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Show I!O ON THE SLAVERY AND CoMMERCE immediately, on paying it down,:j: demand their freedom for ever. This law was, of all others, the moll: important; as the profpea of liberty, which it afforded, mull: have been a continual fource of the moll: pleafing refleCtions, and have greatly fweetened the draught, even of the moll: bitter flavery. Thus then, to the eternal honour of lEgypt and Athens, they were the only places that we can lind, where flaves were confidered with any humanity at all. The re!l: of the world feemed to vie with each other, in the debafement and oppreffion of thefe unfortunate people. They ufed them with as much feverity as they chofe; they meafured their treatment only by their own paffion and caprice ; and, by leaving them on every occafion, without the poffibility of an appeal, they rendered their fituation t To this privilege Plaurus alludes in his Cajina, where he introduces a flave, fpeaking in the following manner. u QE.id tu me ven} libertate territas? cr <l.Eod fi tu nolis, filiufq,uc etiam tuui "Vobis invitis, atq amborum ingraliis, u Umr /ihtllalihtr po.ffilm fitri, • the oF THE HuMAN SPECIE s. 21 the moll: melancholy and intolerable, that can pollibly be conceived. C I-I A P. V. As we have mentioned the barbarous and inhuman treatment that generallly fell to the lot of llaves, it may not be amifs to inquire into the various circum!l:ances by which it was produced. The lidl: circumfiancc, from whence it originated, was the commerce: for if men could be confidered as pq/lijfionJ; if, like cattle, they could be bought and fOld, it will not be diflicult to fuppofe, that they could be held in the L1me confideratioo, or treated in the L1me manner. The commerce therefore, which was begun in the primitive ages of the world, by claffing them with the brutal fpecies, and by habituating the mind to confider the terms of brute and )lave asjjnonit!zouJ, foon caufed them to be viewed in a low and dcfpicable light, and as greatly inferiour to the human fpecies. .l-fence proceeded that treatment,. which 111ight not unreafonably be fuppof~d to arift; B 3 fro1n. |
