OCR Text |
Show 88 ON THE SLAVERY AND COMMERCE was the true principle, on which fhvery fublifl:ed among the ancients. They reafon thus. " The learned Grotius, and others, have conlidered flavery as the jufl: confequence of a private war, (fuppoling the war to be jufl: and the opponents in a fl:ate of nature), upon the principles of reparation and punijhment. Now as the law of nature, which is the rule of conduct to individtuls in fuch a lituation, is applicable to members of a different community, there is reafon to prefume, that thefe principles were applied by the ancients to their prifoners of war; that their ifj"eCls were confifcated by the right of reparation, and their perfons by the right of punifoment."-- But fuch a prefumption is falfe. The right if capture was the only argument, that the ancients adduced in their defence. Hence Polybius; "What muft they, (the Man" tinenfes) fuifer, to receive the punifhment " they deferve I Perhaps it will be faid, that they mujl be .fold, when they are taken, <vith their wives and children into jlavery: But this is not to be confidered as a pu" nilhment, Iince even thofe fuifer it, by the " Jaws, OF THE HuMAN SPECIES. laws of war, who have done nothing that is bafe." The truth is, that both the of~ fending and the qfj"ended parties, whenever they were victorious, inflicted llavcry alike. But if the qfjending party in fl icted llavery on the perfons of the vanquilhed, by what right did they inflict it? It muft be anfwered from the prefumption before-mention~d, " by the " right of reparation, or of punij!Jment :"' an anfwer plainly abfurd and contradictory, as it fu ppofes the aggr~/Jor to have a right, which the injured only could poifcfs. Neither is the argument lefs fallacious than the prefumption, in applying thefe principles, which in a publick war could belong to the publick only, to the perfons of the individuals that were taken. This calls us again to the hifl:ory of the ancients, and, as the rights of reparation and puni01ment could extend to thofe only, who had been injured, to felect a particular inftance for the confideratiori of the cafe. As the Romans had been injured without a previous provocation by the conduct of Hannibal at Saguntum, we may take the ffeaty into confideration, which they made with |