Page:The rise, progress, and phases of human slavery.djvu/37

term service made use of by Virgil indicates clearly the servile relation to the husband which such marriages imposed upon women.

Having explained the origin of direct slavery, its legal establishment, and the principal known causes which multiplied it and consolidated it as a social institution, let us now inquire in what light it was regarded by the ancients themselves, wherefore it was able to maintain its footing all over the world, till the advent of Christianity; why it still obtains in so large a portion of the habitable globe; and why it has in nowise ceased, without giving birth to a masked or indirect slavery worse than itself.

In this inquiry, our task will resolve itself in establishing the three following propositions:—

1st. That direct or personal slavery was not regarded by the ancients in the light in which enlightened men of the present day regard it, that is to say, as an unnatural and inhuman institution, but, on the contrary, was considered to be a thing perfectly natural and reasonable in itself, and essential to the ends and purposes of society.

2nd. That the main cause of its permanence in the world was the universality of public opinion in its favour, rather than the force of law or custom; and that the slaves themselves fully participated in the general opinion.

3rd. That, all things considered, direct slavery, whether as practised by the ancients or by the modems (wherever it is in use), was, with all its evils, less destructive of life, morals, and happiness to the majority than the present system of indirect or disguised slavery, as effected in most civilized countries by unjust agrarian, monetary, and fiscal laws.