Читать книгу The rise, progress, and phases of human slavery - James Bronterre O'Brien - Страница 7

Table of Contents

Sanction given by Law and Public Opinion—Various Causes of Enslavement—Practices of Ancient Germans—Analogy in Modern Commercial and Funding Systems, and Expatriation of Irish Peasantry—Slavery among the Jews.

Having shown how human slavery originated in parental despotism, let us now inquire how positive laws came to consolidate and regulate it, and public opinion to consecrate and perpetuate it, till it had become the normal condition of some three-fourths of the human race antecedently to the period of Christ’s advent. Here we shall again find history our safest guide. If the oldest traditions show, on the one hand, that slavery did not originate in human laws, but was the spontaneous growth of the natural subjection of children to parents, there is equally ample authority, on the other hand, to show that, once introduced, all the forces of law and opinion known to the ancients were unsparingly applied to propagate and maintain slavery in every pagan country.

While families remained apart from each other, without intercourse, without social relationship, slavery knew no other law than the will or pleasure of the head of each household. But when, in the progress of early civilization, the families congregated in any particular locality or country came to find it necessary to constitute themselves into one great society for the purposes of exchange or commerce, intermarrying, mutual defence against aggression, &c., the despotic will of individuals gave place, of necessity, to a general law of the heads of families composing the society. It was then, and not till then, that slavery became a legal institution. The general law not only sanctioned and enforced it, but also greatly enlarged its bounds by creating new sources of slavery. For example, to be taken prisoner in war, to take refuge in the house of another, to be unable to pay one’s debts, or, if a girl, being married out of her family or tribe,—these were so many new sources of slavery created by the general law. The rights of war were made to confer upon the vanquisher the same rights over the vanquished that belonged to their own fathers. Indeed, amongst the ancients the vanquished were considered as “men without gods,” that is to say, men without ancestors of rank or dignity (for, in the language of the primitive poets, the gods and the ancestors of great families are one and the same thing); and they were treated as mere chattels, as appears from the very name given, viz., mancipia, which, though the ordinary term applied to slaves taken in battle, is, in its etymological sense, applicable only to things inanimate. Whether it was from a religious scruple, or for the purpose of divesting the vanquished of what prestige might attach to them from the possession of their gods or ancestral images, we find that the taking or keeping possession of these gods was always a vital consideration in the sieges and battles of antiquity. Once taken by the enemy, the capture and enslavement of their possessors was deemed inevitable. Those left without gods, in this sense, were regarded as outlaws by their fellow-citizens, and their future slavery was considered a mere matter of course by themselves, as well as by their conquerors. We may readily imagine what a prolific source of slavery this must have been in lawless times, when might alone conferred right. We may also conceive how greatly it must have aggravated and embittered the aboriginal relations between master and slave.

Asylums, or houses of refuge, were another means of extending slavery under the positive law. The man who took sanctuary in one of these places became the slave or chattel of the protector who had given him safety. These asylums, of which we find mention made in the primitive traditions of almost every old country, drew together not only maltreated slaves from other quarters, but malefactors and vagabonds of all sorts, and, in general, that restless and turbulent class of people who love action for its own sake, and cannot live out of broils and adventure. History testifies to the opening of such asylums by rulers, and founders of cities, as an essential feature of their policy. Thus, Moses determined six certain cities in which manslayers might take refuge from the avenger. Theseus opened a refuge at Athens, the remembrance of which was so fresh in Plutarch’s time, that that biographer thinks the phrase of the common criers in his day, “All peoples, come hither!” were the identical words used by Theseus himself. Romulus, as before observed, opened an asylum at Rome for the fugitive slaves of Latium, which, it is said, remained open for upwards of 750 years. Indeed, if we are to believe Suetonius, it and similar places of refuge were to be found in Rome, and in the provinces, till Tiberius formally abolished “the law and custom” of them by an edict. It may be observed, generally, of these asylums that, originally or primitively, the parties who fled for refuge to them became the slaves, or subjects, or clients of their protectors, yielding to the latter their personal liberty and service in exchange for their preservation; but at later epochs the character both of asylums and of those who fled to them changed altogether. When opened by free cities within the boundaries of their liberties, or by priests in their temples, they were sacred to freedom, and not to slavery. There is no doubt, however, that in the early ages of the world both law and custom turned them largely to account in extending the domain of slavery.

Next to war, indebtedness, or the relation of debtor to creditor, was probably the most odious and prolific source of slavery under the positive law. Such appears to have been the case, at least, amongst Greeks and Romans, with whose histories the moderns are better acquainted than with those of other ancient countries. Plutarch tells us, in his Life of Solon, that that legislator, on his arriving at power, found a large proportion of the citizens in a state of actual slavery to their creditors, and that one of his greatest difficulties and triumphs was the adjustment of their conflicting claims.

Certain writers and commentators speak of an old Athenian law which gave money-lenders, as security for their money lent, the personal liberty of the borrowers—otherwise, a power to make them slaves. Others say the law in question extended the creditor’s power to one of life or death—that he might expose or kill his defaulting debtor. The Roman laws of the Twelve Tables were, we know, borrowed from Greece; and Aulus Gellius cites the express terms of the law of the Third Table to show that it armed Roman creditors with similar power over their unfortunate debtors. The rigour of this law was such, that in case there were several creditors, they had the option either to sell the debtor’s person to strangers or to dissever his body and divide the pieces amongst them. Shocked and disgusted at the barbarity of this law, Aulus Gellius asks, “What can be conceived more savage, what more foreign to man’s natural disposition, than that the members and limbs of a destitute debtor should be drawn asunder by a mangling process of ever so short duration?” Tertullian, one of the early Christian fathers, bears testimony to the existence of that and similar laws under the pagan system. As he uses the plural word leges instead of the singular lex, it is clear there must have been more than one law of the kind. The murderous part of such laws was, however, too revolting to be carried into effect; so the enslavement of the debtor’s person was the course usually adopted by vindictive creditors. Indeed, Quintilian tells us expressly that public morals rejected the law of the Twelve Tables—at least, that portion of it which gave creditors the power to cut up the bodies of insolvent debtors. To imprison or enslave them was, therefore, their only practicable course; and as the latter was the more profitable, it became the one usually resorted to. The sale of unfortunate debtors as slaves became, therefore, a part and parcel of the commerce of Greece and Rome. It was one of the ways by which hard-hearted creditors indemnified themselves for bad debts. And as neither law nor custom could reconcile any people to such a palpable outrage upon the rights of humanity, it never ceased to be a prolific source of disaffection and civil broils throughout every period of the Greek and Roman annals. Livy records some terrible outbreaks, arising solely from the laws of debtor and creditor. Indeed, next to agrarian monopoly, the workings of usury in pauperizing and enslaving free citizens was the principal cause of all the civil wars, and the ultimate cause of the downfall of the Greek and Roman republics.

But Greece and Rome are not the only ancient states in which debt multiplied slaves and slavery. Tacitus informs us that the ancient Germans were so addicted to gaming, that sometimes they staked even their bodies upon the last throw of the dice, and, when the game went against them, resigned themselves tranquilly to be bound and sold as slaves. ’Tis curious to observe the language made use of by Tacitus in describing this affair. It forcibly reminds one of the “national debts” of modern times, and of the cunning cant by which the toiling slaves, who pay the interest of them, are made to bear the burden with more than asinine resignation. Indeed, the whole passage, as given by Tacitus, might be strictly applied to the men and things we are living amongst, if we would but substitute a few of our modern commercial terms for the old dice-table terms employed by Tacitus. “They (the Germans),” he says, “practise gambling amongst their serious pursuits, and are quite sober over it. So desperate is their lust of gain or fear of losing, that when all other means fail, they stake their liberty and their very bodies upon the last throw of the dice; nay, the beaten party (the loser) enters voluntarily and resignedly into slavery. Although younger and more robust than his antagonist, he quietly submits to be bound in fetters and sold. Such is their perverseness in depravity—they, themselves, call it FAITH, HONOUR! The successful parties (winners) dispose of this class of slaves in the way of commerce, that the infamy of their victory may be lost sight of by the removal of their victim.” In this almost literal translation, we have paraphrased Tacitus no further than his elliptic style and the different genius of our language render necessary; yet we can hardly persuade ourselves that we have not been describing the process and the very terms by which commercial speculation and our system of public and private credit manufacture the slaves of our own day. The only substantial difference is, that our gambling and slave-making are upon an immeasurably larger scale, and that our enslaved Saxons, unlike their German progenitors, have not even a chance of saving themselves: for, though they are made to contribute all the stakes, they are allowed no further share in the game than to look on and pay the losses, whoever may be the winners. Tacitus’s term, fides (faith, honour), is the identical term made use of now-a-days to enforce the payment of national debts by those who never borrowed, and the payment of “debts of honour” by those who forget to pay their tailors’ bills and their servants’ wages. The old German gamester’s trick, too, of getting his victim out of the way by disposing of him as merchandise, instead of keeping him to serve as a slave upon himself, is not without its analogies in our modern practice. Indeed, our whole system of commerce and of public credit is based upon a similar practice and similar motives. The slaves of our modern landlords, merchants, and manufacturers are always the apparent slaves of somebody else—of some wretched go-between underling, on whom the odium, though not the profits, of the system is made to fall. The landlord throws it upon the farmer or agent; the millowner, upon his overseer; the coal-king, upon his manager; the exporting merchant, upon the slop-shops and sweaters; and so on, throughout every ramification of trade and manufacture. The loanmonger retains not in his own hands his purchased privilege of rifling the pockets of all taxpayers twice a year for no value received. That would make his position as odious as that of Tacitus’s successful old German gamester would have been, had he made the “plucked pigeon” his personal slave, who was whilom his boon-companion and equal. Business could not go on in that way. Our loanmonger knows it, and, therefore, no sooner does he get his bonds than he diffuses the “scrip” as widely and plentifully as the dews of heaven, till there is hardly a grade or calling in society that is not made directly interested and instrumental in enslaving the producer and defrauding him of his hire. At the moment we write, there are nearly a quarter of a million of families interested in what is called “public faith,” “national honour,” and all that sort of thing; and, amongst the whole lot, there is not one that was originally concerned in any of the hocus-pocusing transactions which have given us our “national debt,” with its thirty millions of annual tax on the producing slaves of this country. The original loanmongers and their representatives have dexterously shifted the odium and the responsibility of their black job or jobs (for there were many of them) from their own shoulders to those, of innocent parties; and, whatever may eventually become of these parties, they took good care to have more than their quid pro quo before they transferred their claims upon the public purse to the present recipients of the dividends payable half-yearly on account of the debt called “national.” Another and, mayhap, a stronger analogy to the case of Tacitus’s “plucked pigeons,” sold into slavery, might be found in the expatriated tenantry and peasantry of Ireland. The landlords of that country do not always dispose of their human chattels by plague, pestilence, and famine; and there is no law of the Twelve Tables to authorise the cutting up of the bodies of their tenants in arrear. But there is a law—or, whether there is or not, they find one—which authorises them to eject tenants from their holdings, to raze their habitations to the ground, and to drive the said tenants, homeless and breadless, to find a shelter and a crust where they may. In such cases (and they are as plentiful as blackberries), it is not unusual for such landlords to smuggle their ousted victims out of the country, and even to pay their freight to Canada in some crazy old hull (provided their fare do not exceed the amount it would cost to bury them in case they died under a bush or ditch after the dilapidation of their homes). Once removed to Quebec or to the bottom of the Atlantic (it matters not which), there is an end of trouble to both landlord and tenant. In Canada the tenant cannot fare worse than in Ireland (for worse he could not), and he may fare better. At the bottom of the sea he is safe, and provided for, for all time to come. In either case he is out of the landlord’s sight, and out of the sight of all to whom a knowledge of his treatment might suggest misgivings as to their own future. To the landlord who ousted him, his personal service as an actual slave would be as useless as that of Tacitus’s ruined gamester would be to the successful one who had won him and sold him. He would be but an incumbrance—a lump of dead stock—an incubus upon the soil! His presence would be but a reproach to his landlord, and curse to himself! To get rid of him, then,—to dispose of him anyhow, or by any means, that will only get him out of the way,—is the one thing needful. Well, Tacitus has shown us how the lucky gamesters of his day got rid of their fleeced victims in Germany. Against his case we fear not to put the Irish “clearers” and the British farm-“consolidators” of our day, being perfectly assured that the Saxons of the present day will be found to excel those of Tacitus’s day, or any other of the old German tribes, in the art of slave-making, as much as we excel the old Romans themselves in road-making, shipbuilding, money-grubbing, military manslaughtering, or any other art or science.

To return from this digression, the relation of debtor and creditor was unquestionably one of the direst and most fertile sources of slavery known to the ancient pagan world. Even God’s chosen people, the Hebrews, were not altogether free from it. It is true, Moses’s septennial release from debt, and the jubilee ordained at the end of every fifty years, were powerful checks upon the inroad of this form of slavery. But, nevertheless, indebtedness did furnish its contingent to slavery even under the Mosaic law; for do we not find Moses anticipating this curse in Leviticus, when he enjoins, “If thy brother that dwelleth by thee be waxen poor, and be sold unto thee, thou shalt not compel him to serve as a slave or bond-servant, but as an hired servant; and as a sojourner he shall be with thee, and shall serve thee until the day of the jubilee,” &c. This shows clearly how inseparable was slavery from indebtedness under the ancient order of things, when Moses found it necessary to make provisions against its contingency, notwithstanding all the precautions he had ordained to prevent it. And Moses’s foresight is fully proved by the subsequent history of the Jews. For we learn from Josephus, that at a later epoch, to wit, under King Joram, the son of Jehosaphat, the widow of Obadias (who had been governor of King Achab’s palace) came to tell the prophet Elisha that, unable to reimburse the money that her husband had borrowed, to subsist the hundred prophets he had saved from the persecution by Jezebel, his creditors laid claim to herself and her children as their slaves. We might furnish other instances of a similar kind from sacred history; while from profane history we might cite proofs ad infinitum bearing upon the same point: but enough has been said for our purpose. The obligation of debtors to their creditors was undoubtedly one of the most grievous sources of slavery known to the positive law in ancient times. Next to war, it was probably the greatest.

The last remaining cause to be disposed of is the marriage of females—more especially of females married out of their own family or tribe. That much slavery was brought about in this way is provable in a variety of ways, and by the best traditional evidence. Homer’s “Iliad” abounds in testimonies to this effect. We have already cited the example of Cassandra, whom Othryon purchased from Priam, even as Jacob bought Leah and Rachel from their father Laban. Other passages are still more conclusive on the point. We find in the 9th book, for instance, that Agamemnon, regretting his having occasioned the wrath of Achilles, offers him, by way of appeasing it, certain costly presents; amongst others, seven Lesbian female slaves, along with Briseis; and, when Troy should be taken, twenty captives, the most beautiful, after Helen; and as a climax, one of his own three daughters—Achilles to choose, and to have her without purchase. And again, in the 16th book, we find Homer making mention of a certain Polydora, the mother of Menestheus, whom he describes as having been purchased for a wife, by her husband, at a great expense. The poems of Virgil contain similar evidences,—as for instance, when Juno proposes to Venus to settle their quarrels, and to accept Dido as a spouse and servant to her son Æneas. The term service made use of by Virgil indicates clearly the servile relation to the husband which such marriages imposed upon women.

Having explained the origin of direct slavery, its legal establishment, and the principal known causes which multiplied it and consolidated it as a social institution, let us now inquire in what light it was regarded by the ancients themselves, wherefore it was able to maintain its footing all over the world, till the advent of Christianity; why it still obtains in so large a portion of the habitable globe; and why it has in nowise ceased, without giving birth to a masked or indirect slavery worse than itself.

In this inquiry, our task will resolve itself in establishing the three following propositions:—

1st. That direct or personal slavery was not regarded by the ancients in the light in which enlightened men of the present day regard it, that is to say, as an unnatural and inhuman institution, but, on the contrary, was considered to be a thing perfectly natural and reasonable in itself, and essential to the ends and purposes of society.

2nd. That the main cause of its permanence in the world was the universality of public opinion in its favour, rather than the force of law or custom; and that the slaves themselves fully participated in the general opinion.

3rd. That, all things considered, direct slavery, whether as practised by the ancients or by the modems (wherever it is in use), was, with all its evils, less destructive of life, morals, and happiness to the majority than the present system of indirect or disguised slavery, as effected in most civilized countries by unjust agrarian, monetary, and fiscal laws.