ORIGIN OF SLAVERY.
These preliminary remarks prepare the way for the subject to which I invite attention. Here I am naturally led to touch upon the origin of slavery, and the principles which lie at its foundation, before proceeding to exhibit the efforts for its abolition, and their final success in the Barbary States.
The word Slave, suggesting now so much of human abasement, has an origin which speaks of human grandeur. Its parent term, Slava, signifying glory, in the Slavonian dialect, where it first appears, was proudly assumed as the national designation of races in the northeastern part of the European continent, who, in the vicissitudes of war, were afterwards degraded from the condition of conquerors to that of servitude. The Slavonian bondman, retaining his national name, was known as Slave; and this term, passing from a race to a class, was afterwards applied, in the languages of modern Europe, to all in his unhappy lot, without distinction of country or color.[8] It would be difficult to mention any word which has played such opposite parts in history,—beneath the garb of servitude concealing its early robe of pride. And yet, startling as it seems, this word may be received in its primitive character, by those among us who consider slavery essential to democratic institutions, and therefore part of the true glory of the country. Lexicography, going beyond this historical illustration, announces that "most probably the original meaning was independent, free,"[9] thus making the slave distinctively the freeman. In the revolutions of society, and among the compensations of Providence for long-continued degradation, the slave might yet regain this original ascendency, if, in an era of justice, the highest condition were not where all are equal in rights.
SLAVERY IN ANTIQUITY.
Slavery was universally recognized by the nations of antiquity. It is said by Pliny, in bold phrase, that the Lacedæmonians "invented slavery."[10] If this were so, the glory of Lycurgus and Leonidas would not compensate for such a blot. It is true that they recognized it, and gave it a shape of peculiar hardship. But slavery is older than Sparta. It existed in the tents of Abraham; for the three hundred and eighteen servants born to him were slaves. We behold it in the story of Joseph, who was sold by his brothers to the Midianites for twenty pieces of silver.[11] We find it in the poetry of Homer, who stamps it with a reprobation which even the Christian Cowper has hardly surpassed, when he says,—
"Jove fixed it certain that whatever day
Makes man a slave takes half his worth away."[12]
In later days it prevailed extensively in Greece, whose haughty people deemed themselves justified in enslaving all who were strangers to their manners and institutions. "It is right for Greeks to rule barbarians," was the sentiment of Euripides, one of the first of her poets, echoed by Aristotle, the greatest of her intellects.[13] And even Plato, in his imaginary Republic, the Utopia of his beautiful genius, sanctions slavery. But notwithstanding these high names, we learn from Aristotle himself that there were persons in his day—pestilent Abolitionists of ancient Athens—who did not hesitate to maintain that liberty was the great law of Nature, and to deny any difference between master and slave,—declaring at the same time that slavery was founded upon violence, and not upon right, and that the authority of the master was unnatural and unjust.[14] "God sent forth all persons free; Nature has made no man a slave,"[15] was the protest of one of these agitating Athenians against this great wrong. I am not in any way authorized to speak for any Anti-Slavery Society, even if this were the proper occasion; but I presume that this ancient Greek morality embodies substantially the principles maintained at their public meetings,—so far, at least, as they relate to slavery.