fex, or years, to labour for their mafters in offices of the vileft drudgery. So univerfaliy was their cruel treatment of captives admitted to be the right of the victor, that the poet introduces Hector, when taking a tender and perhaps laft farewel of his wife, telling her, as a thing of courfe, that, on the conqueft of Troy, the would be compelled

To bear the victor's hard commands, or bring The weight of water from Hyperia's spring. At an early period the Phoenicians had fuch an eftablished commerce in flaves, that, not fatisfied with reducing to bondage their prifoners of war, they kidnapped perfons who had never offended them, to fupply their foreign markets. In the Odyffey, B. 14. Ulyffes reprefents himself as having narrowly escaped a fnare of this kind laid for him by a falfe Phoenician. Such were the manners of the Greeks in the heroic age; nor were they much improved at the periods of greater refinement. Philip II. of Macedon having conquered the Thebans, not only fold his captives, but even took money for permitting the dead to be buried; and Alexander, who had more generofity than Philip, afterwards razed Thebes, and fold the inhabitants, men, women, and children, for flaves. (See MACEDON, 10.) This cruel treatment of a brave people may indeed have proceeded from the avarice of the conqueror, but more from the momentary refentment of a man who was favage and generous by turns, and who had no command of his paflions. But from the manner in which the Spartans behaved to their flaves, there is little reafon to imagine, that, had they received from the Thebans the fame provocation with Alexander, they would have treated their captives with greater lenity. "At Sparta (fays the late humane and elegant Dr Beattie,) flaves were treated with a degree of rigour that is hardly conceivable; although to them, as their husbandmen and artificers, their proud and idle mafters were indebted for all the neceffaries of life. The Lacedemonian youth, trained up in the practice of deceiving and butchering thofe poor men, were from time to time let loofe upon them, to show their proficiency in ftratagem and maffacre. And once, without any provocation, and merely for their own amusement, we are told that they murdered 3000 in one night, not only with the connivance of law, but by its avowed permission. Such, in promoting the happinefs of one part of fociety and the virtue of another, are the effects of flavery." It has been faid, that in Athens and Rome flaves were better treated than in Sparta: but in the former city their treatment cannot have been good, nor their lives comfortabic, where the Athenians relifhed that tragedy of Euripides in which queen Hecuba is introduced as lamenting that he was chained like a dog at Agamemnon's gate!

(7.) SLAVERY AMONG THE ROMANS. Of the eftimation in which flaves were held at Rome we may form a tolerable notion from the well known fact, that one of thofe unhappy beings was often chained to the gate of a great man's houfe, to give admittance to the guts invited to the feaft. In the early periods of the commonwealth it was customary, in certain facred fhews exhibited on folemn occafions, to drag through the circus a

flave, who had been fcourged to death holding in his hand a fork in the form of a gibbet. But we need not multiply proofs of the cruelty of the Romans to their flaves. If the inhuman combate of the gladiators (fee GLADIATORS) admit of any apology, on account of the martial spirit with which they were thought to inspire the fpectators, the conduct of Vedius Pollio must have proceeded from the most wanton and brutal crucity. (See POLLIO, N° 2.) This man threw fuch flaves as gave him the flighteft offence into his fill-ponds to fatten his lampreys; and yet he was futtered to die in peace! The emperor, indeed, ordered his lampreys to be deftroyed, and his ponds to be filled up; but we hear of no other punishment inflicted on the favage mafter. Till the reign of Auguftus, the depolitions of flaves were never ad. mitted into the courts of judicature; and even then they were received only when períons were accufed of treasonable practices. The origin of slavery in Rome was the fame as in other countries. Prifoners of war were reduced to that state, as if they had been criminals. The dictator Camillus, one of the moft accomplished generals of the republic, fold his Hetrurian captives to pay the Roman ladies for the jewels which they had prefented to Apollo. Fabius, whofe cautious conduct faved his country when Hannibal was victorious in Italy, having fubdued Tarentum, reduced 30,000 of the citizens to flavery, and fold them to the higheft bidder. Coriolanus, when driven from Rome, and fighting for the Volfci, scrupled not to make flaves of his own countrymen; and Julius Cæfar, among whofe faults wanton cruelty has never been reckoned, fold at one time 53,000 captives for flaves. Nor did the flaves in Kome confift only of foreigners taken in war. By one of the laws of the XII tabies, creditors were empowered to seize their infolvent debtors, and keep them in their houfes till, by their fervices or labour, they had discharged the fum they owed: and in the beginning of the commonwealth they were authorised to fell fuch debtors, and even to put them to death. The children of flaves were the property not of the commonwealth, or of their own parents, but of their masters; and thus was flavery perpetuated in the families of fuch unhappy men as fell into that state, whether thro the chance of war or the cruelty of a fordid creditor. The confequence was, that the number of flaves belonging to the rich Patricians was almost incredible. Caius Cæcilius Ifidorus, who died about 7 years before the Chriftian era, left to his heirs 4116 flaves; and if any of those wretched creatures made an unsuccessful attempt to regain his liberty, or was even fufpected of fuch a defign, he was marked on the forehead with a red hot iron. In Sicily, during the moft flourishing periods of the commonwealth, it feems to have been cuftomary for masters to mark their flaves in this manner; at leaft fuch was the practice of Damophilus, who, not fatisfied with this fecurity, thut up his flaves every night in close prisons, and led them out like beafts in the morning to their daily labour in the field. Hence arofe the fervile war in Sicily. Though many laws were enacted by Auguftus and other philanthropic emperors to diminifh the power of creditors over their infolvent

debtors;

debtors; though the influence of the mild fpirit of Chriftianity tended much to meliorate the condition of flaves, even under Pagan mafters; and though the emperor Adrian made it capital to kill a live without a juft reafon; yet this infamous commerce prevailed universally in the empire for many ages after the converfion of Conftantine to the Chriftian religion. It was not completely a bolthed even in the reign of Juftinian; and in many countries, which had once been provinces of the empire, it continued long after the empire ikelf had fallen to pieces.

(8.) SLAVERY, ANCIENT AND MODERN, IN BRITAIN. The Anglo-Saxons, after they were fettled in this island, feem not to have carried on that traffic fo honourably as the Germans. (§ 5.) By a ftatute of Alfred the Great, the purchase of a man, a borse, or an ox, without a voucher to warrant the fale, was ftrictly forbidden. That law was, doubtless, enacted to prevent the fealing of men and cattie; but it shows us that so late as the 9th or 10th century a man, when fairly purchased, was, in England, as much the property of the buyer as the horse on which he rode or the ox which dragged his plough. In the fame country, now so nobly tenacious of freedom and the rights of man, a fpecies of flavery fimilar to that which prevailed among the ancient Germans fub. fifted even to the end of the 16th century. This appears from a commiffion iffued by Q. Elizabeth in 1574, for inquiring into the lands and goods of all her bond-men and bond-women in the counties of Cornwall, Devon, Somerset, and Gloucefter, in order to compound with them for their manumiffion, that they might enjoy their lands and goods as freemen. In Scotland there certainly existed an order of flaves or bond-men, who tilled the ground, were attached to the foil, and with it were transferable from one proprietor to another, at a period fo late as the 13th century; but when or how thofe villains, as they were called, obtained their freedom, seems to be unknown to every lawyer and antiquary of the prefent day. Colliers and falters, were, in the fame country, flaves till within these 40 years, that they were manumitted by an act of the British legislature, and restored to the rights of freemen and citizens. (See DEWAR.) Before that period the fons of colliers could follow no business but that of their fathers; nor were they at liberty to feek employ. ment in any other mines than thofe to which they were attached by birth, without the confert of the lord of the manor, who, if he had no ufe for their fervices himself, transferred them by a written deed to fome neighbouring proprietor.

6.)

interior tribes of Africa. Of this we might reft affured, although we had no other evidence of the fact than what refults from the practice of human facrifices, fo prevalent in the republic of Carthage. The genuine inftincts of nature are often fubdued by dire fuper!lition, but they cannot be wholly eradicated; and the rich Carthaginian, when a human victim was demanded from him to the gods, would be ready to fupply the place of his own child by the fon of a poor ftranger, perfidiously purchased at whatever price. That this was, indeed, a very common practice among them, we learn from the teftimony of various hif torians, who affure us, that when Agathocles the tyrant of Syracuse had overthrown their generals Hanno and Bomilcar, and threatened Carthage itself with a fiege, the people attributed their misfortunes to the juft anger of Saturn for having been worshipped, for fome years, by the facrifices of children meanly born and fecretly bought, instead of those of noble extraction. These substitutions of one offering for another were confidered as a profane deviation from the religion of their fore-fathers; and therefore to expiate the guilt of fo horrid an impiety, a facrifice of two hundred children of the firft rank was on that occafion made to the bloody god. (See SACRIFICE, As the Carthaginians were a commercial people we cannot fuppofe that they purchased slaves only for facrifices. They undoubtedly condemned many of their prifoners of war to the fate of fervitude, and either foid them to foreigners, or diftributed them among their fenators and the leaders of their armies. Hanno, who endeavoured to ufurp the fupreme power in Carthage, whilst that republic was engaged in war with Timoleon in Sicily, armed 20,000 of his flaves to carry his nefarious purpose into execution; and Hannibal, after his decifive victory at Cannæ, fold to the Greeks many of his prifoners whom the Reman fenate refufed to redeem. That illuftrious commander was indeed more humane, as well as more politic, than the generality of his countrymen. Before his days it was customary with the Carthaginians either to maffacre their captives in cold blood, that they might never a gain bear arms against them, or to offer them in facrifice as a grateful acknowledgment to the gods; but this was not always done even by their most fuperftitious or moft unprincipled leaders. Among other rich spoils which Agathocles, after his victory, found in the camp of Hanno and Bomilcar, were 20,000 pair of fetters and manacles, which thofe generals had provided for fuch of the Sicilian prifoners as they intended to preferve alive and reduce to a state of flavery. With the ancient fate of the other African nations we are but very little acquainted. All the African ftates were in alliance with one or other of thofe rival republics; and as the people of those states appear to have been lefs enlightened than either the Romans or the Carthaginians, we cannot fuppofe that they had purer morals, or a greater regard for the facred rights of man, than the powerful nations by whom they were either protected or opprefied. They would, indeed, infenfibly adopt their customs; and the ready market which Marius found for the prisoners taken in Capfa, shows

(9.) SLAVERY OF THE ANCIENT AFRICANS. That the favage nations of Africa were at any period of hiftory exempted from this opprobrium of our: ature, which spread over all the reft of the world, the enlightened reader will not fuppofe. It is indeed in that vaft country that flavery has in every age appeared in its uglieft form. About the era of the Trojan war, a commerce in flaves was carried on between Phoenicia and Lyba: and the Carthaginians, who were a colony of Phoeniclans, and followed the customs, manners and religion of their parent ftate, undoubtedly continued the Tyrian traffic in human flesh with the

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that

that flavery was then no ftrange thing to the Numidians. It feems indeed to have prevailed thro' all Africa from the very first peopling of that unexplored country; and we doubt if in any age of the world the unhappy negro was abfolutely fecure of his perfonal freedom, or even of not be ing foid to a foreign trader.

"At this time, therefore, according to Mr Whita ker, began that kind of traffic in human flesh, "Which fpors unhappy Guinea of its tons." But, as a female Ethiopian flave is mentioned in the Eunuch of Terence, we futpect that Guinea was occafionally "poiled of its fons" at a much earlier period. At any rate, from the cbfervations made by the European travellers who fift penetrated into that continent, it appears undeniable, that fiavery muft have prevailed from time immemorial among fuch of the tribes as had never carried on any commerce with foreign nations, In fact, this kind of commerce prevailed in Africa to early as in the reign of JUGURTHA. That it was not introduced among the negroes either by the Arabs or by the Portuguefe, appears ftel more evident from the behaviour of the Dahomans at the conqueft of Whidah, and from the manner in which the people of Angola, at the earlieft ftage of their foreign trade, procured a fupply of flaves for the Portuguefe market. The greater part of the flaves, whom the Angolans exported from St Paulo de Loanda, were brought from interior countries, fome hundreds of leagues diftant, where they could not have been regularly purchaled had that commerce been till then unknown. The Dahomans, til 1727, had never feen a white man: and when their prince and his army, first met with fome Europeans in the town of Sabi, they were fo fhocked at their complexion and their drefs, that they were afraid to approach them, and could not be perfuaded, that they were men till they heard them speak, and were affured by the Whidanefe that these were the merchants who purchafed all the flaves that were fold in Guinea. We are aflured by Snelgrave, who was then in the army, that those people treated their captives with fuch horrid cruelty as was flocking to the natives of the fea-coaft. A great part of their prifoners were facrificed to their gods, or eaten by the foldiers; and when our author exprefled to a colonel of the guard fome furprife, that a prince to enlightened as the fovereign of Dahomy fhouid facrifice fo many men whom he might have fold to great advantage, he was toid, that it had been the cuftom of their nation, from time immemorial, to offer, after victory, a certain number of prifoners to the gods; and that they feiected the old men for victims, because they were of lefs value at market, and more dangerous from their experience, than the young men. One of the kings of Dahomy slaughtered at once not only all the captives taken in war, but also 127 pritoners of different kinds, that he might have a fufficiency of ikuils to adorn the walls of his palace; though at the very time of that mallacre he knew that there were fix Have-fhips in the road of Whidah, from which he could have got for every prime flave a price little fhort of thirty pounds Stering. (Dalzel's Hift. of Dahomy.) Thele facts, and numberiefs others which the reader will find detailed in the Modern Universal Hiftory, Voi. xii. by writers who were at the greatcit pains to procure authentic information; who were neither biaffed by intereft nor blinded by enthufiaẩm; and who held the infamous traffic in utter abhorrence -prove beyond the poflibility of doubt, that flavery of the worst kind must have prevailed ai

(10.) SLAVERY OF THE NEGROES, HISTORY OF THE. It is the common opinion, that the practice of making flaves of the negroes is of a very modern date; that it owes its origin to the incurfions of the Portuguese on the western coaft of Africa; and that but for the cunning or cruelty of Europeans, it would not now exift, and would never have exifted. But all this is a complication of mistakes. Mr Whitaker, in his Review of Gibbon's Roman Hiftory, has proved, with a force of evidence which admits of no reply, that from the Coaft of Guinea a great trade in flaves was carried on by the Arabs fomé hundreds of years before the Portuguese embarked in that traffic, or had even feen a woolly-headed negro. Even the wandering Arabs of the defert, who rever had any friendly correfpondence with the Chrif tians of Europe, have from time immemorial been ferved by negro flaves. "The Arab must be poor indeed (fays M. Saugaier) not to have at least one negro flave. Their wives, who are captive negreffes, do all the domeftic work, and are roughly treated by the Arabs. Their children are flaves like them, and put to all kinds of drudgey." Surely no man, who is not completely prejudiced, will pretend that thofe roving tribes Arabs fo remarkable for their 'independent spirit and attachment to ancient cuftoms, learned to enflave the negroes from the Europeans! They feem to have, without interruption, continued the practice of flavery from the days of their great anceftor ISHMAEL; and it feems evident, that one of the European nations had ever feen a avoolly headed negro till the year 1100, when the crufaders fell in with a small party of them near the town of Hebron in Judea, and were to ftruck with the novelty of their appearance, that the army burst into a general fit of laughter. Long before the crufades, however, the natives of Guinea had been fold in foreign countries. In 651 the Mahometan Arabs of Egypt so haraffed the king of Nubia or Ethiopia, who was a Chriftian, that he agreed to fend them annually, by way of tribute, a val number of Nubian or Ethiopian flaves into Egypt. Such a tribute, at that time, was more agreeable to the khalif than any other, " as the Arabs then made no fmall account of thofe faves." This fhows that a commerce in bond. fervants could not then be a new branch of trade either to the Arabs or the Ethiopians; but the walt number which the Ethiopian monarch was How compelled to furnith every year, induced him to feed this great drain upon his fubjects from the natives of the neighbouring countries. Fie therefore brought the blacks of GUINEA, for the first time, into the fervice and families of the eatt; and the flavea which he paid in tribute to the Arabs, whether derived from Ethiopia, the Mediterranean regions, or the fhores of the Atlantic, were all caled Ethiopians, from the country by which they were conveyed into Egypt.

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