SLAVERY IN MODERN TIMES.
In the early periods of modern Europe slavery was a general custom, which yielded only gradually to the humane influences of Christianity. It prevailed in all the countries of which we have any records. Fair-haired Saxon slaves from distant England arrested the attention of Pope Gregory in the markets of Rome, and were by him hailed as Angels. A law of so virtuous a king as Alfred ranks slaves with horses and oxen; and the Chronicles of William of Malmesbury show that in our mother country there was once a cruel slave-trade in whites. As we listen to this story, we shall be grateful again to that civilization which renders such outrage more and more impossible. "Directly opposite to the Irish coast," he says, "there is a seaport called Bristol, the inhabitants of which frequently sent into Ireland to sell those people whom they had bought up throughout England. They exposed to sale girls in a state of pregnancy, with whom they made a sort of mock marriage. There you might see with grief, fastened together by ropes, whole rows of wretched beings of both sexes, of elegant forms, and in the very bloom of youth,—a sight sufficient to excite pity even in barbarians,—daily offered for sale to the first purchaser. Accursed deed! infamous disgrace! that men, acting in a manner which brute instinct alone would have forbidden, should sell into slavery their relations, nay, even their own offspring!"[21] From still another chronicler we learn, that, in 1172, when Ireland was afflicted with public calamities, there was a great assembly of the principal men, chiefly of the clergy, who concluded, as well they might, that these evils were sent upon their country for the reason that they had formerly purchased English boys as slaves, contrary to the right of Christian liberty,—the poor English, to supply their wants, being "accustomed to sell even their own children, not to bring them up": wherefore, it is said, the English slaves were allowed to depart in freedom.[22] Earlier in Irish history a boy was stolen from Scotland, who, after six years of bondage, succeeded in reaching his home, when, entering the Church, he returned to Ireland, preached Christianity, and, as St. Patrick, became the patron saint of that beautiful land.[23]
On the Continent of Europe, as late as the thirteenth century, the custom prevailed of treating all captives in war as slaves. Here poetry, as well as history, bears its testimony. Old Michael Drayton, in his story of the Battle of Agincourt, says of the French:—
"For knots of cord to every town they send,
The captived English that they caught to bind;
For to perpetual slavery they intend
Those that alive they on the field should find."[24]
And Othello, in recounting his perils, exposes this custom, when he speaks
"Of being taken by the insolent foe