Note 2 — GENERAL INTRODUCTION.

There is another book dealing with the general history of slavery, Professor J. K. Ingram’s “History of slavery and serfdom”. This writer confines himself to the historical nations of ancient and modern times; the savages are excluded. Though he makes many valuable remarks, of which, as the reader will see, we have availed ourselves, by far the greater part of his work is purely descriptive. A great difference between his book and ours is further that he writes “not for scholars, but for the mass of thoughtful and cultivated men and women”2, whereas we appeal to the men of science, not to the public at large. Yet it is an instructive little book. We only regret that the writer appears to agree with Comte’s curious theory concerning the relation between slavery and religion3.