Book 1 — Chapter IV. Freedom And Slavery.

Section LXVII.

The Origin Of Slavery.

An institution like that of personal bondage, which, it can be shown, has existed, among all nations of which history gives [pg 208] us information, at one time or another, must have very general causes. Among these may be mentioned especially subjection through war. It is not possible to calculate how much the principle, that it was proper to reduce the man to slavery [pg 209] whom it was considered right to kill, contributed to make war less bloody in an uncivilized age.396 A nation of hunters is almost compelled to grant no quarter; the conqueror would be obliged either to feed his prisoner or to put arms in his hands. It is certainly a great humanitarian advance, when this state of things is superseded by slavery among nomadic nations.397

In times of peace, economic dependence is the result of poverty, excessive debt etc.398 Where there is no division of labor, the individual has no means of supplying his wants, except by cultivating a spot of ground. But, how can the poor wretch who has neither capital399 nor land exchange anything of value for either? Such an advance, where there is no security in law, can be made only on the credit of a very important pledge. But the man who is destitute of all property can offer nothing but the productive power of himself or of his family.400 And [pg 210] so it is with the small landed proprietor who has lost all his capital;401 for, considering the superabundance of land, the part which he possesses has value in exchange only to the extent that it is joined with the certainty of being cultivated; and here is the origin of the glebæ adscriptio. The hereditary transmission of the relation to the children seems to be equally useful to them; or who, were this not the case, would think of providing them with food? It also frequently happens that poor parents prefer to sell their children to seeing them starve.402 Hence the strange fact that most nations have the most rigid system of slavery precisely at the time that the soil produces food most readily. We need only cite the instance of the South Sea Islands, at the time of their discovery. In many negro countries, where the people have not yet learned to use animals for transportation, the lowest classes, although they enjoy a nominal liberty, are used as beasts of burden.403

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Section LXVIII.

The Same Subject Continued.

In all very low stages of civilization, the greatest absence of the feeling of wants, and the greatest indolence, are wont to prevail, and in the highest degree. As soon as their merest necessities are provided for, men begin to look upon labor as a disgraceful occupation, and indolence as the highest kind of enjoyment. (§ 41, 213 ff.) Sustained and voluntary efforts, in any number, then become possible only by the creation of new wants; but these new wants suppose a higher civilization. Escape from this sorry circle is then effected in the most humane manner, through the agency of foreign teachers; inasmuch as the representatives of a more highly cultivated people (missionaries, merchants etc.), by their own example, make the nation acquainted with more wants, and at the same time help toward their satisfaction.404 But, in the case of nations whose civilization is completely isolated, or having intercourse only with others equally low, progress is the creature of force exclusively. The barbarous isolation of families ceases when the strongest and most powerful force the weaker into their service. It is now that the division of labor really begins: the victor devotes himself entirely to work of a higher order, to statesmanship, war, worship etc.; the very doing of which is generally a pleasure in itself. The vanquished perform the lower. The one-half of the people are forced to labor for something beyond their own brute wants. And it is, here as elsewhere, the first step that costs.405 (§ 45.)

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Section LXIX.

Origin Of Slavery.—Want Of Freedom.

It is not to be supposed that slavery, at this stage, is so oppressive even to those who have been deprived of their freedom. The feeling of moral degradation which slavery, abstraction even made of its abuses, awakens in us, is unknown in a very uncivilized age.406 The child willingly obeys the orders of strangers, and is hired out to service by his parents etc. The want or craving for liberty keeps pace with the intellectual growth of a people. The systematic over-working of servants or slaves, in the interest of their masters, is scarcely thinkable in an uncultured age, when, in the absence of commercial [pg 213] intercourse, every family consumes what it produces.407 The only thing which the slave has to fear is an occasional outburst of tyranny on the part of the master, a thing which is far from unfrequent in all the relations of low civilizations. Fear restrains masters to a certain extent; for, in those early days, how few were the institutions of state which could protect them against the vengeance of their slaves!408409

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Section LXX.

Emancipation.

As states grow greater and men's manners gentler, the ranks of slavery are less and less liable to be recruited through the agency of war.410 It then becomes necessary to have recourse to the family to keep up their number, which makes their condition much more endurable, and which supposes that it has been made more endurable in other respects beforehand. Modern states, are, as a rule, larger than the ancient were. The Germans had, long before the time of Charlemagne, treated prisoners of war of German origin more mildly than those of Gallic or Slavic origin.411 The condition of the latter even improved from the time that nations began to think of making permanent conquests. Since the Slavic wars of the tenth century, certainly since the Lithuanian contests, it seems that prisoners of war were not reduced to slavery.412 Chivalry, [pg 215] and allowing prisoners to go free, on their word of honor, contributed largely to this result.

The more productive agriculture is, the more numerous the wants of land owners, the more extensive the division of labor and commercial intercourse become, the easier it is for a large class of the community to obtain support for themselves and families without cultivating land of their own. (Wages.) When exchanges through the medium of money become customary, the chief argument for slavery disappears; and the strong, rich and able man can, without having recourse to force, command the labor of other men. Every further advance in economic culture must necessarily help forward in this direction. Thus, without the plow, for instance, we should all be really only so many glebæ adscripti. It is due especially to the ever increasing perfection of tools, machines and operations, that the slave of antiquity was transformed into the serf of the middle ages, and afterwards into the day laborer of modern times.413 It is more particularly to be remarked, that machines, since 1750, “first made the constitutional liberty of many, instead of the feudal freedom of a few, possible.” (Schäffle.)

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Section LXXI.

Disadvantages Of Slavery.

Slavery promotes the division of labor only in the very beginning. The more dependent the slave is, the worse he works. Whatever he spoils or allows to go to waste injures only his master. Hence it is that slave-husbandry is only one degree removed from what the Germans call Raubbau, and which means, as nearly as we can translate it, the most thoughtless and wasteful management possible.414 Whatever he consumes is simply so much gain to himself. Industry and skill are injurious to him, because, if remarkable for these qualities, his master exacts more work from him and is more adverse to setting him at liberty. Instead of the numberless incentives of the free workman: care for the future, for his family, honor and comfort, the slave is generally moved by one—the fear of ill-treatment, and to this he gradually becomes insensible.415 The division of labor demanded by manufactures, and which is to be found for the most part only where each person is at liberty to choose his own avocation, is scarcely supposable where slavery, in the strict sense of the word, prevails. The same is true of the spirit of invention and improvement.416 And even where the milder glebæ [pg 217] adscriptio obtains, the division of labor is much hindered. Hence, competent judges all agree on the badness of slave labor;417 which, as for instance in the United States, was used only where the slaves were crowded together in large numbers and could therefore be easily superintended. And not only are the slaves themselves indolent, but their masters as well; more particularly in slave countries where all labor is considered disgraceful. What must be the national husbandry of a people, one half of whom refuse to do anything that is right and proper, through malice, and the other half through pride! As soon as, on account of increased population and consequent increased consumption, this enormous waste of force can be endured no longer, free workmen become more profitable, not only to themselves and to the whole community, but to the greater number of the individuals who compose it.418 On the Bernstoff estates the quantity of rye harvested before [pg 218] and after emancipation was as 3:8-⅓; of barley-corn as 4:9-⅓; of oat-grain as 2-⅔:8.419

The owners of serfs, especially, are apt to be very wasteful of their labor, because they imagine that they obtain it gratis. Tucker has made a curious calculation tending to show that when civilization reaches a certain point, the master's self-interest leads to emancipation. In Russia, where there are seventy-five persons to the English square mile, it seemed to him that serfdom was still a good economic speculation. In western Europe, where there were one hundred and ten persons to the square mile, freedom, in all relations of master and servant, he considered more advantageous to all parties. Emancipation began in England in the fourteenth century, when that country had a population of forty to the square mile, and was completed in the seventeenth, when the population was ninety-two to the square mile.420 Tucker concludes, that the turning point comes, when the population is relatively to the number of square miles as 66:1.421 Such a calculation cannot, of course, be universally true. The free workman can usually command a much larger portion of the sum total of economic profits [pg 219] than can the slave or serf, who must be satisfied with the minimum necessary to support life.422 Hence, free labor is more profitable to masters only when production in general is so much enhanced thereby that a greater quantity of goods falls to their share also. But this will always be the case where workmen are capable of development.423

Section LXXII.

Effect Of An Advance In Civilization On Slavery.

At the same time, the same degree of servitude becomes more and more oppressive to the bondman as civilization advances. The greater his intellectual progress, the more does he feel the want of liberty, and the more keenly he experiences the degradation of his condition. The development of luxury digs a gulf between master and servant which grows wider every day. (§ 227 ff.) As commerce extends, it becomes more profitable for the master to exact excessive work from his slave. In the West Indies, it was a problem which every slaveholder solved for himself, whether, by immoderately increased production, which cost the lives of many slaves, the gain in sugar was greater than the loss occasioned by the [pg 220] consequent death of the negroes.424 When, with the advance of civilization, the state guarantees to all more certain protection of their rights than they enjoyed in a less advanced stage of social improvement, the last check on masters, the fear of the vengeance of their slaves, is removed.425 Demoralization naturally increases in the same proportion; and that of the master as well as that of his servants.426

Section LXXIII.

The Same Subject Continued.

This explains why it is that, in all countries, the power of the state, in a period of transition towards a higher civilization, has endeavored to render slavery milder. Great credit is due the Church in this regard. It soon extinguished slavery entirely in Scandinavia,427 and in portions of Europe it abolished at least the sale of prisoners to foreign countries.428 The [pg 221] Concilium Agatheuse, in the year 506, decreed that serfs should not be killed by their masters at pleasure,429 but that they should be brought before a tribunal of justice. (The manorial tribunals of more recent times.) Moreover, the numberless holidays of the church operated greatly in favor of the bondmen. Pope Alexander III. recommended their gradual emancipation.430 One of the principal steps in the way of progress was made when they could no longer be sold singly, but only with the village or on the estate to which they belonged.431 The feudal aristocracy improved the condition of the bondmen by reducing a great number of freemen to their level.432 This [pg 222] could not be effected without a real amelioration of slavery; and, later, when the feudal aristocracy declined, the older serfs were, with those who had been formerly free, raised from their abject condition. The sense of chivalry would not permit a lord to be served by a bondman. The old adage “the serf lives to serve and serves to live,” by degrees, lost its force. Serfs were required to perform certain tasks on the lands of their master and to pay him a certain quantity of the produce of their own. Heriots (mortuarium), which became usual from the 8th century (J. Grimm), may be considered evidence that even bondmen were permitted to acquire and hold property in their own right. Thus was one of the chief disadvantages of slavery, in an economic sense, removed.433 It may be affirmed, as characteristic of the aristocracy of feudal times, that they treated those, who like the serfs were entirely at their mercy, with much more consideration than those who were free, and, although dependent on them, had certain rights guaranteed by contract. The absolute monarchy found in [pg 223] nearly all nations, at the opening of modern times, was forced by its struggle with the mediæval aristocracy to favor the emancipation of the serfs and of the lower classes. Even in Russia, Iwan III. (1462-1505) seems to have restored to the peasantry the right of migration, of which they had been deprived by the invasion of the Mongols, nor did they lose it again until the great troubles at the beginning of the seventeenth century, which gave the ruling power to the nobility.434

Where civilization has reached its highest development, the irresistible power of public opinion, governed by the ideas of the universal brotherhood of man and of democratic equality, causes the abolition of all irredeemable and of all hereditary relations of servitude.435436437

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Section LXXIV.

The Same Subject Continued.

It cannot be doubted, that an entirely direct leap from complete servitude to complete freedom may be attended by many [pg 225] evils. No man is “born free,”438 but only with a faculty for freedom; but this faculty must be developed. The knowledge and respect for law, and the self-control, which are the conditions and limits of freedom, are never acquired without labor, seldom without the making of grave mistakes, and never except through the practice of them. As a rule, both parties, masters as well as servants, would like to get rid immediately of all the inconveniences of the former condition and yet continue to enjoy its advantages. The servant, for instance, will now yield no more the specific obedience of former times, but demands still specific mildness from the land-owner, or loaner of capital, his former master. It is inevitable that there should be complaints on both sides.439 But in the higher stages of economic culture, the relation of paternal protection and childlike [pg 226] obedience between the different classes of the people, which, even in medieval times, never obtained in all its purity, is certainly unrecallable. Hence it is, that all hope of a better condition of things is based only on this, that the lower classes may as soon as possible attain to true independence.440

Section LXXV.

The Same Subject Continued.

Even in antiquity, the principal nations of the world could not keep the humanizing influence of civilization from making itself felt on their slaves. And if they did not go so far as to bring about the total abolition of slavery, it is unhesitatingly to be attributed to their religious inferiority.441 In Athens, during the Peloponnesian war, it was almost impossible to distinguish the slaves from the poorer freemen by their looks or dress. Their treatment was mild in proportion as desertion was easier by reason of the smallness of the state or the frequency of war. It was forbidden to beat them; and only a court of justice could punish them with death.442 Emancipation, in individual cases, was very frequent, and the names of Agoratos and of the law-reviser Nicomachos show how great a part an emancipated slave might play in the nation.443 [pg 227] The helot system of the Lacedemonians preserved much longer a great deal more of medieval barbarism; but even here, we may infer from the frequent uprisings and emancipations of the helots, from their services in war etc., that their lot was made less hard than it had been.444

Among the Romans, with whom war and conquest were so long considered445 the principal means of acquisition, slavery was relatively very hard.446 But, later, there came to be several different grades of slavery (servi ordinarii and mediastini etc.); and in slavery, every gradation denotes some amelioration of condition.447 The slave obtained the right to possess resources of his own (peculium).448 In addition to this, [pg 228] emancipation became much more frequent in the later republic; so much so, that Augustus considered it necessary to pass laws taxing frivolous emancipation. (L. Aelia Sentia and Furia.)449 Where men like Terence, Roscius, Tiro, Phædrus and the father of Horace rose from the condition of slavery, the treatment of slaves cannot have been entirely brutalizing.450 Under the emperors who oppressed the free citizens, legislation was directed more than ever towards the protection of the slaves.451 Instead of permanent slavery, a condition of things was introduced and became more general every day, one in which the bondman might contract a legal marriage, have property of his own, and in which he was protected against an arbitrary increase of the quota he had to pay his master, whether in money or produce, although he still remained bound to the land. This class was formed not only of the originarii, or those born into it, but also of a large number of impoverished freemen, barbarian prisoners of war etc.452453

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