CHAPTER II.

EFORE we separated after the last reading, we agreed, if it were fine, to have our next meeting at an inn in a little town about eight miles distant. We met there on the appointed day, and after dinner, Milverton read to us the following section of his essay.

2. THAT SLAVERY IS NEEDLESS.

Many a reader who has been quite willing to agree to the first proposition that slavery is cruel,' and who may scarcely have had patience for much detail in reference to that part of the subject, has all the while been troubled with an ill-defined apprehension of the needfulness of slavery at least in certain

cases.

But for whom is it needful? For the masters? If the superior race on earth could in no wise till the earth from some physical inaptitude (a race, for instance, of the present European constitution, with nothing but ricefields to work upon) and the races under them

could till it, but would not work more than enough to support themselves in a brutish way, and for whom all the finer head-work and handwork of the superior race had no attractions, there would then be a fair justification of the institution of slavery. But this hypothesis meets with no fulfilment in nature. There are millions of untried acres waiting for the Caucasian race, where they may work out their own institutions, without the drawback of slavery amongst them. And even if the hypothesis were founded on reality, though it would be right, in self-preservation, for the wiser race to compel the others to work for them, they would be bound at the same time to endeavour to elevate the character of the lower race, and to convert their forced service into brotherly aid. Our imaginary Caucasians would be bound to give their Helots a taste. for the higher necessities of civilization, so as to make them in turn dependent upon Caucasian skill in the higher departments of life. Even in this extreme case, then, we might look for some termination to a state of slavery absolutely needful in the beginning. In real life there is no such need. The celebrated Vieyra in one of his sermons answers the people of Maranham on this head:

this people, this

• But you will say to me, republic, this state cannot be supported without Indians. Who is to bring us a pitcher of water or a bundle of wood? Who is to plant our mandioc? Must our wives do it? Must our children do it? In the first place, as you will presently see, these are not the straits in which I would place you: but if necessity and conscience require it, then, I reply, yes! and I repeat yes! You and your wives and your children ought to do it! We ought to support ourselves with our own hands; for better is it to be supported by the sweat of one's own brow, than by another's blood.'*

On the other hand, is slavery needful for the slaves? If there were no other way but slavery to elevate them in the scale of beings, then that might be taken. I am not prepared to say that the intelligent should exercise no dominion over the non-intelligent. For the sake of both I contend they should; only it should not be of an extreme kind like slavery, unless there is an absolute necessity. Now whether any such necessity exists or

*VIEYRA's first Sermon at St. Luiz, A.D. 1653. SOUTHEY'S History of Brazil, vol. ii. p. 479.

not is a question that may be settled by historical experience. Doubtless of almost every race in succession, it has been pronounced by their masters, that to get any good out of them, it was necessary to have supreme power over them: and each race has falsified this arrogant assertion. To illustrate this, here is a fragment which I conjecture to have been part of a letter sent by a Roman senator to some young man who had recently come into possession of large property, and was inclined to act with unusual benevolence towards his slaves.-'It might have been true in former days when all slaves were captives in war from people brave as ourselves, but with this scum of nations, it is absurd. You favour much the British race, and (forgive me) are wont from paradox, to talk of their fidelity and valour. Two of my slaves of that race, no later than the ides of June, were detected in a long course of deceit and trickery; not only purloining, but laying the crime on my Thracians, and even on Epænetus, my freedman whom you know. The truthful scourge brought this to light: and for them there is no other reasoning. Can such a rabble of barbarians become a

nation? for by nation I do not mean a horde of wandering savages

'Quorum plaustra vagas rite trahunt domos—'

but men formed to carry the ideas of power and justice over the world, fit not only to govern themselves, but to sway others? (a thoroughly Roman theory, by the way, of a nation.) The thing is impossible, and would only delude those delirious persons by whom every new and strange thing is well received. Moreover my physician Festus tells me that these people are by the appointment of the Gods (divinitus) an inferior race, proved by their miserably white skin. For, as he says, the lymph in their bodies is altogether of a poor and half-decocted nature which produces these sickly appearances of pink and white. Hence the brain is of a flaccid substance and the whole body is such as cannot be led to good but by stripes, not rarely applied. I do not say these things of myself, and should despise to know them—but they are what the slave (Festus) says. You yourself perceiving the hang-dog look and abject bearing (gestum demissum perditumque vultum) of these Britons. And it is with