in the cities became more and more impoverished, and lived by _panem
et circenses_, as in Rome. Under this deceitful glitter, the disease
slowly undermined the prosperity of the cities, and the first shock
revealed the terrible reality. Soon fiscal rapacity seized hold of
every thing both in the Italian and Italianized cities. Not only the
poorer classes but even the wealthy began to feel it. One after another
the cities lost their domains and their treasure, and thus lost the
means to sustain their internal administration. With the growing
imperial rapacity increased also the danger and the difficulties of
public office, as the _decurions_ and other officials were responsible
to the imperial treasury for all the taxes and imposts levied upon the
city. The rich men, patrons, etc., now used extensively their right
of exemption from office, and excused themselves from public service
in proportion as the fiscal pressure increased, and as they found
it more lucrative to profit from general calamities than to attempt
to avert them. Besides, taxes for the central exchequer were to be
imposed and levied as well as taxes for the local administration of
the cities. All this finally almost entirely crushed the impoverished
burghers, and in the second century large numbers of burghers were
inscribed in the _curia_. First the poorer shopkeepers, artisans,
and small property holders, and then almost all the _viles_, with
the exception of the _infames_--that is, those who at any time had
undergone any infamous condemnation--became _curiales_. Taxes on lands,
houses, and slaves, and also on persons (_per capita_), increased
almost daily, and were imposed under various guises and new names. All
handicraftsmen, tradesmen, and merchants, had to pay special taxes,
and the poorest plebeian had to pay a _capitatio_ or _illatio_. When
the cities had thus been reduced to poverty, and were obliged to tax
themselves heavily to sustain their existence, the severest of all
labor was to be a city official, and every one tried to avoid public
honors, as even to be a _curialis_ was considered a heavy calamity.
The surplus of the poor free population, no longer supported by the
magistrates or _decuriones_, abandoned the cities and became colonists
on the imperial domains, on the remaining city domains, or on private
lands; and there sank deeper and deeper into the mire of slavery. Soon
the _curiales_ began to follow the plebeians, in order to escape from
their privileges and dignities. With this, however, an imperial edict
interfered, and small proprietors, curiales, etc., were prohibited
from selling their property. The eventual acquirer of such property
was made _ipso facto_ curial, and responsible for both past and
current taxes, and the other exactions and servitudes imposed. The
law put various other impediments on the personal liberty of poor but
taxable curiales: they became bondmen of the state or of their own
municipality; they could not change their residence, and suffered
innumerable annoyances. The curiales, thus goaded, often preferred even
the hateful military service on the utmost frontiers of the empire:
they voluntarily entered the legions, in order to be exempted from
taxation and the grip of the imperial and municipal tax-gatherer. More
of them, however, chose rather to seek patrons, and became bondmen
to the rich, the slaveholders, and exempted persons, giving both
themselves and their property to their protectors. Thus frequently the
impoverished descendants of former _honoratiores_ became first bondmen
and then slaves. During that long epoch of grinding oppression and
taxation, the division and subdivision of the community into classes
and grades originated. This classification was based on pursuits and
occupations, and also according to the imposts levied on each class,
from the magnate--as the rich social successors of the oligarchs were
now called--down to the lowest laborer and chattel. Finally, the whole
property in the Roman world--the country, the city, the lands, houses,
and slaves--was centred in the hands of a few magnates, who owned
incalculable numbers of colonists, bondmen, serfs, and chattels.
The famous Roman legions were recruited from yeomen, plebeians, workmen
and colonists; in one word, from the free population. When freemen
diminished, foreigners and barbarians were hired and enrolled. Sylla's
military murderers were in great part Spanish Celts; and after Sylla
and Marius, foreigners entered more and more into the composition
of the Roman armies. Caligula had a kind of body-guard composed of
Germans; and soon all the nations conquered by Rome were represented,
not only in the armies, but even under the imperial canopy. Then
arose the intestine wars for imperial power carried on by pretenders,
each _proclaimed_ by some province or legion. These wars resulted in
slaughter, devastation, ruin and universal misery; and thus enlarged
the number of slaves, and powerfully revived the slave traffic, which
survived the downfall of heathenism and the Roman world.
Domestic slavery, acting through long centuries, brought about a
thoroughly diseased and depraved condition of society, which, in turn,
reacted upon its producing cause, exacerbating and intensifying it. The
result was, that domestic slavery quite overmastered the ancient Roman
world. At the melancholy period of Rome's disruption, the high-souled,
patriotic citizen--that compact and columnar type of character--had
become quite extinct, and in his place were large slave-owners,
slave-drivers, and slave-traders. The masters and protectors of Rome
were foreigners and barbarians. The slaveholders could not defend
the empire, and beneath them was a degraded population of so-called
freemen, and millions of serfs and slaves, all of them without a spark
of love for their country, and destitute even of material incitements
to urge them to defend their homes or uphold the existing condition of
society. None of them had any interest to sustain their slaveholding
masters or the fiscality of the empire; and at times the lower classes,
the slaves especially, even joined the invaders. Thus, when Alaric
appeared before Rome, over forty thousand slaves joined his camp.
Such was the condition of the Roman world and its western provinces,
Spain and Gaul, when the avalanche from the north burst upon it with
its torrent of invaders. The oligarchic slaveholders, having destroyed
the republic, transmitted to the Cæsars a society which had through
their means become utterly degenerate and depraved. The emperors,
in their turn, transmitted to the new era a world putrescent with
domestic slavery. Often does a virus eat its way so deeply into a
healthy organism, as to change its very character and the conditions of
its existence. Then the morbid disorganization becomes an apparently
normal condition, until finally life is altogether extinct. Such was
the effect of chattelhood on the Roman world, and especially on Italy,
which was the soul and centre of the system. Nor does it require any
great apprehension to see how the tragic analogy holds in the case of
the Southern States of the North American confederacy.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 14: The Cæsars proper end with Nero, and then begin the
emperors of various families and even nationalities.]
[Footnote 15: See speech of Senator Mason of Virginia.]
[Footnote 16: So to-day no law creates or gives a definition of
"sand-hillers," "clay-eaters," and other brutalized poor whites in the
South, who are rapidly approaching slavery.]
XIV.
CHRISTIANITY: ITS CHURCHES AND CREEDS.
AUTHORITIES:
_General History, Ecclesiastical History, Councils, Bulls, etc._
Christianity appeared for the purpose of effecting a regeneration
in man's moral nature; this necessarily included also his social
regeneration.
The primitive Christians, apostles, and martyrs, by their words,
actions, and death, taught charity, brotherly love, and equality before
God; and thus slowly but powerfully undermined slavery. They consoled
in every possible way their lowly and suffering brethren, and tried
to inspire the slaveholders with feelings of charity and benevolence
toward their bondmen; but as the apostles did not attack any prevalent
social or political evil, nay, even seemed to countenance, by their
silent recognition or their advice, the existing imperial despotism,
so, for obvious reasons, they could not directly attack domestic
slavery nor proclaim universal emancipation. They preached to slaves
and slaveholders, made converts from both, and considered and treated
both as equal before God and the law. The few words of apostolic
consolation which have been transmitted to us as referring especially
to chattels, logically and morally contain a condemnation of slavery,
for it is only misfortune and evil that inspire pity or require
consolation. So that the apostles and primitive Christians, by advising
slaves to bear their yoke patiently, thereby proclaimed slavery to be
an evil, like any of the sufferings, losses, or misfortunes of life.
When, under Constantine, Christianity was embodied in a national
ecclesiasticism, the Church watched more directly over the condition
of the slaves. In various ways it tried to alleviate their condition
and effect their manumission; and this it urged the more earnestly as
the Christians belonged mostly to the poorer classes, and also numerous
serfs and slaves.
But the Church had now become a material fact, and henceforward, beside
its legitimate moral aims, it had also worldly and selfish desires.
It received imperial and private donations, became a large proprietor
of lands, and therefore also a holder of slaves and serfs. It could
therefore take no distinct interest in emancipation, but nevertheless
still continued to inspire slaveholders with a milder spirit, and
tried to prevent, as far as possible, the slave traffic, at least in
Christian chattels.
None of the apostles, fathers, confessors, or martyrs of the Church
ever affirmed slavery to be a moral and divine institution, or ever
attempted to justify it in any way. These primitive Christians and
holy fathers never once thought to refer to the curse of Noah as a
justification of slavery. The Biblical story of Noah and his curse was
first dragged into this question by the feudalized mediæval clergy, to
justify the enslavement, not of black Africans but of white Europeans,
among whom, undoubtedly, were the ancestors of many blatant American
supporters of the divine origin, on Biblical authority, of slavery.
When the Roman empire was broken in pieces by the northern invaders,
the body of the Roman Church and clergy belonged to the subdued and
enslaved race. The Franks, Northmen, and Anglo-Saxons were then
altogether heathen; but many of the invaders--as the Visigoths and
Ostrogoths, the Vandals, Burgundians, Heruli, and Longobards--were
Christians; but, being Arians (Unitarians), they were enemies of the
Trinitarians, and treated the Roman clergy as they did the rest of the
subdued population. The Roman clergy, however, finally succeeded in
superseding the Arian dogmas by their own, and they then constituted
the sole expounders of Christian doctrine. Moved then by the Christian
spirit, as well as by consanguinity with the enslaved population,
they never failed to impress on the conquerors, whether heathen or
Christian, their duties toward their slaves. They also continued to
promote manumissions by declaring them meritorious before God. These
manumissions were performed at the sacred altar with all the pomp
and impressive rites of the Church, and were often extorted from the
slaveholding barbarian in his last agonies.
As before, so during the first centuries of the Germanic settlements
of Western and Southern Europe, the Church never recognized the right
of one man to enslave another; but rather through the voice of Gregory
the Great, bishop, pope, or saint, reaffirmed the ancient axiom of the
Roman jurist: "_Homines quos ab initio natura creavit liberos--et jus
gentium jugo substituit servitutis_." The efforts of Gregory the Great,
as also those of his predecessors and successors, were directed toward
stopping the infamous slave traffic, first in Christian slaves, and
then in Jews, Mussulmans, and all heathen. The Roman Church and its
leaders unceasingly condemned the slave-trade, and the popes menaced
with excommunication the traffickers in Mussulman prisoners in Rome,
Lyons, Venice, etc., as also those Germans who afterward, in the ninth,
tenth, and eleventh centuries, enslaved the prisoners of war which they
made among the Slavonic tribes, Christian and heathen. The popes have
likewise perpetually condemned the African or negro slave-trade, from
its beginning down to the present day. Gregory XVI. interdicts "all
ecclesiastics from venturing to maintain _that this traffic in blacks_
is permitted under any pretext whatsoever;" and prohibits "teaching in
public or in private, in any way whatever, any thing contrary to this
apostolic letter." Explicit words of this tenor, coming from the pope,
were generally considered as expressing the spirit of the Papal Church.
In the Roman, as in all other churches and sects, however, both clergy
and laity were wont to interpret all such mandates according to their
own convenience.
For reasons formerly alluded to, the various national ecclesiastical
councils held in countries politically reconstructed by German
invaders--as Spain, France, and England--repeatedly and explicitly
legislated on slavery. These councils had it constantly in view to
moderate the general treatment of slaves and bondmen, and to prevent
mutilation and other cruel modes of punishment. The churches were
proclaimed inviolable places of refuge for fugitive slaves, and while
emancipation was urged as meritorious, the enslavement of freemen was
visited with excommunication.
Soon, however, the Church, that is, the priesthood and hierarchy,
came to form an integral part of the feudal system. The higher clergy
shared the public spoils, and had fiefs and other estates stocked
with serfs and chattels. Then the fervor for emancipation abated;
nevertheless, the clergy generally recommended a humane treatment of
the enslaved. The Irish clergy and councils perhaps proved themselves
the most disinterested at that early mediæval epoch: they were the
"underground railroad" of the period--assisting in the escape of slaves
from bondage; and a council held in Armagh in 1172, gave _liberty_
to all _English_ (that is, Saxon) slaves in Ireland. Nowadays, on
the contrary, the immense majority of the Irish Roman clergy on this
continent support and sanction chattel slavery.
In the course of time the clerical hierarchies, monasteries, etc.,
inoculated with the feudal and baronial spirit, became as zealous for
the preservation of even the most revolting forms of servitude imposed
upon the bondmen, as the most rapacious lay barons could possibly have
been. Nowhere did the clergy raise its voice for either a total or a
partial abolition of bondage.
Serfdom, which had long previously vanished from Italy, was, at the
appearance of Luther, on the point of dissolution in England. The
father of the religious reformation of Germany rather avoided blending
social with spiritual reform; but the French and Swiss reformers, as
well as the anabaptists and other sects, kept especially in view the
amelioration of the condition of the oppressed masses. In general, the
great movements for a freer spiritual activity which characterized the
sixteenth century, contributed to promote the emancipation of serfs:
and this first by purifying and elevating the public conscience, and
then by bringing about the secularization of church property. The
state, on becoming the heir of the clergy, was everywhere foremost in
abolishing servitude: the ecclesiastical corporation, on the other
hand, never labored for its abolition.
Among the various religious bodies--the Quakers and the modern
Unitarians excepted--the absoluteness of Christian doctrine and
morals has always been greatly modified by worldly interests. Not the
Episcopal nor Scottish churches, nor indeed any other denomination, can
claim the merit of having begotten the noble sentiment so universal in
England on the subject of human bondage. The Roman clergy continues,
as it always has done, to oscillate between duty and interest; and the
various Protestant sects do the same. And it is a significant feature
that in the American Union almost every religious denomination has its
pro-slavery and its anti-slavery factions.
XV.
GAULS.
AUTHORITIES:
_Cæsar, Dieffenbach, Picot, Amadee Thierry, etc._
The Gauls (_Gadhels_, _Gaels_ or _Gals_), a branch of the Aryas, were
the first historic race which peopled Central and Western Europe. It
is supposed that the Gauls (afterward wrongly called Kelts) emigrated
from Asia to Europe before the Greeks, Latins, or Slavonians, as
undoubtedly they did long previous to the Teutons or Germans. Already,
in prehistoric times, from the regions of the Danube to the Atlantic,
on the Alps and the Pyrenees as well as on the British and Irish
islands, these first wanderers left their marks in the names of rivers
and mountains. Gallia (Gaul) finally became their home, and from thence
they repeatedly issued forth and shook the ancient world, ravaged
Greece and extended their empire to Asia Minor on the east, and Italy
on the south. They burnt republican Rome in its very infancy, and for
centuries the Roman republic struggled for life and death with them,
until they were finally subdued by Cæsar.
The whole of Gaul was occupied by tribes more or less consanguineous,
and their internal social organization was in many respects similar.
Cæsar, in his bird's-eye view, says that the two dominant classes
were the druids and nobles, while under them were the "_plebs,
poene servorem habetur loco, quæ per nihil audet et nullo adhibitur
consiglio_." This only explains the absence or perhaps dormancy of
political rights. "_Plerique_ (not _all_, it will be noticed, but
_many_, and these mainly such as had suffered reverses of fortune)
_sesse in servitutem_ DICANT _nobilibus--in hos eadem omnia sunt jura
quæ dominis in servis_." This latter phrase only means that certain
relations between the chief and his dependents were similar to those of
master and chattel--being the only form of servitude known to Cæsar,
who did not understand the tribal organization on which the authority
of the chief was based.
Parke Godwin, in his highly elaborate and valuable History of France,
says very justly that "the Gallic society was a mere conglomeration of
chieftains and followers." After giving a picture of Gallic family life
and exhibiting the nature of the chieftain's power and functions, that
eminent writer thus continues: "The other members of the clan consisted
of a number of dependents in various degrees of subordination, and of
adherents whose ties were more or less voluntary." Among the dependents
were "bondmen (attached to the soil), debtor-bondmen, _obaerati_,
strangers found in the country without a protector or lord, and slaves,
captives of war or purchased in the open market." Thus far Parke Godwin.
Slaves, if indeed such existed among the Gauls at the time of Cæsar,
were certainly exceedingly limited in number, and chattelhood was not
an inherent condition of any part of the people. In his history of his
long wars with the Gauls, Cæsar makes no allusion to a slave-element in
the population--an omission which shows how insignificant it must have
been.
The commercial relations of the Gauls with the Phoenicians and with the
Greek colony of Massilia, or Marseilles, probably tended to encourage
slavery among them. But although our knowledge of their internal
relations and domestic economy is very scanty, there are a few facts
which prove that domestic slavery was hardly even in an embryonic stage
at the epoch when the Gauls, by their contact with Rome and Cæsar,
entered the general current of history. The Massaliotes (or colonists
established at Marseilles), trafficked in slaves. They also had them
in their houses, but did not employ them on lands situated beyond the
precincts of the city. For field laborers they hired the Ligurians,
who, at given seasons, descended with their wives from the mountains
and worked for wages. Lands belonging to Gallic clans or districts were
no more worked by slave labor than were the fields of the Massaliotes.
Even in the households of the chieftains or nobles, domestic slavery,
if it existed, must have been hidden from sight. Possidonius, tutor of
Pompey, Cicero, and other eminent Romans, gives a description of the
mode of life and domestic customs of the Gauls, in whose country he
travelled. He observed, that at their luxurious feasts the guests were
served by the children of the family, instead of domestic slaves; which
fact authorizes the conclusion that the number of chattels was very
small, and that they had no place in family life.
Gallic slaves consisted of criminals, vagabonds, foreigners imported
from Massilia, and prisoners of war principally made from nations
beyond the Alps and the Rhine. Even after the invasion of the Kimbri
and Belgæ, Gaul was inhabited by tribes more or less akin to each
other. It was therefore the theatre of almost uninterrupted domestic
war between tribes and federations. But when one tribe was conquered by
another, the subject people and those who escaped the fury of battle
were not reduced to slavery, but simply became tributary, and received
their laws from the conqueror. Exceptions to this rule must have been
exceedingly rare. If an invading tribe was subdued, it received lands
and was obliged to settle among the conquerors. The founders of Rome,
as we saw (see "Romans: Republicans"), acted in a similar manner.
Prisoners of war were absorbed into the clan, and were held, perhaps
exclusively by the chieftain, in the condition of serfs bound to the
soil, but not as chattels or marketable objects; and they were neither
deprived of personality nor the rights of family.
The arable lands, forests, and pasturages were owned by the clan
collectively--the chiefs, of course, receiving the lion's share when
distributed for cultivation; and each clan lived on its own lands.
These agricultural clansmen it was who constituted the terrible
armies which, under various Brenni (chiefs, leaders, kings), so often
terrified and scourged almost the whole known world.
With the increase of the wealth and power of the chieftains, their
relations with the poorer clansmen became more aggressive, and the
lands were held by the latter under conditions more and more onerous.
But when Cæsar invaded Gaul, no large estates (_latifundia_) existed,
and the soil was in the hands of a numerous peasantry inspired with
patriotism and love of independence. This peasantry flocked to the
standard of Vercingetorix, and, to the last, sustained him in his
deadly struggle against Cæsar.
The living acoustic telegraph used by the Gauls during the wars with
Cæsar is another proof that great estates did not exist in Gaul, and
that the soil was tilled by freemen possessed of homesteads: for each
peasant, from the limit of his homestead, shouted the news to his
next neighbor, he to the next, and so on; and thus intelligence was
swiftly carried hundreds of miles even during the shortest day of the
year. An important event occurring in any one tribe was thus spread in
a twinkling all over Gaul. Now, if the country had been divided into
large estates worked by slaves, such a mode of communication would of
course have been impossible.
As the clans and their land were governed by chieftains and nobles, so
also were the cities under oligarchic rule. The free population in the
cities had no independent rights, and was obliged to have patrons.
The poor, the defenceless, and even the artisans, willingly enrolled
themselves for life under the clientship of the powerful nobility,
depending on them as the rural clansmen depended upon the chieftains
or rural nobles. But the condition of a client in the city was not
hereditary or transmissible, as was clanship in the country. The
_family_ of the client held no relations of dependency upon the patron;
and a son was not bound by obligations contracted by his father. When
the patron died, the bonds of his clients were severed, and they were
free to select another patron.
Such were the relations between the chieftains and clansmen, between
the nobility and the people, between the soil and its tiller, between
client and patron, when the Romans commenced the conquest of Gaul.
Impoverishment, debts contracted to their chiefs, and exactions of one
kind and another, may have transformed many independent clansmen into
partial bondmen; but they always preserved their family and village
rights.
After the numerous evidences already pointed out in the history of
the Greeks and Romans, it is unnecessary here to show how similar
morbid causes produced correspondingly destructive effects in the
crude civilization and social condition of the Gauls. The development
of these germs brought the Gauls almost to serfdom, if not yet
to chattelhood, at the same time degrading the character of the
oligarchs--future slaveholders--to the extent described by Cæsar.
This perversion of the internal economy of the Gauls prepared them for
domestic slavery. Thus often an insignificant derangement in the human
economy, or a trifling lesion in its organism, may find its ultimate
result only in permanent disorganization or in _death_.
The Roman conquest and the subsequent oppressive administration,
contributed to establish the same relations between the population
in Gaul as existed in Italy and Spain, and which have been already
described. The city (_municipium_) became all and every thing; the
clan, the district, the country nothing. The former chiefs of the
clans became the senators of their respective centres. The imperial
Roman administration favored the concentration of landed estates into
a few hands, and consequently the impoverishment of small landholders
and free laborers and operatives of every kind; and thereby greatly
increased the growth of slavery. The collective ownership of the
land by the clan and its chiefs became wholly transformed into the
individual property of the chief, who was now also a municipal senator
or magnate. A striking analogy to this is found in the Highlands of
Scotland, which, in the same way have become the property of a few
powerful families. The Gallic clansmen before being transformed into
chattels, first became tenants (_coloni_)--similar to those in imperial
Italy--of their chiefs (or _tierns_), who, on becoming senators, lived
in the cities, and were surrounded, not by clients and clansmen, but by
slaves. The estates now began to be worked by bondmen and chattels,
and thus a servile population succeeded to the free and sturdy yeomanry
of ancient times.
Not without a struggle, however, was this accomplished. The oppressive
taxation, the tyranny of the domestic oligarchs, and the devastations
committed by barbarians--the vanguards of the future destroyers of the
Roman empire--generated in the third century the repeated insurrections
of the _Bagaudes_ (the Gallic name for _insurgent_), that is, of the
peasantry against the cities. All the oppressed small land-owners,
tenants, serfs and slaves united in these insurrections.