LESSON III.
It is said all nature swarms with life. But every animal, in some way, preys upon his fellow. Even we cannot move our foot without becoming the means of destruction to petty animals capable of palpitating for hours, may be days, in the agonies of death. There is no day upon this earth, in which men, and millions of other animals, are not tortured in some way, to the fullest extent of life.
Let us look at man alone; poor and oppressed; tormented by injustice, and stupified to lethargy; writhing under disease, or tortured by his brethren! Recollect his mental pains! The loss of friends, and the poison of ingratitude; the rage of tyranny, and the slow progress of justice; the brave, the high-minded, the honest, consigned to the fate of guilt!
Dive into the dungeon, or the more obscure prison-house of penury. See the aged long for his end, and the young languish in despair; talents and virtue in eternal oblivion: see malice, vengeance, and cruelty at their work, while they propagate every hour; for severity begets its kind, and hate begets hate.
Look where you will, the heart is torn with anguish; the soul is saddened by sorrow. All things seem at war; all one vast abortion. Such is the rugged surface; and the eye sees no golden sands, no precious gems gleaming from beneath the blackened waters of human suffering. These things are so; creation has grown up; and human life can never effect one tremble of the leaf on which it has found its residence.
But the Christian philosopher views these evidences of a great moral catastrophe without madness. He perceives that sin has sunk man into degradation, slavery, and death. He comprehends his own weakness, and trusts in God.
But there is a man, with all these facts before him, who rages. He makes war on the providence, and determines, as if to renovate the work, of the Almighty. Is he a man of a single idea? If not, let him make a better world; and, while he is thus employed, let us resume our subject.
Slavery, either voluntary or involuntary, whether the immediate result of crime or of mental and physical degradation, is equally the consequent of sin. Let us consider how far its existence is sustained by the laws of justice, of religion, and of God.
Our word, God, is pure Saxon, signifying “perfectly good;” “God is good.” “And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.”
Suppose the laws of Japan permit voluntary slavery, as did those of Moses. (See Exod. xxi. 5; also Lev. xxv. 47.) Suppose an African negro, of the lowest grade, destitute and naked, voluntarily finds himself in that island, where the poor, free inhabitants scarcely sustain life by the most constant toil. The negro finds no employment. He can neither buy, beg, nor steal; starvation is at hand. He applies to sell himself, under the law of the country, a slave for life. Is not slavery, in this case, a good, because life is a greater good than liberty? Liberty is worth nothing in opposition to life. Liberty is worth nothing without available possessions to sustain it. The preservation of life is the highest law. The law of God, therefore, would be contradictory, if it forbid a man to sell himself to sustain his life; and the justice and propriety of such law must be universal and eternal, so far as it can have relation with the condition of man upon this earth.
But, “What is life without liberty?” said a beggar-woman! He, who thinks life without liberty worth nothing, must die if he have no means to sustain his liberty. Esther entertained no such notion: “For we are sold, I and my people, to be destroyed and slain, and to perish. But if we had been sold for bond-men, and bond-women, I had held my tongue.” Esth. vii. 4.
Nor has such ever been the notion of the church. Bergier says, Dict. Theo., Art. Esclava—
“That civil liberty became a benefit, only after the establishment of civil society, when man had the protection of law, and the multiplied facilities for subsistence; that, previous to this, absolute freedom would be an injury to a person destitute of flocks, herds, lands, and servants.”
“The common possession of all things is said to be of the natural law; because the distinction of possessions and slavery were not introduced by nature, but by reason of man, for the benefit of human life; and thus the law of nature is not changed by their introduction, but an addition is made thereto.” St. Thomas Aquinas, 1, 2, q. 94 a 95 ad 2.
And the same father says again, 2, 2 q. 57 a 3 ad 2—“This man is a slave, absolutely speaking, rather a son, not by any natural cause, but by reason of the benefits which are produced; for it is more beneficial to this one to be governed by one who has more wisdom, and the other to be helped by the labour of the former. Hence the state of slavery belongs principally to the law of nations, and to the natural law, only in the second degree, not in the first.”
But a man having the natural right to sell himself proves that he has the same right to buy others. The one follows the other. But, suppose the laws of Japan do not permit voluntary slavery for life, or, rather that they have no law on the subject; but that they have a law, that whosoever proves himself to be so degraded that he cannot, or will not sustain himself, but is found loitering, begging, or stealing, shall be forcibly sold a slave for life,—is not the same good effected as in the other case, although the individual may be too debased to perceive it himself? And is it difficult to perceive, that the same deteriorating causes have produced both cases? The doctrine of the church is that “death, sickness, and a large train of what is called natural evils, are considered to be the consequences of sin. Slavery is an evil, and is also a consequence of sin.” Bishop England, p. 23.
And St. Augustine preached the same doctrine, as long ago as the year 425. See his book, “Of the City of God,” liber xix. cap. 15. He says—“The condition of slavery is justly regarded as imposed on the sinner. Hence, we never read slave (as one having a master) in Scripture before the just Noe, by this word, punished the sin of his son. Sin, not nature, thus introduced the word.”
And St. Ambrose, bishop of Milan, A.D. 390, in his book on “Elias and Fasting” c. 5, says—“There would be no slavery to-day had there not been drunkenness.”
And so, St. John Chrysostom, bishop of Constantinople, A.D. 400, Hom. 29, in Gen.: “Behold brethren born of the same mother! Sin makes one of them a servant, and, taking away his liberty, lays him under subjection.”
The very expression, “Cursed be Canaan, a servant of servants shall he be to his brethren,” most distinctly shows the sentence to have been the consequent of sin, and especially so when compared with the blessing bestowed upon the two brothers, in which they are promised the services of him accursed.
Pope Gelesius I., A.D. 491, in his letter to the bishops of the Picene territory, states, “slavery to have been the consequence of sin, and to have been established by human law.”
St. Augustine, lib. xix. cap. 16, “On the City of God,” argues at length to show “that the peace and good order of society, as well as religious duty, demand that the wholesome laws of the state regulating the conduct of slaves should be conscientiously observed.”
“Slavery is regarded by the church * * * not to be incompatible with the natural law, to be the result of sin by Divine dispensation, to have been established by human legislation; and, when the dominion of the slave is justly acquired by the master, to be lawful, not in the sight of the human tribunal only, but also in the eye of Heaven.” Bishop England, page 24.
But again, in the works already quoted, “De Civitate Dei,” St. Augustine says, liber xix. caput 15, that, “although slavery is the consequence of sin, yet that the slavery may not always light upon the sinful individual, any more than sickness, war, famine, or any other chastisement of this sinful world, whereby it may often happen that the less sinful are afflicted, that they may be turned more to the worship of God, and brought into his enjoyment,” and refers to the case of Daniel and his companions, who were slaves in Babylon, and by which captivity Israel was brought to repentance.
In cap. 16, “he presents to view the distinction of bodily employment and labour between the son and the slave; but that each are equally under the master’s care; and as it regards the soul, each deserved a like protection, and that therefore the masters were called patres familias, or fathers of households; and shows that they should consult for the eternal welfare of their slaves as a father for his children; and insists upon the weight and obligation of the master to restrain his slaves from vice, and to preserve discipline with strict firmness, but yet with affection; not by verbal correction alone, but, if requisite, corporeal chastisement, not merely for the punishment of delinquency, but for a salutary monition to others.”
And he proceeds to show “that these things become a public duty, since the peace of the vicinage depends upon the good order of its families, and that the safety of the state depends upon the peace and discipline of all the vicinage.”
This author also shows, from the etymology of the word “servus,” that, according to the law of nations at the time, the conqueror had at his disposal the lives of the captives. If from some cause he forbore to put some of them to death, then such one was servati, or servi, that is, kept from destruction or death, and their lives spared, upon the condition of obedience, and of doing the labours and drudgery of the master.”
And we may again inquire whether, when prisoners taken in war, under circumstances attending their capture by which the captor feels himself entitled to put them to death,—it is not a great good to the captured to have their lives spared them, and they permitted to be slaves? The answer will again turn upon the question, whether life is worth any thing upon these terms? And whatever an individual may say, the world will answer like Esther. Thus far slavery is an institution of mercy and in favour of life.
We close this lesson by presenting the condition of slavery among the Chinese, and their laws and customs touching the subject.
M. De Guignes, who traversed China throughout its whole extent, observing with minuteness and philosophical research every thing in relation to its singular race, does not believe slavery existed there until its population had become overloaded, when, as a partial relief from its miseries, they systematically made slaves of portions of their own race.
He says, that in ancient times, “it is not believed that there were slaves in China, except those who were taken prisoners in war, or condemned to servitude by the laws. Afterwards, in times of famine, parents were frequently reduced to the necessity of selling their children. This practice, originated in the pressure of necessity, has continued to exist, and even become common. * * * A person may also sell himself as a slave when he has no other means of succouring his father; a young woman, who finds herself destitute, may in like manner be purchased with her own consent.
“The prisoners of war are the slaves of the emperor, and generally sent to labour on his land in Tartary. The judges have the power to pass the sentence of slavery on culprits such as are sold at public auction; slaves also who belong to persons whose property is confiscated, are sold to the highest bidder by public outcry.” See work as quoted by Edin. Encyc., Article, “China.”