[19] 1, 2, 2.
[20] Id. 1, 3, 1-2.
[21] Dig. 1, 1, 4, where, in an excerpt from Ulpian, it is said that all human beings are jure naturali (that is, by the law of nature) born free.
We of to-day must not regard the last three passages cited from the Corpus Juris Civilis as particularly reprehending the property of the master in his slave. Cicero asserts that there is no private property whatever according to the law of nature; that according to that law all things are common property. He details some of the ways by which private appropriation is made, such as long holding, entry into vacant lands, capture in war, acquisition by contract, etc. According to this, a prisoner of war stood on the same footing as a horse captured from the enemy. By the law of nature there could be private property in neither. But this law of nature was really repealed by the jus gentium, under which both horse and prisoner alike became private property. If another took either the horse or slave away from the owner, he would—to use Cicero’s language—violate the law of human society. De Officiis Lib. 1. cap. 7, §§ 20, 21.
[22] Inst. 1, 8, 1. When Mr. Cobb says that there is “but one voice in the Digest and Code,” book cited, xcviii, meaning that they give no countenance to slavery, the statement is misleading.
[23] In the first chapter of his History of England Macaulay ascribes this result to moral causes, and to religion as chief agent. He is only one of many acute historians who overlook the play of economical forces.
[24] Cobb, Slavery, ccxviii (foot-note).
[25] See p. 437 infra, where I have compared the struggle of Ireland for autonomy during the last half of the eighteenth century with that of the south narrated in this book.
[26] Charleston Address mentioned above, 15.
[27] Hist. of Fed. Gov., 2d ed., 59.