Note 15 — Chapter I · DEFINITION AND DISTINCTION FROM KINDRED PHENOMENA.

This definition, however, on further consideration will show itself capable of some simplification. For when one man is the property of another, this implies compulsory labour. The right of property in this case, the object of it being a man, is a power over that man’s will too. The Romans recognised this: “The master has not only a right of property over the slave as over a lifeless thing, but also a power like that over his son, the potestas dominica, that is a power over the slave’s will”15. The right of property, that is a legally unlimited power over a man, were useless, if the owner did not influence the man’s will; and this influencing is equivalent to imposing labour upon him, labour being taken in the widest sense. A mere physical possession, such as the preserving of captives for cannibal purposes, which Letourneau and Spencer make so much of16, is socially of little consequence. Possession of human beings, as a social institution, is that which gets hold of the will of its object. Hence it follows, that slavery is the fact that one man is the property or possession of another.