This relation has existed in a great variety of forms, and degrees of severity. Very often it has been a condition marked by injustice and cruelty, attended with no adequate remuneration for labour, great civil disabilities and personal suffering, great domestic wrongs, and great intellectual and moral degradation. And there are instances, as facts show, in which it has existed unaccompanied by any of these evils. These are evils that have been wickedly superinduced by the cruelty and cupidity of men, rather than evils which necessarily and essentially belong to the relation itself. Long before the Bible was given to the world, slavery had an extensive prevalence throughout the oriental nations. So far from introducing the evil, it found the earth filled with it, and has silently and gradually so meliorated the relation between the master and the slave, that in the progress of its principles and spirit, it must ultimately either abolish this relation, or leave it resting upon a basis of the purest benevolence, and the source of mutual advantage. This, we purpose to show is the appropriate influence of the Bible upon slavery. Nor do we design to extend our remarks beyond this single point; What is the legitimate influence of the Bible upon slavery? This is the only question which falls within the range of appropriate discussion in these lectures. We cannot take an intelligent view of this question, without a glance at the condition of slavery in those countries where the influence of the Bible has never been enjoyed. The great antiquity of the Assyrian empire, extending beyond the period when letters were invented, leaves the customs of the ancient Assyrians in great obscurity. Five of the Canaanitish tribes were the vassals of Chedorlaomer for twelve years, and obtained their liberty by an open revolt. Abram was an inhabitant of Assyria, and at the time of his recovery of Lot from Chedorlaomer and his allies, he was the proprietor of several hundred "trained servants, born in his house." From the predatory nature of their wars, it is probable that the condition of slaves in Assyria was not essentially dif ferent from the condition of the same class of men in the surrounding countries. The manner in which slaves were treated among the Babylonians, the Persians, and other nations of remote antiquity, was such as "excluded them from every privilege of society, and almost every blessing of life." They were dependent upon the caprice of imperious masters, and were unprotected by the laws. They might be tortured, maimed, or put to death at the arbitrary will of their masters. In these early ages, in times of great public calamity, men often sold themselves for slaves. While Joseph was the prime minister of Pharaoh, and during the seven years' famine, the people came to him and said, "Buy us and our land for bread; and we will be servants unto Pharaoh." Joseph granted their request, and said unto them, “Behold I have bought you this day, and your land, for Pharaoh." Before this time, Egypt was a limited monarchy. The people were free, and had lands independent of the crown. Now they became vassals, feudatory tenants, and the government despotic. The condition of slaves in Egypt we know was sufficiently abject and degraded. We need no greater evidence of this, than Pharaoh's treatment of the children of Israel, and more especially his cruel order to the midwives. Nor were they enemies, nor the children of enemies, who were subjected to this severe servitude, but the descendants of a family who had been the saviours of Egypt, and the builders up of royal power. Nations whose unmixed ferocity and thirst for revenge were more generally satiated by the indiscriminate butchery of their enemies; who denied them even those common funeral rites, which in the opinion of the times, were necessary to the repose of the soul after death; who directed even their captive kings to be taken to prison and slain; regarded it as a mitigation of the laws of war to substitute slavery for death. Adult males were usually put to the sword, and the women and children captured and enslaved. A distinguished writer on the principles of political law, remarks, “In former times, it was a custom almost universally established, that those who were made prisoners in a just and solemn war, whether they had surrendered themselves, or were taken by main force, became slaves the moment they were conducted into some place dependent on the conqueror. And this right was exercised on all persons whatever, even on those who happened to be in the enemy's country at the time when the war suddenly broke out. The prisoners themselves and their posterity were reduced to the same condition." In some countries, insolvent debtors were sold for slaves. There were periods in the Roman history, when if the debt were not discharged within thirty days after a number of citations, by the direction of the prætor, the public crier proclaimed in the forum, "Let him be punished with death, or sold beyond the Tiber!" In the Institutes of Justinian, slaves are said to become such in three ways-by birth, where the mother was a slave; by captivity in war; and by the voluntary sale of himself by a freeman. In Greece, the disproportion between freemen and slaves was nearly in the ratio of ninety to four hundred. This large portion of the popula tion, according to the account given by Mitford, were not only slaves, but nothing could exceed the insult, the injury, the cruelty, to which they were subjected. The Spartan youth hunted them as wild beasts, for the sake of making themselves expert in the use of arms. "A scanty and disgusting dress, and a dog-skin cap, distinguished them from all the rest of the inhabitants. Those who were too robust had to be enfeebled by various kinds of ill-treatment; and if the masters did not do this, they became themselves liable to a penalty. Every slave annually received a certain number of stripes to remind him that he was a slave! Hymns of a nobler kind they were not allowed to sing; but only gay and sensual songs. To complete their degradation, they were sometimes compelled to sing songs in disgrace and ridicule of themselves; and to the same purpose they were also compelled to perform indecent dances. In order to make the sons of the Spartans loathe the vice of drunkenness, the slaves were compelled to intoxicate themselves in public assemblies. When they became too numerous, they were murdered clandestinely; every year, at a certain period, the young Spartans, clad in armour, used to hunt them; and to prevent their increase, they were killed with daggers."* The same author relates an affecting anecdote respecting the slaves of Sparta. When, during the Peloponnesian war, the Spartans became apprehensive of the influence of their slaves, they made proclamation that the most meritorious and heroic among them should present themselves before the magistrate for the honour of freemen. In conformity with this invitation, two thousand presented themselves for this honour. The offer, however, was but a lure to detect * The Nature and Moral Influence of Heathenism, by Tholuck. See Biblical Rep. for 1832. the most aspiring and generous minded of those unhappy beings, and draw out their choicest spirits. Instead of the promised freedom, all were inhumanly slain, in accordance with the atrocious policy of that severe and sanguinary state. The slaves of Greece were generally branded like cattle. According to the laws of Lycurgus, they could neither be emancipated, nor sold. In Sicily and Italy, they were chained and confined to work in dungeons. Rome was a continual market for slaves, where they were commonly exposed naked. It is computed by the historian, Gibbon, that this class composed one half of the inhabitants of that extensive empire, and could not have been less than sixty millions. As a body of men, they were considered dangerous to the welfare of the state, and were therefore depressed in every way. They were left entirely at the disposal of their masters, who might treat them in whatever manner they pleased, and who were invested with absolute power and authority over them. The aged, the sick, and the infirm, were carried to an island on the Tiber, where they were suffered to perish. Vedius Apollo, an intimate friend of Augustus, fed his fishes with the flesh of his slaves. Nor was this degradation of limited extent. A single individual in Rome had slaves to the amount of four thousand, one hundred and sixteen. When the master was murdered, and the murderer could not be. detected, all his slaves, with their wives and children, were put to death. There was a class of slaves among the Romans, called the Ostiarii, who were chained. like watch-dogs before the houses. The laws of Rome regarded them all simply as property; not as persons, but as things; and as far as they could do so from the nature of the case itself, hardly distinguished them from brutes. Nor was it until the time of the empe |
