with hired
labour. Hired labour remained as before, an occasional appliance to meet
temporary needs.
The use of the terms Medieval and Modern as labels[1819] for ancient
civilization in two clearly marked stages has, I repeat, just enough
truth in it to be dangerous. As a rhetorical flourish it may pass. But
it conveys by suggestion much that cannot be accepted. No doubt it is
not meant to imply that what we call the Middle Ages is to be ignored.
But it inevitably tends to stifle a belief in historical continuity, a
faith in which is the soul of historical inquiry as generally understood
in the present day. That modern labour-conditions shew a powerful
reaction against medieval, is obvious: that medieval conditions have not
influenced the modes of this reaction, is to me incredible. I do not
believe that the modern free wage-earning system could have grown out
of the ancient slave-labour system, had there been no such intervening
period as the ‘Middle Ages.’ That the aims of the capitalist ancient and
modern are the same, is a mere truism: but is not the same true of the
medieval capitalist also?