INCREASE AND CONSOLIDATION OF SLAVERY.
Sanction given by Law and Public Opinion--Various Causes of
Enslavement--Practices of Ancient Germans--Analogy in Modern
Commercial and Funding Systems, and Expatriation of Irish
Peasantry--Slavery among the Jews.
Having shown how human slavery originated in parental despotism, let us
now inquire how positive laws came to consolidate and regulate it, and
public opinion to consecrate and perpetuate it, till it had become the
normal condition of some three-fourths of the human race antecedently
to the period of Christ’s advent. Here we shall again find history our
safest guide. If the oldest traditions show, on the one hand, that
slavery did not originate in human laws, but was the spontaneous growth
of the natural subjection of children to parents, there is equally
ample authority, on the other hand, to show that, once introduced, all
the forces of law and opinion known to the ancients were unsparingly
applied to propagate and maintain slavery in every pagan country.
While families remained apart from each other, without intercourse,
without social relationship, slavery knew no other law than the will or
pleasure of the head of each household. But when, in the progress of
early civilization, the families congregated in any particular locality
or country came to find it necessary to constitute themselves into one
great society for the purposes of exchange or commerce, intermarrying,
mutual defence against aggression, &c., the despotic will of
individuals gave place, of necessity, to a general law of the heads
of families composing the society. It was then, and not till then,
that slavery became a _legal_ institution. The general law not only
sanctioned and enforced it, but also greatly enlarged its bounds by
creating new sources of slavery. For example, to be taken prisoner in
war, to take refuge in the house of another, to be unable to pay one’s
debts, or, if a girl, being married out of her family or tribe,--these
were so many new sources of slavery created by the general law. The
rights of war were made to confer upon the vanquisher the same rights
over the vanquished that belonged to their own fathers. Indeed, amongst
the ancients the vanquished were considered as “men without gods,”
that is to say, men without ancestors of rank or dignity (for, in the
language of the primitive poets, the gods and the ancestors of great
families are one and the same thing); and they were treated as mere
chattels, as appears from the very name given, viz., _mancipia_, which,
though the ordinary term applied to slaves taken in battle, is, in
its etymological sense, applicable only to things inanimate. Whether
it was from a religious scruple, or for the purpose of divesting the
vanquished of what prestige might attach to them from the possession
of their gods or ancestral images, we find that the taking or keeping
possession of these gods was always a vital consideration in the
sieges and battles of antiquity. Once taken by the enemy, the capture
and enslavement of their possessors was deemed inevitable. Those
left without gods, in this sense, were regarded as outlaws by their
fellow-citizens, and their future slavery was considered a _mere
matter of course_ by themselves, as well as by their conquerors. We
may readily imagine what a prolific source of slavery this must have
been in lawless times, when _might_ alone conferred _right_. We may
also conceive how greatly it must have aggravated and embittered the
aboriginal relations between master and slave.
Asylums, or houses of refuge, were another means of extending slavery
under the positive law. The man who took sanctuary in one of these
places became the slave or chattel of the protector who had given
him safety. These asylums, of which we find mention made in the
primitive traditions of almost every old country, drew together not
only maltreated slaves from other quarters, but malefactors and
vagabonds of all sorts, and, in general, that restless and turbulent
class of people who love action for its own sake, and cannot live out
of broils and adventure. History testifies to the opening of such
asylums by rulers, and founders of cities, as an essential feature
of their policy. Thus, Moses determined six certain cities in which
manslayers might take refuge from the avenger. Theseus opened a refuge
at Athens, the remembrance of which was so fresh in Plutarch’s time,
that that biographer thinks the phrase of the common criers in his day,
“All peoples, come hither!” were the identical words used by Theseus
himself. Romulus, as before observed, opened an asylum at Rome for the
fugitive slaves of Latium, which, it is said, remained open for upwards
of 750 years. Indeed, if we are to believe Suetonius, it and similar
places of refuge were to be found in Rome, and in the provinces, till
Tiberius formally abolished “the law and custom” of them by an edict.
It may be observed, generally, of these asylums that, originally or
primitively, the parties who fled for refuge to them became the slaves,
or subjects, or clients of their protectors, yielding to the latter
their personal liberty and service in exchange for their preservation;
but at later epochs the character both of asylums and of those who
fled to them changed altogether. When opened by free cities within the
boundaries of their liberties, or by priests in their temples, they
were sacred to freedom, and not to slavery. There is no doubt, however,
that in the early ages of the world both law and custom turned them
largely to account in extending the domain of slavery.
Next to war, indebtedness, or the relation of debtor to creditor, was
probably the most odious and prolific source of slavery under the
positive law. Such appears to have been the case, at least, amongst
Greeks and Romans, with whose histories the moderns are better
acquainted than with those of other ancient countries. Plutarch tells
us, in his Life of Solon, that that legislator, on his arriving at
power, found a large proportion of the citizens in a state of actual
slavery to their creditors, and that one of his greatest difficulties
and triumphs was the adjustment of their conflicting claims.
Certain writers and commentators speak of an old Athenian law which
gave money-lenders, as security for their money lent, the personal
liberty of the borrowers--otherwise, a power to make them slaves.
Others say the law in question extended the creditor’s power to one of
life or death--that he might expose or kill his defaulting debtor. The
Roman laws of the Twelve Tables were, we know, borrowed from Greece;
and Aulus Gellius cites the express terms of the law of the Third Table
to show that it armed Roman creditors with similar power over their
unfortunate debtors. The rigour of this law was such, that in case
there were several creditors, they had the option either to sell the
debtor’s person to strangers or to dissever his body and divide the
pieces amongst them. Shocked and disgusted at the barbarity of this
law, Aulus Gellius asks, “What can be conceived more savage, what more
foreign to man’s natural disposition, than that the members and limbs
of a destitute debtor should be drawn asunder by a mangling process
of ever so short duration?” Tertullian, one of the early Christian
fathers, bears testimony to the existence of that and similar laws
under the pagan system. As he uses the plural word _leges_ instead of
the singular _lex_, it is clear there must have been more than one
law of the kind. The murderous part of such laws was, however, too
revolting to be carried into effect; so the enslavement of the debtor’s
person was the course usually adopted by vindictive creditors. Indeed,
Quintilian tells us expressly that public morals rejected the law of
the Twelve Tables--at least, that portion of it which gave creditors
the power to cut up the bodies of insolvent debtors. To imprison or
enslave them was, therefore, their only practicable course; and as the
latter was the more profitable, it became the one usually resorted to.
The sale of unfortunate debtors as slaves became, therefore, a part and
parcel of the commerce of Greece and Rome. It was one of the ways by
which hard-hearted creditors indemnified themselves for bad debts. And
as neither law nor custom could reconcile any people to such a palpable
outrage upon the rights of humanity, it never ceased to be a prolific
source of disaffection and civil broils throughout every period of
the Greek and Roman annals. Livy records some terrible outbreaks,
arising solely from the laws of debtor and creditor. Indeed, next to
agrarian monopoly, the workings of usury in pauperizing and enslaving
free citizens was the principal cause of all the civil wars, and the
ultimate cause of the downfall of the Greek and Roman republics.
But Greece and Rome are not the only ancient states in which debt
multiplied slaves and slavery. Tacitus informs us that the ancient
Germans were so addicted to gaming, that sometimes they staked even
their bodies upon the last throw of the dice, and, when the game went
against them, resigned themselves tranquilly to be bound and sold as
slaves. ’Tis curious to observe the language made use of by Tacitus
in describing this affair. It forcibly reminds one of the “national
debts” of modern times, and of the cunning cant by which the toiling
slaves, who pay the interest of them, are made to bear the burden
with more than asinine resignation. Indeed, the whole passage, as
given by Tacitus, might be strictly applied to the men and things we
are living amongst, if we would but substitute a few of our modern
commercial terms for the old dice-table terms employed by Tacitus.
“They (the Germans),” he says, “practise gambling amongst their serious
pursuits, and are quite sober over it. So desperate is their lust of
gain or fear of losing, that when all other means fail, they stake
their liberty and their very bodies upon the last throw of the dice;
nay, the beaten party (the loser) enters voluntarily and resignedly
into slavery. Although younger and more robust than his antagonist,
he quietly submits to be bound in fetters and sold. Such is their
perverseness in depravity--_they, themselves_, call it FAITH, HONOUR!
The successful parties (winners) dispose of this class of slaves in the
way of commerce, _that the infamy of their victory may be lost sight of
by the removal of their victim_.” In this almost literal translation,
we have paraphrased Tacitus no further than his elliptic style and
the different genius of our language render necessary; yet we can
hardly persuade ourselves that we have not been describing the process
and the very terms by which commercial speculation and our system of
public and private credit manufacture the slaves of our own day. The
only substantial difference is, that our gambling and slave-making
are upon an immeasurably larger scale, and that our enslaved Saxons,
unlike their German progenitors, have not even a chance of saving
themselves: for, though they are made to contribute all the stakes,
they are allowed no further share in the game than to look on and
pay the losses, whoever may be the winners. Tacitus’s term, _fides_
(_faith_, _honour_), is the identical term made use of now-a-days to
enforce the payment of national debts by those who never borrowed,
and the payment of “debts of honour” by those who forget to pay their
tailors’ bills and their servants’ wages. The old German gamester’s
trick, too, of getting his victim out of the way by disposing of him as
merchandise, instead of keeping him to serve as a slave upon himself,
is not without its analogies in our modern practice. Indeed, our
whole system of commerce and of public credit is based upon a similar
practice and similar motives. The slaves of our modern landlords,
merchants, and manufacturers are always the _apparent_ slaves of
somebody else--of some wretched go-between underling, on whom the
_odium_, though not the profits, of the system is made to fall. The
landlord throws it upon the farmer or agent; the millowner, upon his
overseer; the coal-king, upon his manager; the exporting merchant, upon
the slop-shops and _sweaters_; and so on, throughout every ramification
of trade and manufacture. The loanmonger retains not in his own hands
his purchased privilege of rifling the pockets of all taxpayers twice
a year for no value received. That would make his position as odious
as that of Tacitus’s successful old German gamester would have been,
had he made the “plucked pigeon” his personal slave, who was whilom
his boon-companion and equal. Business could not go on in that way.
Our loanmonger knows it, and, therefore, no sooner does he get his
bonds than he diffuses the “scrip” as widely and plentifully as the
dews of heaven, till there is hardly a grade or calling in society
that is not made directly interested and instrumental in enslaving
the producer and defrauding him of his hire. At the moment we write,
there are nearly a quarter of a million of families interested in
what is called “public faith,” “national honour,” and all that sort
of thing; and, amongst the whole lot, there is not one that was
originally concerned in any of the hocus-pocusing transactions which
have given us our “national debt,” with its thirty millions of annual
tax on the producing slaves of this country. The original loanmongers
and their representatives have dexterously shifted the odium and the
responsibility of their black job or jobs (for there were many of
them) from their own shoulders to those, of innocent parties; and,
whatever may eventually become of these parties, they took good care
to have more than their _quid pro quo_ before they transferred their
claims upon the public purse to the present recipients of the dividends
payable half-yearly on account of the debt called “national.” Another
and, mayhap, a stronger analogy to the case of Tacitus’s “plucked
pigeons,” sold into slavery, might be found in the expatriated tenantry
and peasantry of Ireland. The landlords of that country do not _always_
dispose of their human chattels by plague, pestilence, and famine; and
there is no law of the Twelve Tables to authorise the cutting up of
the bodies of their tenants in arrear. But there is a law--or, whether
there is or not, they find one--which authorises them to eject tenants
from their holdings, to raze their habitations to the ground, and to
drive the said tenants, homeless and breadless, to find a shelter and
a crust where they may. In such cases (and they are as plentiful as
blackberries), it is not unusual for such landlords to smuggle their
ousted victims out of the country, and even to pay their freight to
Canada in some crazy old hull (provided their fare do not exceed the
amount it would cost to bury them in case they died under a bush or
ditch after the dilapidation of their homes). Once removed to Quebec
or to the bottom of the Atlantic (it matters not which), there is an
end of trouble to both landlord and tenant. In Canada the tenant cannot
fare worse than in Ireland (for worse he could not), and he may fare
better. At the bottom of the sea he is safe, and provided for, for all
time to come. In either case he is out of the landlord’s sight, and out
of the sight of all to whom a knowledge of his treatment might suggest
misgivings as to their own future. To the landlord who ousted him,
his personal service as an actual slave would be as useless as that
of Tacitus’s ruined gamester would be to the successful one who had
won him and sold him. He would be but an incumbrance--a lump of dead
stock--an incubus upon the soil! His presence would be but a reproach
to his landlord, and curse to himself! To get rid of him, then,--to
dispose of him anyhow, or by any means, that will only get him out of
the way,--is the one thing needful. Well, Tacitus has shown us how the
lucky gamesters of his day got rid of their fleeced victims in Germany.
Against his case we fear not to put the Irish “clearers” and the
British farm-“consolidators” of our day, being perfectly assured that
the Saxons of the present day will be found to excel those of Tacitus’s
day, or any other of the old German tribes, in the art of slave-making,
as much as we excel the old Romans themselves in road-making,
shipbuilding, money-grubbing, military manslaughtering, or any other
art or science.
To return from this digression, the relation of debtor and creditor
was unquestionably one of the direst and most fertile sources of
slavery known to the ancient pagan world. Even God’s chosen people,
the Hebrews, were not altogether free from it. It is true, Moses’s
septennial release from debt, and the jubilee ordained at the end
of every fifty years, were powerful checks upon the inroad of this
form of slavery. But, nevertheless, indebtedness _did_ furnish its
contingent to slavery even under the Mosaic law; for do we not find
Moses anticipating this curse in Leviticus, when he enjoins, “If thy
brother that dwelleth by thee be waxen poor, and _be sold_ unto thee,
thou shalt not compel him to serve as a slave or bond-servant, but as
an hired servant; and as a sojourner he shall be with thee, and shall
serve thee until the day of the jubilee,” &c. This shows clearly how
inseparable was slavery from indebtedness under the ancient order of
things, when Moses found it necessary to make provisions against its
contingency, notwithstanding all the precautions he had ordained to
prevent it. And Moses’s foresight is fully proved by the subsequent
history of the Jews. For we learn from Josephus, that at a later
epoch, to wit, under King Joram, the son of Jehosaphat, the widow of
Obadias (who had been governor of King Achab’s palace) came to tell the
prophet Elisha that, unable to reimburse the money that her husband
had borrowed, to subsist the hundred prophets he had saved from the
persecution by Jezebel, _his creditors laid claim to herself and her
children as their slaves_. We might furnish other instances of a
similar kind from sacred history; while from profane history we might
cite proofs _ad infinitum_ bearing upon the same point: but enough has
been said for our purpose. The obligation of debtors to their creditors
was undoubtedly one of the most grievous sources of slavery known to
the positive law in ancient times. Next to war, it was probably the
greatest.
The last remaining cause to be disposed of is the marriage of
females--more especially of females married out of their own family
or tribe. That much slavery was brought about in this way is provable
in a variety of ways, and by the best traditional evidence. Homer’s
“Iliad” abounds in testimonies to this effect. We have already cited
the example of Cassandra, whom Othryon purchased from Priam, even as
Jacob bought Leah and Rachel from their father Laban. Other passages
are still more conclusive on the point. We find in the 9th book, for
instance, that Agamemnon, regretting his having occasioned the wrath of
Achilles, offers him, by way of appeasing it, certain costly presents;
amongst others, seven Lesbian female slaves, along with Briseis; and,
when Troy should be taken, twenty captives, the most beautiful, after
Helen; and as a climax, one of his own three daughters--Achilles to
choose, and to have her without purchase. And again, in the 16th book,
we find Homer making mention of a certain Polydora, the mother of
Menestheus, whom he describes as having been purchased for a wife, by
her husband, at a great expense. The poems of Virgil contain similar
evidences,--as for instance, when Juno proposes to Venus to settle
their quarrels, and to accept Dido as a spouse and servant to her son
Æneas. The term _service_ made use of by Virgil indicates clearly the
servile relation to the husband which such marriages imposed upon women.
Having explained the _origin_ of direct slavery, its legal
establishment, and the principal known causes which multiplied it
and consolidated it as a social institution, let us now inquire in
what light it was regarded by the ancients themselves, wherefore it
was able to maintain its footing all over the world, till the advent
of Christianity; why it still obtains in so large a portion of the
habitable globe; and why it has in nowise ceased, without giving birth
to a masked or indirect slavery worse than itself.
In this inquiry, our task will resolve itself in establishing the three
following propositions:--
1st. That direct or personal slavery was not regarded by the ancients
in the light in which enlightened men of the present day regard it,
that is to say, as an unnatural and inhuman institution, but, on the
contrary, was considered to be a thing perfectly natural and reasonable
in itself, and essential to the ends and purposes of society.
2nd. That the main cause of its permanence in the world was the
universality of public opinion in its favour, rather than the force of
law or custom; and that the slaves themselves fully participated in the
general opinion.
3rd. That, all things considered, direct slavery, whether as practised
by the ancients or by the modems (wherever it is in use), was, with
all its evils, less destructive of life, morals, and happiness to the
majority than the present system of indirect or disguised slavery, as
effected in most civilized countries by unjust agrarian, monetary, and
fiscal laws.
[Illustration: Decoration]