CHAPTER II. ORIGIN OF SLAVERY IN PATERNAL AUTHORITY.
Antiquity of Slavery—Anterior to Legal Institution—Examples cited from Ancient History—Arose from Patriarchal Government—Despotic Power of Head of Family—Marriage Custom of Purchase—Aristocratic Governments favourable to Development—Decadence under Republics.
In the preceding chapter we have shown how the modern working classes sprang from the ancient Proletarians; how the Proletarians arose out of the downfall of the ancient system of direct slavery; and how Christianity was mainly instrumental in bringing about the manumission of slaves in the Roman empire, and thence throughout western Europe. The Proletarians, past and present, are but the descendants and successors of the manumitted slaves, and of decayed families of the ancient master-class; and, as observed in our last chapter, the modern classification of them by writers of the Guizot school is—Workpeople, Robbers, Beggars, and Prostitutes.
All who have escaped this classification are such descendants or successors of the ancient freedmen as have found their way into the class of burgesses, consisting of merchants, manufacturers, professionals, and money-dealers of all sorts. Of the remainder, by far the greater number fall within the description of work-people: these are the wages-slaves of modern civilization. Direct slavery was, then, the parent of Proletarianism; and Proletarianism the parent of wages-slavery. But how did direct slavery itself originate—the personal slavery of man to man? Was it instituted? Was it the creature of law, or of conventional compact? Upon this point the concurrent testimony of history and of philosophy is unanimous: it goes to show that slavery was not a public institution originally framed by human laws, but that it was what the Americans call a domestic institution originating in the despotic authority of parents over their offspring in the very infancy of society. This origin necessarily supposes slavery to have been amongst the earliest, if not the very earliest, of human institutions—to have been coeval with the institution of society itself. In point of fact, it appears to have been so. Tracing history back to its fountain-heads, before systems came to disturb them, we discover a countless variety of unmistakable signs to show that two distinct classes, not to say races, made up the aggregate of souls in every ancient community of which history makes mention. One is the master-class; the other, the slave-class. The first possesses; the second is possessed. This aboriginal condition of humanity appears, as an historical fact, universal. There is no ancient tradition, there is no authentic record purporting to be history, that does not make mention of masters and slaves.
There were masters and slaves amongst the ancient Hebrews, the proofs of which are abundantly scattered throughout the Old Testament and in Josephus’s “History of the Antiquities of the Jews.” There were masters and slaves amongst the Greeks in the remotest periods of their annals. This is shown by numerous passages in Homer’s “Iliad” and “Odyssey;”—as, for instance, in book xxi. of the “Iliad,” where Achilles boasts to Lycaon of the captives he had taken, and sold into slavery; and in book xxii. of the “Odyssey,” where Euryclea, the governess of Ulysses’ household, says to him, “You have in your house fifty female slaves, whom I have taught to work in wool-spinning, and to support their servitude.” That masters and slaves existed at every epoch of the Roman republic and empire is evident from the testimony of every ancient classic whose writings or recorded sayings are extant. The Institutes of Justinian make slavery expressly a subject of legislation. That the relation of master and slave obtained in ancient Gaul and in ancient Germany we have abundant evidences in Cæsar’s Commentaries and in several passages to be found in Tacitus’s treatise “De Moribus Germanorum.” Indeed, masters and slaves are known to have existed in France as late as the twelfth century, and in Prussia as late as one hundred years ago, as may be seen by the General Code of the Prussian States, published in 1794. Masters and slaves are still to be found in all Mahomedan countries, throughout the kingdoms of the East generally, and (tell it not in Gath!), until lately, in several of the republics of the United States of America.