efit of the master, without the contract or consent of the servant." But may not be be properly called a slave who has given up his freedom to discharge a debt which he could not otherwise pay, or who has thrown it away at a game of hazard? In many nations, debts have been legally discharged in this manner; and in some savage tribes, such is the universal ardour for gaming, that it is no uncommon thing for a man, after having lost at play all his other property, to stake, on a single throw of dice, himself, his wife, and his children (a). That persons who have thus lost their liberty are slaves, will hardly be denied; and surely the infatuated gamester is a slave by his own contract. The debtor, too, if he was aware of the law, and contracted debts larger than he could reasonably expect to be able to pay, may justly be considered as having come under an obligation to labour for the benefit of a master with his own consent; for every man is answerable for all the known consequences of his voluntary actions.

This definition of slavery seems to be defective as well as inaccurate. A man may be under an obligation to labour through life for the benefit of a master, and yet that master have no right to dispose of him by sale, or in any other way to make him the property of a third person; but the word slave, as used among us, always denotes a person who may be bought, and sold like a beast in the market (b). In its original sense, indeed, it was of the same import with noble, illustrious; but vast numbers of the people among whom it had that signification being, in the decline of the Roman empire, sold by their countrymen to the Venetians, and by them dispersed over all Europe, the word slave came to denote a person in the lowest state of servitude, who was considered as the absolute property of his master. See PHILLOGY, No 220.

As nothing can be more evident than that all men have, by the law of nature, an equal right to life, liberty, and the produce of their own labour (see RIGHT, No 5), it is not easy to conceive what can have first led one part of them to imagine that they had a right to enslave another. Inequalities of rank are indeed inevitable in civil society; and from them results that ferocity which is founded in contract, and is of temporary duration. (See MORAL PHILOSOPHY, No 141.) He who has much property has many things to attend to, and must be disposed to hire persons to assist and serve him; while those who have little or no property must be equally willing to be hired for that purpose. And if the master be kind, and the servant faithful, they will both be happier in this connection than they could have been out of it. But from a state of servitude, where the slave is at the absolute disposal of his master in all things, and may be transferred without his own consent from one proprietor to another, like an ox or an ass, happiness must be for ever banished. How then came a traffic so unnatural and unjust as that of slaves to be originally introduced into the world?

The common answer to this question is, that it took its rise among savages, who, in their frequent wars with each other, either massacred their captives in cold blood, or condemned them to perpetual slavery. In support of this opinion we have heard it observed, that the Latin word servus, which signifies not a hired servant, but a slave, is derived from servare, "to preserve;" and that such men were called servi, because they were captives, whose lives were preserved on the condition of their becoming the property of the victor.

That slavery had its origin from war, we think extremely probable (c), nor are we inclined to controvert this etymology of the word servus; but the traffic in men prevailed almost universally long before the Latin language or Roman name was heard of; and there is no good evidence that it began among savages. The word שׁפּי, in the Old Testament, which in our version is rendered servant, signifies literally a slave, either born in the family or bought with money, in contradistinction to שׁפּי, which denotes a hired servant: and as Noah makes use of the word שׁפּי in the curse which he delivered upon Ham and Canaan immediately after the deluge, it would appear that slavery had its origin before that event. If so, there can be little doubt but that it began among those violent persons whom our translators have called giants*, though the original word * Gen. vi. שׁפּי literally signifies affliators of others. Those wretches seem first to have seized upon women, whom they forcibly compelled to minister to their pleasures; and from this kind of violence the progress was natural to that by which they enslaved their weaker brethren among the men, obliging them to labour for their benefit, without allowing them fee or reward.

After the deluge the first dealer in slaves seems to Nimrod have been Nimrod. "He began," we are told, "to be flaved his a mighty one in the earth, and was a mighty hunter before the Lord." He could not, however, be the first hunter of wild beasts; for that species of hunting must have been practised from the beginning; nor is it probable that his dexterity in the chase, which was then the universal employment, could have been so far superior to that of all his contemporaries, as to entitle him to the appellation of "the mighty hunter before the Lord." Hence most commentators have concluded, that he was a hunter of men; an opinion which they think receives some countenance from the import of his name, the word Nimrod signifying a rebel. Whatever

(a) Aleam (quod mirere) sobrii inter feria exercent, tanta lucrandi perdendive temeritate, ut cum omnia defendent, extremo ac novissimo jactu de libertate et corpore contendant. Viatus voluntariam servitutem adit; quamvis junior, quamvis robustior, alligari se ac venire patitur.—Tacitus de Mor. Germ.

The savages of North America are equally addicted to gaming with the ancient Germans, and the negroes on the Slave Coast of Guinea perhaps still more.

(b) The Roman orator's definition of slavery, Parad. V. is as accurate as any that we have seen. "Servitus est obedientia fraeti animi et abjectio et arbitrio carentis suos;" whether the unhappy person fell into that state with or without his own consent or consent.

(c) In the article SOCIETY, the reader will find another account of the origin of slavery, which we think likewise probable, though we have not transferred it to this place; as it would, in our opinion, be wrong to give to one writer what we know to belong to another. It may be proper, however, to observe here, that between the two articles there is no contradiction, as barbarous wars were certainly one source of slavery. be in this, there can be little doubt but that he became a mighty one by violence; for being the sixth son of his father, and apparently much younger than the other five, it is not likely that his inheritance exceeded theirs either in extent or in population. He enlarged it, however, by conquest; for it appears from Scripture, that he invaded the territories of Ashur the son of Shem, who had settled in Shinar; and obliging him to remove into Assyria, he seized upon Babylon, and made it the capital of the first kingdom in the world. As he had great projects in view, it seems to be in a high degree probable that he made bond-servants of the captives whom he took in his wars, and employed them in building or repairing the metropolis of his kingdom; and hence we think is to be dated the origin of postdiluvian slavery.

That it began thus early can hardly be questioned; for we know that it prevailed universally in the age of Abraham, who was born within seventy years after the death of Nimrod. That patriarch had three hundred and eighteen servants or slaves, born in his own house, and trained to arms, with whom he pursued and conquered the four kings who had taken captive his brother's son †. And it appears from the conversation which took place between him and the king of Sodom after the battle, that both believed the conqueror had a right to consider his prisoners as part of his spoil. "Give me (says the king) the persons, and take the goods to thyself." It is indeed evident from numberless passages of scripture, that the domestics whom our translators call servants were in those days universally considered as the most valuable part of their master's property, and clasped with his flocks and herds. Thus when the sacred historian describes the wealth of Abraham, he says, that "he had sheep and oxen, and he-asses, and men-servants, and maid-servants, and she-asses, and camels." And when Abimelech wished to make some reparation to the patriarch for the unintended injury that he had done him, "he took sheep and oxen, and men-servants, and women-servants, and gave them unto Abraham, and restored to him Sarah his wife." The riches and power of Isaac and Jacob are estimated in the very same manner. Of the former it is said, that "the man waxed great, and went forward and grew, until he became very great: for he had possession of flocks, and possession of herds, and great store of servants, and of slaves; and the Philistines envied him." The latter, we are told, "increased exceedingly, and had much cattle, and maid-servants, and men-servants, and camels, and asses ‡."

That the practice of buying and selling servants thus early begun among the patriarchs descended to their posterity, is known to every attentive reader of the Bible. It was expressly authorised by the Jewish law, in which are many directions how such servants were to be treated. They were to be bought only of the heathen; for if an Israelite grew poor and sold himself either to pay a debt, or to procure the means of subsistence, tacit law, he was to be treated not as a slave עבד, but as a hired servant עבד, and restored to freedom at the year of Jubilee. "Both thy bond-men and thy bond-maids (says Moses) shall be of the heathen that are round about you: of them shall ye buy bond-men and bond-maids. And ye shall take them as an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit them for a possession; they shall be your bond-men for ever!!" Unlimited as the power thus given to the Hebrews over their bond-servants of heathen extraction appears to have been, they were strictly prohibited from acquiring such property by any other means than fair purchase: "he that fleetheth a man and felleth him," said their great lawgiver, "shall surely be put to death §."

Whilst slavery, in a mild form, was permitted among the people of God, a much worse kind of it prevailed among the heathen nations of antiquity. With other spread of abominable customs, the traffic in men quickly spread world from Chaldea into Egypt, Arabia, and over all the east, and by degrees found its way into every known region under heaven (D).

Of this hateful commerce we shall not attempt to trace the progress through every age and country, but shall content ourselves with taking a transient view of it among the Greeks and Romans, and a few other nations, in whose customs and manners our readers must be interested.

One can hardly read a book of the Iliad or Odyssey, without perceiving that, in the age of Homer, all prisoners of war were liable to be treated as slaves, and compelled, without regard to their rank, sex, or years, to labour for their masters in offices of the vilest drudgery. So universally was this cruel treatment of captives admitted to be the right of the victor, that the poet introduces Hector in the very act of taking a tender and perhaps last farewell of his wife, when it was surely his infelicity to afford her every consolation in his power, telling her, as a thing of course which could not be concealed, that, on the conquest of Troy, she would be compelled

To bear the victor's hard commands, or bring The weight of water from Hyperia's spring (E). POPE.

At that early period, the Phoenicians, and probably the Greeks themselves, had such an established commerce in slaves, that, not satisfied with reducing to bondage their prisoners of war, they scrupled not to kidnap in cold blood

(D) If credit be due to a late account of China, the people of that vast empire have never made merchandise of men or women. The exception, however, is so singular, that we should be glad to see it better authenticated; for it is apparent from works of the most undoubted credit, that over all the other eastern countries with which we are acquainted slavery has prevailed from time immemorial, and that some of the Indian nations make long journeys into Africa for the sole purpose of buying slaves.

(E) In those early times drawing water was the office of the meanest slaves. This appears from Joshua's curse upon the Gibeonites who had deceived him.—"Now therefore ye are cursed, and there shall none of you be freed from being bond-men, and hewers of wood, and drawers of water, for the house of my God." To this state of bondage Homer makes Hector say, that Andromache would necessarily be brought upon the destruction of Troy; blood persons who had never kindled their resentment, in order to supply their foreign markets. In the 14th book of the Odyssey, Ulysses represents himself as having narrowly escaped a snare of this kind laid for him by a false Phoenician, who had doomed the hero to Libyan slavery: and as the whole narrative, in which this circumstance is told, is an artful fiction, intended to have the appearance of truth to an Ithacan peasant, the practice of kidnapping slaves could not then have appeared incredible to any inhabitant of that island.

Such were the manners of the Greeks in the heroic age; nor were they much improved in this respect at periods of greater refinement. Philip of Macedon having conquered the Thebans, not only sold his captives, but even took money for permitting the dead to be buried*; and Alexander, who had more generosity than Philip, afterwards razed the city of Thebes, and sold the inhabitants, men, women, and children, for slaves†. This cruel treatment of a brave people may indeed be supposed to have proceeded, in the first instance, from the avarice of the conqueror; and in the second, from the momentary resentment of a man who was savage and generous by turns, and who had no command of his passions. We shall not positively assign it to other causes; but from the manner in which the Spartans behaved to their slaves, there is little reason to imagine that had they received from the Thebans the same provocation with Alexander, they would have treated their captives with greater lenity. "At Sparta (says a humane and elegant writer) slaves were treated with a degree of rigour that is hardly conceivable; although to them, as their husbandmen and artificers, their proud and idle masters were indebted for all the necessaries of life. The Lacedemonian youth, trained up in the practice of deceiving and butchering those poor men, were from time to time let loose upon them, in order to show their proficiency in stratagem and massacre. And once, without any provocation, and merely for their own amusement, we are told that they murdered three thousand in one night, not only with the connivance of law, but by its avowed permission. Such, in promoting the happiness of one part of society and the virtue of another, are the effects of slavery."

It has been said, that in Athens and Rome slaves were better treated than in Sparta: but in the former city their treatment cannot have been good, or their lives comfortable, when the Athenians relished that tragedy of Euripides in which Hecuba, the wife of Priam, is introduced as lamenting that she was chained like a dog at Agamemnon's gate? Of the estimation in which slaves were held in Rome, we may form a tolerable notion from the well-known fact, that one of those unhappy beings was often chained at the gate of a great man's house, to give admittance to the guests invited to a feast*. In the early periods of the commonwealth it was customary, in certain sacred shows exhibited on solemn occasions, to drag through the circus a slave, who had been scourged to death holding in his hand a fork in the form of a gibbet†. But we need not multiply proofs of the cruelty of the Romans to their slaves. If Div. lib. i. the inhuman combats of the gladiators (see GLADIATORS) admit of any apology on account of the martial spirit with which they were thought to inspire the spectators, the conduct of Vettius Pollio must have proceeded from the most wanton and brutal cruelty. This man, who flourished not in the earliest periods of the republic, when the Romans were little better than a savage banditti, but in the polished age of Augustus, frequently threw such slaves as gave him the slightest offence into his fishponds to fattens his lampreys; and yet he was suffered to die in peace! The emperor, indeed, upon coming to the knowledge of his cruelty, ordered his lampreys to be destroyed, and his ponds to be filled up; but we do not recollect that any other punishment was inflicted on the savage master. Till the reign of the same emperor the depositions of slaves were never admitted in the courts of judicature; and then they were received only when persons were accused of treasonable practices.

The origin of slavery in Rome was the same as in Origin of every other country. Prisoners of war were of course Roman reduced to that state, as if they had been criminals. The dictator Camillus, one of the most accomplished generals of the republic, sold his Heturian captives to pay the Roman ladies for the jewels which they had presented to Apollo. Fabius, whose cautious conduct saved his country when Hannibal was victorious in Italy, having subdued Tarentum, reduced 30,000 of the citizens to slavery, and sold them to the highest bidder. Coriolanus, when driven from Rome, and fighting for the Volsci, scrupled not to make slaves of his own countrymen; and Julius Caesar, among whose faults wanton cruelty has never been reckoned, sold at one time fifty-three thousand captives for slaves. Nor did the slaves in Rome consist only of foreigners taken in war. By one of the laws of the twelve tables, creditors were empowered to seize their insolvent debtors, and keep them in their houses till, by their services or labour, they had discharged the sum they owed: and in the beginning of the commonwealth they were authorized to fell such debtors, and even to put them to death (r). The children of slaves were the property not of the commonwealth, or of their own parents, but of their masters; and thus was slavery perpetuated in the families of such unhappy

(f) After a certain number of citations, the law granted to the debtor thirty days of grace to raise the sum for which he was accountable. The words of the law are: "Æris confessi, rebusque jure judicatis, trinti dies justi sunt. Post dein manum endojacito.—Vincito aut nervo, aut compedibus." When the debt is confessed, and the trial passed, let there be thirty days of forbearance; afterwards lay hands on him; bind him either with a cord or fetters." After the thirty days were expired, if the debtor had not discharged the debt, he was led to the praetor, who delivered him over to the mercy of his creditors; these bound him and kept him in chains for the space of sixty days. Afterwards, for three market-days successively, the debtor was brought to the tribunal of the praetor; then a public crier proclaimed in the forum the debt for which the prisoner was detained. It often happened, that rich persons redeemed the prisoner by paying his debts; but if nobody appeared in behalf of the debtor after the third market-day, the creditor had a right to inflict the punishments appointed by the law. "Tertii nundinis capite Slavery. unhappy men as fell into that state, whether through the chance of war or the cruelty of a fordid creditor (G). The consequence was, that the number of slaves belonging to the rich patricians was almost incredible. Catus Caecilius Iiidorus, who died about seven years before the Christian era, left to his heirs 4116 slaves; and if any one of those wretched creatures made an unsuccessful attempt to regain his liberty, or was even suspected of such a design, he was marked on the forehead with a red-hot iron (H). In Sicily, during the most flourishing periods of the commonwealth, it seems to have been customary for masters to mark their slaves in this manner; at least we know that such was the practice of Damophilus, who, not satisfied with this security, shut up his slaves every night in close prisons, and led them out like beasts in the morning to their daily labour in the field. Hence arose the servile war in Sicily.

Though many laws were enacted by Augustus and other patriotic emperors to diminish the power of creditors over their insolvent debtors; though the influence of the mild spirit of Christianity tended much to meliorate the condition of slaves, even under Pagan masters; and though the emperor Adrian made it capital to kill a slave without a just reason, yet this infamous commerce prevailed universally in the empire for many ages after the conversion of Constantine to the religion of Christ. It was not indeed completely abolished even in the reign of Julian; and in many countries which had once been provinces of the empire it continued long after the empire itself had fallen to pieces.

It has already been observed, that among the ancient Germans it was not uncommon for an ardent gamester to lose his personal liberty by a throw of the dice. This was indeed a strong proof of savage manners; but the general condition of slaves among those savages seems to have been much better than among the polished Greeks and Romans. In Germany the slaves were generally attached to the soil, and only employed in tending cattle, and carrying on the business of agriculture; for the menial offices of every great man's house were performed by his wife and children. Such slaves were seldom beaten, or chained, or imprisoned. Sometimes indeed they were killed by their masters in a fit of sudden passion; but none were considered as materials of commerce, except those who had originally been freemen, and lost their freedom by play. These, indeed, the successful gamester was very ready to sell, both because he felt them an useless burden, and because their presence continually put him in mind of that state to which a throw of the dice might one day reduce himself.

Such is the account which Tacitus gives * of slavery * Dr Mor among the ancient Germans. The Anglo-Saxons, however, after they were settled in this island seem not to have carried on that traffic so honourably. By a statute of Alfred the Great†, the purchase of a man, a horse, or an ox, without a voucher to warrant the sale, was strictly forbidden. That law was, doubtless, enacted to prevent the stealing of men and cattle; but it shows us that so late as the ninth or tenth century a man, when fairly purchased, was, in England, as much the property of the buyer as the horse on which he rode, or the ox which dragged his plough. In the same country, now so nobly tenacious of freedom and the rights of man, a species of slavery similar to that which prevailed among the ancient Germans subsisted even to the end of the sixteenth century. This appears from a commission issued by Queen Elizabeth in 1574, for inquiring into the lands and goods of all her bond-men and bond-women in the counties of Cornwall, Devon, Somerset, and Gloucester, in order to compound with them for their manumission, that they might enjoy their lands and goods as freemen †. In Scotland there certainly existed an order of slaves or bond-men, who tillled the ground, were attached to the soil, and with it were transferable from one proprietor to another, at a period so late as the thirteenth century; but when or how those villains, as they were called, obtained their freedom, seems to be unknown to every lawyer and antiquary of the present day. Coaliers and falters were, in the same country, slaves till little more than 30 years ago, that they were manumitted by an act of the British legislature, and restored to the rights of freemen and citizens. Before that period the sons of coaliers could follow no business but that of their fathers; nor were they at liberty to seek employment in any other mines than those to which they were attached by birth, without the consent of the lord of the manor, who, if he had no use for their services himself, transferred them by a written deed to some neighbouring proprietor.

That the savage nations of Africa were at any period slavery among the Carthaginians.

capite poenas data aut trans Tiberim peregere venumduito;" that is, "Let him on the third market-day be punished with death, or sold beyond the Tiber as a slave." If there were several creditors, they were allowed, in consequence of this severe law, to divide the body of the prisoner into several parts, and share it among them in proportion to the sum which they demanded.

(c) This is evident from the story of Appius and Virginia. See ROME, No 113.

(H) How capriciously and unjustly this infamous mark was impressed, we learn from the story of Restio. This man being proscribed, and a reward offered for his head by the triumvirs Octavianus, Antony, and Lepidus, concealed himself from the fury of the tyrants in the best way that he could. A slave whom he had marked with the hot iron having found out the place of his retreat, conducted him to a cave, and there supported him for some time with what he earned by his daily labour. At length a company of soldiers coming that way, and approaching the cave, the faithful slave, alarmed at the danger his master was in, followed them close, and falling upon a poor peasant, killed him in their presence, and cut off his head, crying out, "I am now revenged on my master for the marks with which he has branded me." The soldiers, seeing the infamous marks on his forehead, and not doubting but he had killed Restio, snatched the head out of his hand, and returned with it in all haste to the triumvirs. They were no sooner gone, than the slave conveyed his master to the sea-side, where they had the good luck to find one of Sextus Pompeius's vessels, which transported them safe into Sicily. of history exempted from this opprobrium of our nature which spread over all the rest of the world, the enlightened reader will not suppose. It is indeed in that vast country that slavery has in every age appeared in its ugliest form. We have already observed, that about the era of the Trojan war, a commerce in slaves was carried on between Phoenicia and Libya; and the Carthaginians, who were a colony of Phoenicians, and revered the customs, manners, and religion of their parent state, undoubtedly continued the Tyrian traffic in human flesh with the interior tribes of Africa. Of this we might rest assured, although we had no other evidence of the fact than what results from the practice of human sacrifices so prevalent in the republic of Carthage. The genuine instincts of nature are often subdued by dire superstition, but they cannot be wholly eradicated; and the rich Carthaginian, when a human victim was demanded from him to the gods, would be ready to supply the place of his own child by the son of a poor stranger, perniciously purchased at whatever price. That this was, indeed, a very common practice among them, we learn from the testimony of various historians*, who assure us, that when Agathocles the tyrant of Syracuse had overthrown their generals Hannibal and Bomilcar, and threatened Carthage itself with a siege, the people attributed their misfortunes to the just anger of Saturn for having been worshipped, for some years, by the sacrifices of children meanly born and secretly bought, instead of those of noble extraction. These substitutions of one offering for another were considered as a profane deviation from the religion of their forefathers; and therefore to expiate the guilt of so horrid an impiety, a sacrifice of 200 children of the first rank was on that occasion made to the bloody god. As the Carthaginians were a commercial people, we cannot suppose that they purchased slaves only for sacrifices. They undoubtedly condemned many of their prisoners of war to the state of servitude, and either sold them to foreigners, or distributed them among their senators and the leaders of their armies. Hannibal, who endeavoured to usurp the supreme power in Carthage whilst that republic was engaged in war with Timoleon in Sicily†, armed 20,000 of his slaves in order to carry his nefarious purpose into execution: and Hannibal, after his decisive victory at Cannae, sold to the Greeks many of his prisoners whom the Roman senate refused to redeem‡. That illustrious commander was indeed more humane, as well as more politic, than the generality of his countrymen. Before his days it was customary with the Carthaginians either to massacre their captives in cold blood, that they might never again bear arms against them, or to offer them in sacrifice as a grateful acknowledgement to the gods by whose affluence they believed that they were vanquished; but this was not always done even by their most superstitious or most unprincipled leaders. Among other rich spoils which Agathocles, after his victory already mentioned, found in the camp of Hannibal and Bomilcar, were twenty thousand pair of fetters and manacles, which those generals had provided for such of the Sicilian prisoners as they intended to preserve alive and reduce to a state of slavery.

With the ancient state of the other African nations we are but very little acquainted. The Numidians, Mauritians, Getulians, and Garamantes, are indeed mentioned by the Roman historians, who give us ample details of the battles which they fought in attempting to preserve their national independence; but we have no particular account of their different manners and customs in that age when Rome was disputing with Carthage the sovereignty of the world. All the African states of which we know anything, were in alliance with one or other of those rival republics; and as the people of those states appear to have been less enlightened than either the Romans or the Carthaginians, we cannot suppose that they had purer morals, or a greater regard for the sacred rights of man, than the powerful nations by whom they were either protected or oppressed. They would, indeed, infensibly adopt their customs; and the ready market which Marius found for the prisoners taken in the town Capa, although Sallust acknowledges† that the sale was contrary to the laws‡ Bell. of war, shows that slavery was then no strange thing to Jug. the Numidians. It seems indeed to have prevailed cap. 91. through all Africa from the very first peopling of that unexplored country; and we doubt if in any age of the world the unhappy negro was absolutely secure of his personal freedom, or even of not being sold to a foreign trader.

It is the common opinion that the practice of making slaves of the negroes is of a very modern date; that with it owes its origin to the incursions of the Portuguese on the western coast of Africa; and that but for the cunning or cruelty of Europeans, it would not now exist, the Portuguese would never have existed. But all this is a commonplace of mistakes. A learned writer has lately proved* Whittaker with a force of evidence which admits of no reply* Brer's Re- view of Guinea that from the coast of Guinea a great trade in slaves Gibbon's was carried on by the Arabs some hundreds of years before the Portuguese embarked in that traffic, or history, had even seen a woolly-headed negro. Even the 19 wandering Arabs of the desert, who never had any Arabs at friendly correspondence with the Christians of Europe, an early have from time immemorial been served by negro-pecioned slaves. "The Arab must be poor indeed (says M. Saugnier Saugnier) not to have at least one negro slave. His and Brist- sole occupation is the care of the herd. They are ne- son's Voya- ver employed in war, but they have it in their power geen to marry. Their wives, who are captive negresses, do all the domestic work, and are roughly treated by the Arabian women, and by the Arabs themselves. Their children are slaves like them, and put to all kinds of drudgery." Surely no man whose judgment is not completely warped by prejudice, will pretend that those roving tribes of savages, so remarkable for their independent spirit and attachment to ancient customs, learned to enslave the negroes from the Europeans. In all probability they have, without interruption, continued the practice of slavery from the days of their great ancestor Ishmael; and it seems evident, that none of the European nations had ever seen a woolly-headed negro till the year 1100, when the crusaders fell in with a small party of them near the town of Hebron in Judea, and were so struck with the novelty of their appearance, that the army burst into a general fit of laughter||. Long before the crusades, however, we know with certainty p. 83. that the natives of Guinea had been exposed to sale in foreign countries. In 651 the Mahometan Arabs of Egypt fo harassed the king of Nubia or Ethiopia, who was a Christian, that he agreed to send them annually, by way of tribute, a vast number of Nubian or Ethiop- Slavery, pian slaves into Egypt. Such a tribute as this at that time, we are told, was more agreeable to the khalif than any other, as the Arabs then made no small account of those slaves*.

The very proposal of such a tribute, and the estimation in which black slaves were held in Egypt, shows that a commerce in bond-servants could not then be a new branch of trade either to the Arabs or the Ethiopians; but the vast number which the Ethiopian monarch was now compelled to furnish every year, induced him to feed this great drain upon his subjects from the natives of the neighbouring countries. "He ranged accordingly into all that vast blank of geography upon the map of the world, the spreading bosom of the African continent; and even pushed through it to its farthest extremities in the west. He thus brought the blacks of Guinea, for the first time, into the service and families of the cast; and the slaves which he paid in tribute to the Arabs, whether derived from the nearer neighbourhood of Ethiopia, fetched from the mediterranean regions of Africa, or brought from the distant shores of the Atlantic, were all denominated Ethiopians, from the country by which they were conveyed into Egypt†."

"At this time, therefore, according to Mr Whitaker, began that kind of traffic in human flesh

"Which spoils unhappy Guinea of its sons."

There are not many authors from whom, in questions of antiquity, we differ with greater hesitation; but, as we meet with a female Ethiopian slave in the Eunuch of Terence, we cannot help supposing that Guinea was occasionally "spoiled of its sons" at a much earlier period. At any rate, from the observations made by the European travellers who first penetrated into that continent, it appears undeniable that slavery must have prevailed from time immemorial among such of the tribes as had never carried on any commerce with foreign nations. When Battel first visited the Giagas*, those people had never before seen a white man; yet they welcomed him and the English, with whom he had come, to their country, invited them to bring their goods on shore, and without hesitation loaded the ships with slaves. The Giagas were indeed waging war with the kingdom of Benguela; and being cannibals, who prefer human flesh to all others, the slaves whom they had sold to the English were probably prisoners whom they would have killed and eaten if they had not found an opportunity of otherwise disposing of them to greater advantage. But as they had not been incited by the Europeans to eat their prisoners, there can be no reason to suppose that by the Europeans they had been first induced to sell them; for we have seen that this kind of commerce prevailed in Africa among people much more polished than the Giagas so early as in the reign of Jugurtha.

That it was not introduced among the negroes either by the Arabs or by the Portuguese, appears still more evident from the behaviour of the Dahomans at the conquest of Whidah, and from the manner in which the people of Angola at the earliest stage of their foreign trade procured a supply of slaves for the Portuguese market. The greater part of the slaves whom the Angolans exported from St Paulo de Loanda were brought from interior countries, some hundreds of leagues distant, where they could not have been regularly purchased had that commerce been till then unknown in those countries. The Dahomans, in the beginning of the year 1727, had never seen a white man: and when their victorious prince and his army, in their route through Whidah, first met with some Europeans in the town of Sabi, they were so shocked at their complexion and their dress, that they were afraid to approach them, and could not be persuaded that they were men till they heard them speak, and were assured by the Widanese that these were the merchants who purchased all the slaves that were sold in Guinea†. Slavery, therefore, if it prevailed among the Dahomans before that period, could not have been introduced among them by European or Arabian intrigues; but we are assured by Snelgrave, who was then in the army, that those people treated their captives with such horrid cruelty as was shocking to the natives of the sea-coast, and leaves no room for doubt but that slavery had been practised among them from the earliest ages. A great part of their prisoners were sacrificed to their gods or eaten by the soldiers; and when our author expressed to a colonel of the guard some surprise that a prince so enlightened as the sovereign of Dahomy should sacrifice so many men whom he might have sold to great advantage, he was gravely told, that it had been the custom of their nation, from time immemorial, to offer, after victory, a certain number of prisoners to the gods; and that they selected the old men for victims, because they were of less value at market, and more dangerous from their experience and cunning, than the young men. To those persons who fancy that the wars between the African princes are carried on for the sole purpose of supplying the European ships with slaves, it may be proper to remark, that one of the kings of Dahomy slaughtered at once not only all the captives taken in war, but also 127 prisoners of different kinds, that he might have a sufficiency of skulls to adorn the walls of his palace; though at the very time of that massacre he knew that there were six slave-ships in the road of Whidah, from which he could have got for every prime slave a price little short of thirty pounds sterling §.

These facts, and numberless others which the reader will find detailed in the 13th volume of the Modern Universal History, by writers who were at the greatest pains to procure authentic information; who were neither biased by interest nor blinded by enthusiasm; and who appear to have held the infamous traffic in utter abhorrence—prove beyond the possibility of doubt, that slavery of the worst kind must have prevailed among all the negro nations before they were visited either by the Portuguese or by the Arabs (1). These two nations may

(1) The same thing appears from the voyages of M. Saugnier, who had an opportunity of conversing with many tribes of negroes, and who always speaks of slavery as an established practice among them; adding, that such as are sold for crimes are put to death by their own countrymen if they fly from their master. It appears likewise in a still more striking light from Dalzel's History of Dahomy, where we are told that all the Daho- may indeed have been the first who dragged the unhappy negro from his native continent, and made his slavery doubly severe, by compelling him to labour, without his own consent, for masters whom he hardly considered as human beings.

On the beginning of this commerce, or the dreadful cruelty with which it has been carried on to the present day, it is impossible to reflect without horror; but there is some consolation, however small, in knowing that its original authors were not Europeans. The purchase of Guinea blacks for slaves by foreign nations commenced ages before the Portuguese had laid that country open to the intercourse of Europe. Even after they had made many incursions into it, the inhabitants were regularly purchased for slaves by some of the adjoining states as they are now by the maritime Europeans.

"The Arabs of Egypt having reduced all the north of Africa, and carrying with them their love of black servants, would be sure to open a ready communication for themselves to their country. They certainly had one so early as 1512, and before the Europeans had any for that purpose (k). They went from Barbary by a route that was so much practised, as to be denominated expressly 'the way of the camels.' Meeting together at the town of Cape Cantin, or that of Valadie near it, the commercial caravan traversed the vast deserts, those of Sarra, which run like the tropic of Cancer over them in a long line across the country; to a place of great population called Hoden, the Waden or Hoden of our maps, and a little to the south-west of Cape Blanco. From Hoden they turned to the left, and pushed directly into the interior of the continent, to reach Tezazza, the Tagazel or Tagaza of our maps, and lying nearly east of Hoden. Here assuredly they did, as the caravan does certainly at this day; and added to the other wares upon their camels a quantity of salt from those mines of rock-salt, which are extraordinary enough to be noticed as rocks in our maps. This they carried, as they still carry it, to Tambut, the Tombut of the maps, and a town in the heart of the African continent. And from this town they turned on the right for the sea coast again, and reached it in the great kingdom of Mele, the Meli of our maps, to the south of the Gambia, and just at the springing as it were of that grand arch of sea which curves so deeply into the body of the land, and constitutes the extensive gulf of Guinea. At Melli and at Tombut they received a measure of gold for a measure of salt. The caravan collects gold at Tombut to the present time; but at Melli they purchased gold, and also silver, in pieces as large as pebbles. And at Haden they had a great mart for slaves; the blacks being brought thither from the countries adjoining, and bartered away to the traders. Such was the Slave Coast and the Gold Coast of former days. The staple commodity of Hoden is only transferred now to Whidah; and diverted from the Arabs of Barbary to the Christians of Europe," by whom the negroes are which is carried to the continent of America or to the Sugar now trans-ferred to the West Indies. In these countries they are all sold like beest in a market; but they experience very different degrees of servitude from the different masters who hold them as property. Such of them as are reconciled to the appearance of white men, or have been born in the European colonies, feel themselves as happy under a humane master as they could be in their native continent (L); and we believe that few of them in such circumstances have expressed a desire to return.

In the French West India islands, before the late re-volution in the mother country, which has produced in all its dependencies anarchy and massacre, the condition of the negro slaves was better than that of the bond-men among the ancient Germans. "Those of them old govern-who cultivated the plantations were attached to the soil, and could not be drawn off to pay debts, or be sold separately from the estate on which they lived. This gave them a lasting property in their huts and little plots of ground, which they might safely cultivate without dread of being turned out of possession, or transferred contrary to their interest and feelings from one pro-prietor to another. They were under the protection of law as soon as they arrived in the colony. Proper mission-aries were appointed for the purpose of training them up to a certain degree of religious knowledge, and ample funds were allotted for the maintenance of those ecclesiastics. On ill treatment received from his master, or on being deprived of his allowance of food and rai-ment, the slave was directed to apply to the king's at-torney,

mans, from the lowest to the highest, acknowledge the right of the sovereign to dispose of their persons and properties at pleasure; and where we learn, that the sovereign himself assured Mr Abfon the English governor at Whidah, that all his ancestors had from time immemorial put to death every prisoner of war whom they could not fell as a slave.

(k) In the year 1442, Anthony Gonzalez, a Portuguese adventurer, restored to their native country some Moorish prisoners whom he had two years before forcibly carried off from the coast of Africa. He landed them at Rio del-Oro, and received from the Moors in exchange ten blacks and a quantity of gold dust. This transac-tion proves, that a commerce in black servants was then regularly carried on by the Moors and not by the Por-tuguese. So early as the year 1502, the Spaniards began to employ a few negroes in the mines of Hispaniola; but in the year following, Ovando, the governor of that island, forbade the further importation of them, alleging that they taught the Indians all manner of wickedness, and rendered them less tractable than formerly; and it was not till the year 1517 that the supply of negroes to the Spanish American plantations became an established and regular branch of commerce. Edwards's History of the West Indies, Book IV. chap. ii.

(L) "I have observed many of my slaves go on board the vessel with joy, on my assurance that they would be well treated and happy on the plantation where I was going to send them. When the Banbarans find that they are trusted by the whites, they never think of making their escape, choosing to be the slaves of Europeans rather than of a black man who would treat them with the greatest cruelty. Voyages to the Coast of Africa by Mfrré Saugnier and Briffon, p. 332, 335. English Translation." Slavery. torney, who was obliged to prosecute the master forthwith. That officer was also bound to prosecute, if by any other means he heard of the abuse; the law adding as the reason, This we will to be observed, to check the abuse of power in the master.*

We wish it were in our power to say, that in the British West India colonies slaves are equally protected by law as they were in the French islands under the old government, and that the same care is taken of their moral and religious improvement. This, however, we are afraid, cannot be said with truth. In the island of Jamaica, before the passing of the consolidated slave act, not many years ago, a white man, whether proprietor or not, who had killed a negro, or by an act of severity been the cause of his death, was, for the first offence, entitled to benefit of clergy, and not liable to capital punishment till a repetition of the crime. By the present law, it is enacted, "That if any person, whether owner or superintendent of slaves, shall be convicted of having, by any act of passion or cruelty, occasioned the death of any negro, it shall be capital for the first offence; and for the greater security of the property, and as a check on those who may have the punishment of slaves in their power, it is particularly required, that every surgeon or doctor belonging to each estate shall swear to the cause of the death of each negro, to the best of his knowledge and belief; and if any negro dies, and is interred by the owner or overseer, without the doctor's having seen or been sent for to such negro, in this case the owner or overseer causing the negro to be so interred is liable to a prosecution for such conduct."

This law must doubtless be productive of good effects; but being a colonial act, it cannot have the vigour of the Code Noir; nor do we know of any attorney in the island who is obliged to defend the rights of the negroes, or prosecute the master whose cruelty has by any means come to his knowledge. The justices and vestry of each parish are indeed constituted a council of protection, for the express purpose of making full enquiry into the barbarities exercised on slaves, and bringing the authors to punishment at the public expence; and by a new slave-act of Grenada, the justices are required annually to nominate three freholders to be guardians of the slaves.

These are benevolent regulations; but we doubt if protection can be so promptly afforded by a council of guardians as by an individual attorney who has no other employment. In some of the other British islands, we have been confidently told that the unfortunate sons of Africa have no protection whatever against the tyranny of a foppish owner, or the caprice of a boyish overseer (M); though it is added, that the humanity of many masters more than supplies the want of laws in every respect but that of improvement, and that the attachment of others has in them a like effect. In some cases good sense, a regard for their reputation, and a well-informed conviction of their interest, induce men to treat their slaves with discretion and humanity. The slaves of many a planter possess advantages beyond what the labourer even of Britain enjoys;" yet these advantages all depend upon the good will of his master; and in no part of the British colonies are the slaves attached to the soil. This single circumstance, together with the total neglect of their moral and religious culture, makes their situation much less eligible than was that of the French slaves under the old government; and affords a striking proof of what the humane author whom we have just quoted well observes, that "those men and nations whom liberty hath exalted, and who therefore ought to regard it tenderly in others, are constantly for restraining its blessings within their own little circle, and delight more in augmenting the train of their dependants than in adding to the rank of fellow-citizens, or in diffusing the benefits of freedom among their neighbours."

Having given this ample detail of the rise and progress of slavery in the world, and shewn that it has prevailed in every age, and under all religions, we shall now proceed to enquire whether a practice so general be in any instance lawful; and if it be, how it must be modified, in order to be rendered consistent with the rights of man and the immutable laws of virtue.

That in a state of nature one man has a right to seize upon another, and to compel him by force to labour for his subsistence, is a position which we believe has never been feriously maintained. But independent communities stand to each other in the very same relation that individuals do in a state of nature; and therefore if in such a state the man of greater bodily strength or mental faculty would have no right to convert his weaker neighbour into personal property, neither can the more powerful and enlightened nation have a right to carry off by force, or entice by fraud, the subjects of a weaker and more barbarous community for the purpose of reducing them to a state of servitude. This is a truth so obvious as to admit neither of proof nor of denial.

In thus stating the case between two independent nations, we have in our eye that traffic in slaves which is carried on between the civilized Europeans and the barbarous Africans: and the utmost length which we think an apologist for that trade can go is to contend, that we may lawfully purchase slaves in those countries where from time immemorial they have been a common branch of commerce. But the European right to purchase cannot be better than the African right to sell; and none of us have never yet been informed what gives one African a right to fell another. Such a right cannot be natural, for the reason which we have elsewhere assigned (see RIGHT): neither can it be adventitious; for adventitious rights are immediately derived from the municipal law, which is the public will of the state. But the state has no authority to deprive an innocent man of his personal freedom, or of the produce of his own labour; for it is only to secure these, by protecting the weak

(m) In Barbadoes there is said to be a law for the protection of slaves, which is the most insolent trifling with justice and humanity that the writer of this article has ever seen. It is enacted, forsooth, "That if any man shall, of wantonness, or only of bloody-mindedness, or cruel intention, wilfully kill a negro or other slave, if his own, he shall pay into the public treasury fifteen pounds sterling!" See Dickson's Letters on Slavery, p. 4. weak from the violence of the strong, that states are formed, and individuals united under civil government.

It may perhaps be said, that by patiently submitting to governments which authorize the traffic in human flesh, men virtually give up their personal liberty, and vest their governors with a right to fell them as slaves: but no man can vest another with a right which he possesses not himself; and we shall not hesitate to affirm, that in a state of nature where all have equal rights, no individual can submit himself to the absolute disposal of another without being guilty of the greatest crime. The reason is obvious. From the relation in which men stand to one another as fellow-creatures, and to God as their common Creator, there are duties incumbent upon each peculiar to himself; in the performance of which he can be guided only by his own reason, which was given him for that very purpose. But he who renounces his personal freedom, and submits unconditionally to the caprice of a master, impiously attempts to set himself free from the obligation of that law which is interwoven with his very being, and chooses a director of his conduct different from that which God has assigned him. A man therefore cannot put himself in a state of unconditional servitude; and what he cannot do for himself, he surely cannot authorize others to do for him either by a tacit or by an open consent.

These considerations have often made us regret that writers, for whose talents and integrity we have the highest respect, should, without accurately defining what they mean by slavery, have peremptorily affirmed, that, consistently with the law of nature men may be reduced to that state as a punishment for crimes, or to discharge debts which they cannot otherwise pay. That a criminal, who has forfeited his life to the laws of his country, may have his punishment commuted for hard labour, till death in the course of nature shall put a period to his terrestrial existence, is a truth which we apprehend cannot be controverted; but to make such a commutation of punishments consistent with the laws of nature and of nature's God, it appears to us that the kind and degree of labour must be precisely ascertained, and the conduct of the criminal not left to the capricious direction of any individual.

Punishments can be justly inflicted only for one or other of two ends, or for both. They may be calculated either to reform the criminal or to be a warning to the innocent; and those which most effectually answer both these purposes are surely to be preferred to such as answer but one of them. For this reason we consider hard labour as a much fitter punishment for most crimes than death: but to entitle it to preference, the kind and degree of the labour must be ascertained by the law; for if these circumstances be omitted, and the offender delivered over as a slave to the absolute disposal and caprice of a private master, the labour to which he is condemned, instead of operating to his reformation, may be converted into the means of tempting him to the commission of new crimes. A young woman, in the state of servitude, would hardly be able to maintain her virtue against the solicitations of a master who should promise her liberty or a remission of toil upon her yielding to his desires; and the felon, who had long been accustomed to a life of vagrancy and idleness, would not strenuously object to the perpetration of any wickedness to obtain his freedom, or even a diminution of his daily talk. Indeed such temptations might be thrown in his way, as human nature could not resist but by means of much better principles than felons can be supposed to possess. He might be scourged into compliance; or his labours might be so increased as to make him for a little respite eagerly embrace the most nefarious proposal which his master could make: for being absolute property, there is no earthly tribunal to which he could appeal for justice; and felons do not commonly support themselves under trials by pious meditations on a future state.

By reasoning in this way, we are far from meaning to insinuate that slave-holders in general torture their slaves into the commission of crimes. God forbid! Many of them we know to be religious, humane, and benevolent: but they are not infallible; and some of them may be instigated, some of them undoubtedly have been instigated, by avarice and other worse principles, to compel creatures, who are so absolutely their dependents, to execute deeds of darkness too hazardous for themselves. But the morality or immorality of any action, and the moral fitness of any state, are to be judged of by their natural tendency, if the one were universally practised and the other universally prevalent (see Moral Philosophy, No 156.) and as the natural tendency of absolute domestic slavery among such creatures as men is to throw the most powerful temptations to vice in the way both of matter and of slave, it must be in every instance, even when employed as a punishment, inconsistent with the fundamental principles of moral virtue.

Some writers indeed have maintained, and the civil law seems to suppose, that children are the property of not the their parents, and may by them be sold as slaves in cases of urgent necessity: but if we duly consider how property is acquired (see Property), and attend to the natural consequences of slavery, we shall soon be convinced that this opinion is very ill founded. The rights of parents result from their duties; and it is certainly the duty of that man who has been the instrument of bringing into the world an intellectual and moral being, to do everything in his power to render the existence of that being happy both in the present life and in that which is to come. If this duty be conscientiously discharged, the parent has a manifest right to the gratitude, love, and reasonable obedience, of his child; but he cannot, in consequence of any duty performed, claim a right to transfer that child as property to the uncontrolled disposal of any private master; for this plain reason, that the man who is considered as the private property of another, cannot reasonably be supposed to enjoy happiness in this world, and is under many temptations to do what must necessarily render him miserable in the next. See Moral Philosophy, No 138.

If criminals cannot be lawfully reduced to a state of absolute private slavery, much less surely can it be lawful to reduce insolvent debtors and prisoners of war to that state. Many a virtuous man, who has contracted debts with the fairest prospect of paying them, has been suddenly rendered insolvent by fire, by shipwreck, or by the bankruptcy of others with whom he was necessarily engaged in the course of his trade. Such a man can be considered in no respect as criminal. He has been indeed unfortunate; but it would be grossly unjust, as well as shockingly cruel, to add to his misfortune by reducing him to a state to which we have just seen that the vilest felon cannot be reduced without a violation of the laws of morality. Fraudulent bankrupts indeed, of whom we daily see many, might with great propriety and the strictest justice be compelled to extenuate their debts by labouring for the benefit of those whom they have injured; and criminals of other descriptions might be made to work for the benefit of the public; but in both cases the task to be performed should be ascertain- ed by the law, and the persons of the labourers be protected by the state. If such can be called slaves, their slavery is undoubtedly consistent with every principle of virtue and religion; for they suffer nothing but the due reward of their deeds. Prisoners of war, however, can upon no honest principle be reduced even to this state of mitigated bondage; for they are so far from incurring guilt by fighting for their country, that even to their enemies their courage and conduct in such a cause must appear worthy of reward. A victorious general has certainly a right to prevent the prisoners taken in battle from again drawing their swords against him during the continuance of the war; but there are many ways by which this may be done effectually without chaining the unfortunate captives to the oar, or selling them like cattle to private purchasers, by whom they may be treated with capricious cruelty, and driven to the perpetration of the greatest crimes.

To these conclusions, and the reasoning on which they are built, we are aware it may be objected, that if private slavery were in every instance unlawful and inconsistent with the fundamental principles of morality, it would not have prevailed among the ancient patriarchs, and far less have been authorized by the Jewish law.

In reply to this objection, it may be observed, that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, though excellent men, were not characters absolutely perfect; that as their practice does not authorize polygamy or incest among us, it will not authorize the reducing of our fellow-creatures to a state of hopeless servitude; and that from the circumstances of the age in which they lived, many things were permitted to them, and were indeed harmless, which are forbidden to us, and would now be pernicious. The character of Abraham appears to have been much more perfect than that of his son or grandson; and was certainly equal, if not superior, to that of any other mere man of whom we read either in profane or even in sacred history. We are to remember, however, that he was born amidst idolaters, and was probably an idolater himself till enlightened by the inspiration of Jehovah, and called from his kindred and from his father's house. Before his conversion, he must have had much cattle and many slaves, which constituted the riches of that early period; and his case would indeed have been peculiarly hard, had he been commanded to divest himself of his servants, and to depart into a strange country very thinly inhabited, without people to protect his flocks and herds from beasts of prey. Nor would his loss have contributed in any degree to the benefit of his slaves, who, as the ranks of men were then adjusted, could not long have preserved their liberty. Had they not been forcibly reduced to their former state by their idolatrous countrymen, which in all probability they would have been, they must have soon submitted to it, or perished by hunger. Let it be remembered, too, that the bond-servants of Abraham, though constituting the most valuable part of his property, were not considered as a species of inferior beings, but were treated rather as children than as slaves. This is evident from his speaking of the steward of his house as his heir, when complaining to God of the want of seed. Indeed the manner in which this circumstance is mentioned, shows that it was then the general practice to consider domestic slaves as members of the family; for the patriarch does not say, "I will leave my substance to this Eliezer of Damascus;" but his words are, "Behold to me thou hast given no seed; and lo, one born in my house is my heir."* * Gen. xxv. From this mode of expression we are strongly inclined to think that captives taken in war were in that age of simplicity incorporated into the family or tribe of the conqueror, as they are said to be at present among the North American Indians, to supply the place of those who had fallen in battle. If so, slavery was then a very mild thing, unattended with the evils which are now in its train, and must often have been highly beneficial to the captive.

The other part of the objection appears at first sight more formidable: but perhaps a little attention to the design of the Mosaic economy may enable us to remove it even more completely than this. We need not inform our theological readers, that one great purpose for which the posterity of Abraham were separated from the heathen nations around them, was to preserve the knowledge of the true God in a world run headlong into idolatry. As idolatry appears to have had something in its forms of worship extremely captivating to rude minds, and as the minds of the Israelites at the era of their departure from Egypt were exceedingly rude, every method was taken to keep their separation from their idolatrous neighbours as complete as possible. With this view they were commanded to sacrifice the animals which their Egyptian masters had worshipped as gods, and were taught to consider hogs and such other creatures as the heathen offered in sacrifice, when celebrating their mythical and magic rites, as too unclean to be eaten or even to be touched. Of this distinction between clean and unclean beasts, God himself assigns the reason: "I am the Lord your God (says he), who have separated you from other people; ye shall therefore put difference between clean and unclean beasts, and between unclean fowls and clean."† Lev. xi. For the same reason they were prohibited from inter- 24, 25, 26 marrying with the heathen, or having any transaction whatever with them as neighbours; and the seven idolatrous nations of Canaan they were strictly commanded to exterminate. "When the Lord thy God (says Moses) shall deliver them before thee, thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them: thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor show mercy unto them: neither shalt thou make marriages with them; thy daughter thou shalt not give unto his son, nor his daughter thou shalt take to thy son; for they will turn away thy son from following me, that they may serve other gods."‡

Under these laws, it is plain that no intercourse whatever could have place between an Israelite and a man of any other nation, unless the latter was reduced to such a state as that he could neither tempt the former, nor practise himself the rites of his idolatrous worship. But the Israelites were not separated from the rest of the world for their own sakes only: They were intended to be the repositories of the lively oracles of God, and gradually spread the light of divine truth through other nations, till the fulness of time should come, when in Christ all things were to be gathered together in one. To answer this end, it was necessary that there should be some intercourse between them and their Gentile neighbours; but we have seen that such an intercourse could only be that which subsists between masters and their slaves.

Should this apology for the slavery which was authorised by the Jewish law be deemed fanciful, we beg leave to submit to the consideration of our readers the following account of that matter, to which the same objection will hardly be made. It was morally impossible that between nations differing so widely in religion, customs, and manners, as the Jews and Gentiles, peace should for ever reign without interruption; but when wars broke out, battles would be fought, and prisoners would be taken. How were these prisoners to be disposed of? Cartels for exchange were not then known: it was the duty of the Israelites to prevent their captives from taking up arms a second time against them; they could not establish them among themselves either as artificers or as husbandmen; for their law enjoined them to have no communication with the heathen. There was therefore no other alternative but either to massacre them in cold blood, or to reduce them to the condition of slaves. It would appear, however, that those slaves were raised to the rank of citizens, or at least that their burdens were much lightened, as soon as they were convinced of the truth of the Mosaic revelation, and received into covenant with God by the rite of circumcision. They were then admitted to the celebration of the passover; concerning which one law was decreed to the stranger, and to him that was home-born. Indeed, when we consider who was the legislator of the Jews; when we reflect upon the number of laws enacted to mitigate slavery among them, and call to mind the means by which the due execution of all their laws was enforced, (see Theology), we cannot help being of opinion that the heathen, who was reduced to slavery in Judea, might be happier, if he pleased, than when living as a freeman in his own country. But whether this be so or not, is a matter with which we have no concern. On account of the hardness of their hearts, and the peculiarity of their circumstances, many things, of which slavery may have been one, were permitted to the Jews, which, if practised by Christians, would render them highly guilty.

After treating thus largely of slavery in general, we need not occupy much of the reader's time with the

SLAVE-TRADE carried on by the merchants of Europe with the natives of Africa. It is well known that the Portuguese were the first Europeans who embarked in this trade, and that their example was soon followed by the Dutch and the English. Of the rise and progress of the English commerce in slaves, the reader will find a sufficient account in other articles of this work *. That commerce, though long cherished by the government as a source of national and colonial wealth, was from its commencement considered by the thinking part of the nation as a traffic inconsistent with the rights of man, and suspected to be carried on by acts of violence. These suspicions were gradually spread through the people at large, and confirmed, in many instances, by evidence incontrovertible. Laws were in consequence enacted to make the negroes more comfortable on what is called the middle passage, and to protect them against the wanton cruelty of their masters in the West Indies: but the humanity of the nation was roused; and not many years ago a number of gentlemen of the most respectable characters, finding that no adequate protection could be afforded to persons in a state of hopeless servitude, formed themselves into a society at London, for the purpose of procuring a total abolition of the slave trade. That the motives which influenced the leading men of this society were of the purest kind, cannot, we think, be questioned; for their object was to deliver those who had none to help them, and from whom they could expect no other reward for their labours of love than the blessings of them who were ready to perish. To a cause truly Christian, who did not pray for success? or who but must have felt the most pungent regret, if that success had been rendered doubtful, or even delayed, by the imprudence of some of the agents employed by the society? This we apprehend was really the case. Language calculated only to exasperate the planters could not serve the negroes; and the legislature of Great Britain would never suffer itself to be forced into any measure by the menaces of individuals.

In the year 1793, petitions were presented to parliament for the abolition of this inhuman traffic, which gave a pleasing picture of the philanthropy of the nation; but, unfortunately for the cause of freedom, it was discovered that many of the names subjoined to those petitions had been collected by means not the most honourable. The discovery, perhaps, would never have been made, had not the insulting epithets indiscriminately heaped upon the slave-holders provoked those men to watch with circumspection over the conduct of their opponents. The consequence was, that suspicions of unfair dealing on the part of the petitioners were excited in the breasts of many who, though they ardently wished well to the cause, chose not to add their names to those of school-boys under age, and of peasants who knew not what they were subscribing. Let the rights of the Africans be maintained with ardour and firmness: but never let their advocates suppose that the cause of humanity requires the support of artifice. Absolute slavery, in which the actions of one man are regulated by the caprice of another, is a state demonstrably inconsistent with the obvious plan of the moral government of the world. It degrades the mental faculties of the slave, and throws, both in his way and in his master's, temptations to vice almost insurmountable. Let these truths be set in a proper light by those who have doubtless seen them exemplified; and they will surely have their full effect on the minds of a generous, and, we trust, not an impious people (x). The trade will be generally abolished; pains will be taken

(x) We have not insisted upon the impolicy of the slave-trade, or endeavoured to prove that its abolition would SLA [398] SLA

ken to cultivate the minds of the West Indian negroes; and the era may be at no great distance when slavery shall cease through all the British dominions.

But what benefit, it will be asked, will the negroes of Africa reap from an abolition of the slave trade? Should anything so wildly incredible happen, as that all the nations of Christendom, in one common paroxysm of philanthropy, should abandon this commerce in servants, which has been prosecuted in all ages, and under all religions; they would only abandon it to those who were originally possessed of it, who still penetrate into the country, and who even push up to Gago at the very head of the Slave coast, and leave the wool-headed natives of it to Mahometan matters, in preference to Christian. Under such matters they were in Judea at the time of the crusades. Under such, as we learn from Messrs Saugnier, Briffon, and others, they still are in the deserts of Africa, as well as in the islands of Johanna and Madagascar*; and it is universally known that they enslave one another as a punishment for the most whimsical crimes. Among them, indeed, slavery seems to be reduced to a system, and to descend, as it has done in more polished nations, from father to son; for both Saugnier and Wadstrom† speak of particular families of negroes who are exempted from that degrading fate by the laws of the country.

All this we admit to be true. Most certainly the negroes would not be exempted from the miseries of servitude, though Europe and the West Indies were swallowed up in the ocean. The customs of the country, as the king of Dahomy assured Mr Abfon I., will be made as long as black men shall continue to possess their own territories, in their present state of depravity and ignorance; and these customs appear to involve slavery of the cruellest kind. But if slavery be in itself unlawful, is it a sufficient excuse for our continuing the traffic that it is carried on by the rude negroes and the savage Arabs? Are people, whom we sometimes affect to consider as an inferior order of beings, to furnish examples of conduct to those who boast of their advancements in science, in literature, and in refinement? Or will the benevolent Lord of all things pardon us for oppressing our helpless brethren, merely because they are cruelly oppressed by others? It is indeed true that the natives of Guinea cannot be made really free but by introducing among them the blessings of religion and the arts of civil life; but surely they would have fewer temptations than at present to kidnap one another, or to commence unprovoked wars for the purpose of making captives, were the nations of Europe to abandon the commerce in slaves (o). That commerce, we grant, would be continued by the Arabs, and perhaps by others of the eastern nations; but the same number of people could not be carried off by them alone that is now carried off both by them and by the Europeans.

Were it indeed possible to put the slave-trade under proper regulations, so as to prevent all kidnapping and unjust wars among the Africans, to supply the markets; and were it likewise possible to ensure to the negroes in the West Indies mild treatment and religious instruction, we are far from being sure that while the natives of Guinea continue so rude, and their neighbours the Arabs so selfishly savage, it would be proper to abandon at once to hordes of barbarians the whole of this commerce in bond servants. "The trade, which in its present form is a reproach to Britain, might be made to take a new shape, and become ultimately a blessing to thousands of wretches who, left in their native country, would have dragged out a life of miserable ignorance, unknowing the hand that framed them, unconscious of the reason of which they were made capable, and heedless of the happiness laid up for them in store §."

Slavery is, indeed, in every form an evil; but it seems to be one of those many evils which, having long prevailed in the world, can be advantageously removed only by degrees, and as the moral cultivation of the slaves may enable them to support the rank and discharge the duties of free men. This is doubtless the reason why it was not expressly prohibited by the divine Author of our religion, but suffered to vanish gradually before the mild influence of his Heavenly doctrines. It has vanished before these doctrines in most countries of Europe; and it affords us no small gratification to have it in our power to record, what indeed must be fresh in the memory of our readers, that the abolition of the slave-trade was finally accomplished by the steady perseverance and generous exertions of some of the most enlightened and respectable characters in the kingdom, who, after a long and arduous struggle, obtained a decree of the legislature, prohibiting, after a limited period, the trade in slaves to be continued by subjects of Britain. The bill originated in the house of lords, and having undergone considerable discussion in the house of commons, finally passed on the 16th of March, and received his majesty's assent.

would be advantageous to the sugar-planters; for the planters surely understand their own interest better than those can do, who, having never been in the West Indies, are obliged to content themselves with what information they can glean on the subject from a number of violent and contradictory publications. To countenance slavery under any form is undoubtedly immoral. This we know; and therefore upon this ground have we opposed the slave-trade, which cannot be continued without preferring interest to virtue.

(o) In a speech which Mr Dalzel says the king of Dahomy made to Mr Abfon, when he was informed of what had passed in England on the subject of the slave-trade, are these remarkable words: "In the name of my ancestors and myself, I aver that no Dahoman ever embarked in war merely for the sake of procuring wherewithal to purchase your commodities." We must take the liberty to question the truth of this solemn averment. That the slave-trade is not the sole cause of the Dahoman wars every man will admit, who does not fancy that those people have neither passions nor appetites, but for the commodities of Europe: but the bare affirmation of this bloody despot, who boasted of having killed many thousands at the customs, will not convince those who have read either Wadstrom's Essay on Colonization, or the evidence reflecting the slave-trade given at the bar of the house of commons, "that no Dahoman ever embarked in war merely to procure slaves to barter for European commodities." affront on the 25th March 1807. The time fixed by the bill, for the total abolition of the trade, we believe, was the beginning of the following year, viz. January 1808.

We cannot conclude without expressing a hope, that the period is not very distant when the slaves in the West Indies shall be so much improved in moral and religious knowledge, as that they may be safely trusted with their own freedom. To set them free, in their present state of ignorance and depravity, is one of the wildest proposals that the ardour of innovation has ever made. Such freedom would be equally ruinous to themselves and to their masters; and we may say of it what Cicero said of some unsealable indulgences proposed to be granted to the slaves in Sicily: Quae cum accedunt, nemo est, quin intelligat ruere illam rempublicam; hec ubi veniant, nemo est, qui ullam spem salutis reliquiam esse arbitretur.

Those of our readers who wish to enter into a detail of this subject, may consult, with much advantage, The History of the Rise, Progress, and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by Mr Clarkson, 2 vols 8vo.See MANSLAUGHTER, HOMICIDE, MURDER, &c.