those people who had not the freedom of Rome. Greece, however, and especially Arcadia, formed an honourable exeeption to this disgraceful system.... How far the sale of children went originally, it is difficult to determine; but, at a very early date, it had the effect of making them slaves as completely as if they had been captives, and not born within the walls of Rome.' Blair, pp. 32--3.

Among the Romans, as in our own Colonies, slavery by birth depended upon the condition of the mother alone; and her master became owner of her offspring, not the less so when he was the father also. In early times, a Roman father was entitled to put even his free-born children to death, as well as to expose or to sell them. A law ascribed to Romulus recognises this extensive power, which is sanctioned also by the Twelve Tables, and remained part of the written law till the reign of Alexander Severus. The sale of children by their parents, under the pressure of want, was legalised by Theodosius the Great; but those sold into servitude were to be returned to their original ingenuous con'dition, whenever claimed, and without any compensation to their 'purchaser.' Justinian, however, re-established the rule of Constantine, which required the parent to give the buyer the value of the child or mother slave. These enactments were obviously intended to check infanticide. The power of the father over his ingenuous offspring would seem, indeed, to have been nearly as great as over his bond children.

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Upon the whole, slavery, among the Romans, was a condition admitting of many gradations, and it was confined to no distinct caste. As the freeman might be reduced to slavery, or might voluntarily descend into it, so, the slave might hope to emerge from it. Slavery, under any modification, cannot be dissociated from degradation and liability to cruel oppression; but the Roman slavery was an institution which admitted of far greater mitigation, and more readily yielded to the meliorating influence of Christianity, than the colonial slavery of modern times.

It has been questioned, whether the Greek or the Roman servitude was the more favourable to the slave. As to the actual condition, Mr. Blair remarks, between the conquest of Corinth and the reign of Antoninus Pius, the slave at Rome was much less protected by law and public feeling, and had, probably, less indulgence, than the slave at Athens.

Before the earlier of those eras, indeed, simplicity of manners rendered the treatment of slaves, in Italy, generally good: yet that could not be implicitly relied upon. But, after the adoption, by Antoninus, of one of the best Athenian laws, the servile classes in the Roman territories came to be on a level with those in the Grecian states. There appear to be strong reasons for believing, that the Helots in Lacedæmonia, being the property of the State, and not of in

dividuals, were permitted to live, removed from the control of their masters, in a condition very similar to that of the Serfs, or adscriptitii, under the declining Roman empire. But the temporary relaxation from their bonds which the Helots enjoyed, was as nothing in the scale, when there was thrown in against it, their liability to suffer from the inhuman policy which dictated to the Spartans periodical massacres, as the means of removing their apprehensions at the increase of the slave population.' p. 194.

As it respected the prospect of a change of condition, the Roman bondsman had a decided advantage over the Greek.

At Sparta, slaves seem to have had hardly any hopes of ever being admitted among freemen. At Athens, emancipation from the dominion of the master was frequent; but the privileges of citizenship rarely followed, even to a limited extent, and were conferred by public authority alone...... At Rome, the lowest slave could always look forward to manumission, and to obtaining the rank of a citizen through the sole will of his master. Between the reigns of Augustus and Justinian, it is true, that there existed restrictions, in point of number, upon the master's powers of freeing his bondsmen, and raising them to the station of Roman citizens; yet, during that interval, many might hope for an opportunity of reaching a better condition. And at all times, previous to the limitations of Augustus, and again after the ample encouragement of Justinian, no slave needed to despair of becoming both a citizen and a freeman.' p. 195.

Unlike the Greeks, who, in the pride of intellect and the true spirit of republicanism, considered slavery as derivable from the laws of nature and the permanent diversities in the races of man, regarding themselves as an aristocrasy among the nations; the Romans, who partook more of the military spirit, and to whom law stood instead of philosophy, recognized the national equality of the human species, and confessed the dominion of masters over slaves to flow entirely from the will of society. While the Republic lasted, however, the legal character of the Roman slavery remained uniform and unmitigated; and the slave had no protection against the avarice, rage, or lust of his master. All the changes which had the authority of law, were introduced under the Empire. The master's power of life and death over his slaves, was first sought to be legally abolished by Hadrian and Antoninus Pius. The mutilation of slaves had been forbidden by Domitian. Hadrian suppressed the ergastula, or slave-prisons, which seem to have answered to the Jamaica work-houses. They were originally intended for convict or fugitive slaves,

That the condition of a slave is better under an arbitrary than under a free government, is,' Adam Smith remarks, supported by the history of all ages and nations.'

but were abused for the nefarious purpose of imprisoning and working in chains kidnapped freemen*. The same enlightened heathen emperor introduced some other important restrictions on the sale and ill treatment of slaves. He even banished a lady of rank, because she was notoriously cruel to her slaves. Constantine prohibited the punishment of branding a slave, which is now practised in the West Indies, not on convict slaves only, but often without the imputation of a crime! He also passed an edict which placed the wilful murder of a slave on a level with that of a freeman, and expressly included the case of a slave who died under punishment, unless that was inflicted with the usual instruments of correction. But this law was afterwards modified. The effect of Christianity in meliorating the usage of slaves, was considerable, even prior to its political establishment +.

Christianity inculcated a salutary care for the spiritual welfare of slaves. The church invited or allowed them to partake of all the ordinances of religion: and their birth was no impediment to their rising to the highest dignities of the priesthood. In early times, it would appear, that slaves, holding the true faith, were taken into the service of the church; like the two slave-girls, mentioned by Pliny, in his celebrated letter to Trajan, respecting the Christians of Bithynia. At first, indeed, it was required, that a slave should be enfranchised, before ordination; but Justinian declared the simple consent of the master to be sufficient. If a slave had been ordained without his owner's knowledge, the latter might demand him within a year; and the slave fell back into his master's power. Nay, if a slave, after ordination with his master's consent, chose to renounce the ecclesiastical state, and returned to a secular life, he was given back, as a slave, to his master. Similar rules applied, originally, to the assumption and abandonment of the monastic habit, by slaves; but subsequently, they were directed to remain three years in a state of probation, after which, their admission into a religious order made them free. We are told, that it was very common, for both ecclesiastic and lay patrons of churches and chapels, to encourage their slaves to become clergymen, that they, in preference to strangers, might receive their benefices: till the practice was condemned, in the fifth century, by the council of Chalcedon. The canon law must, always, have recognised

• Mr. Stephen has shewn that the ergastuli were penal slaves, or those on whom that character was fraudulently imposed. See Slavery of the W. I. Colonies, vol. i. pp. 338-358. It is doubted whether, among the agricultural slaves, there were any females. There are no allusions to their being so employed; and there would seem to have been none at least among the ergastuli. Liberty, according to the testimony of Columella, was generally conferred upon female slaves who had borne four or more children. See Blair, p. 104.

+ Mr. Blair cites at p. 127, the apocryphal Apostolic Constitutions as the work of Clemens Alexandrinus, and a production of the second century. Lardner will set him right on this point.

the indissolubility of marriages contracted by slaves; but it was not published, as a rule for practice, till a late period; probably, from fear of injury to slave-owners, by open infringement of their existing rights. Slaves were fully protected in the exercise of worship, and, to a certain extent, in the observance of religious festivals. The liberty and gambols of the Saturnalia were transferred to Christmas; and it is not unlikely, that some of those ceremonies at Easter, by which Princes used to denote their Christian humility, were originally derived from those representations of equality, exhibited in the Pagan feasts of March and December.' pp. 70-72.

'Slaves were, at all times, competent to avail themselves of the temporary protection of sanctuaries. Those were, of old, the temples and altars of the gods, to which the palace and images of the Emperor were, afterwards, added; and on the change of religion, Christian churches and shrines received the same privileges as those which had belonged to edifices dedicated to Heathen worship. A slave who, dreading the resentment of his lord, fled to an asylum, was safe while he remained there; and it would have been sacrilegious to drag him away: but, whenever he quitted the sacred spot, he might be lawfully seized by his master. The law of Theodosius the Great, introduced a further security, by authorizing the slave, while in the asylum, to invoke the aid of the judge, and to proceed unmolested to the tribunal, where the merits of his case were to be duly investigated, and the threatened vengeance of his master properly controlled. A Christian church afforded very great safety from the wrath of unmerciful owners: for when a slave took refuge there, it became the duty of the ecclesiastics to intercede for him, with his master; and if the latter refused to pardon the slave, they were bound not to give him up, but to let him live within the precincts of the sanctuary, till he chose to depart, or his owner granted him forgiveness.' pp. 88, 89.

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But to Justinian belongs the merit of having removed most of the impediments to manumission created by his predecessors; and the spirit of his laws powerfully contributed both to improve the condition of bondsmen, and to promote the extinction of domestic servitude. The reformation of the servile code of 'Rome,' remarks Mr. Stephen, was attended with no civil disorders; because manumissions, through the benign influence of Christianity, became so copious, soon after that manumission commenced, that the slaves speedily ceased to bear a dangerous 'proportion in number to the free citizens and libertines of the 'empire.'*

Thus, it appears that Christianity, if it did not violently overturn, gradually dissolved the institution of slavery. The heavy 'chains of personal slavery,' in the language of Bp. Porteus, 'were gradually broken in most parts of the Christian world; and they that had been, for so many ages, bruised by the cruel and oppressive hand of pagan masters, were at length set free.'

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* Slavery of the W. I. Colonies, vol. i. p. 377.

It is admitted, that no passage in the Christian Scriptures actually prohibits slavery; for Christianity, as Paley remarks on this subject, soliciting admission into all nations of the world, abstained, as behoved it, from intermeddling with the civil in'stitutions of any." Nor did it denounce the tyranny of Nero. But it expressly forbade the Christian freeman to become a slave by voluntary contract; it authoritatively enjoined the Christian slave to aspire to become a freedman, as well as to glory in his spiritual liberty *; it raised the bond to the same level, in moral dignity, with the free; it immediately multiplied manumissions, and operated as an alterative' upon the social system; and, had not its influence been counteracted by those causes which paralysed its own native energy, by deteriorating its purity, it would still more rapidly have produced the extinction of an evil involving the most enormous injustice and the most fatal impolicy.

The influence of slavery upon the social character of the Romans, Mr. Blair shews to have been, in various respects, prejudicial and degrading; and the State was directly exposed, at different periods, to serious dangers from the slaves. He concludes his erudite Inquiry with remarking, that' on the whole, if 'we consider that several of those corruptions by which Rome was undermined had their chief source in the institution of Slavery, we must necessarily look upon it as one of the main causes of the decay of her empire.'

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and

Nature created man free," says Bishop Warburton, 'Grace invites him to assert his freedom.' A golden sentence ! Christianity has extinguished the Roman slavery and the feudal servitude. Wherever it has had free course, it has vindicated its heaven-born character, by proclaiming liberty to the captive and redemption to the slave. It shall yet triumph over West Indian heathenism and American prejudice; over the strength of avarice and the pride of caste. It will redress the wrongs of the slaves, and compel a recognition of the equal claims of the blacks. If it could loosen the bonds of pagan slavery, shall we doubt the issue of its conflict with the injustice and infatuation of Christian slave-holders ?

Art. II. Lectures on Revivals of Religion. By William B. Sprague, D.D., Pastor of the second Presbyterian Church in Albany. With an Introductory Essay, by the Rev. George Redford, A.M., and the Rev. John Angell James. 12mo. pp. xxiv. 456. Price 5s. 6d. Glasgow. 1832.

NOTHING that the world rapid growth of America.

has ever witnessed, equals the There, in a temporal, as well as

a spiritual sense, a nation is born in a day.' The changes which

* Gal. iii. 28. 1 Cor. vii. 22, 23.