Part 11
Thus, even during the most brilliant periods, the numerous free persons in the cities became more and more impoverished, and lived by _panem et circenses_, as in Rome. Under this deceitful glitter, the disease slowly undermined the prosperity of the cities, and the first shock revealed the terrible reality. Soon fiscal rapacity seized hold of every thing both in the Italian and Italianized cities. Not only the poorer classes but even the wealthy began to feel it. One after another the cities lost their domains and their treasure, and thus lost the means to sustain their internal administration. With the growing imperial rapacity increased also the danger and the difficulties of public office, as the _decurions_ and other officials were responsible to the imperial treasury for all the taxes and imposts levied upon the city. The rich men, patrons, etc., now used extensively their right of exemption from office, and excused themselves from public service in proportion as the fiscal pressure increased, and as they found it more lucrative to profit from general calamities than to attempt to avert them. Besides, taxes for the central exchequer were to be imposed and levied as well as taxes for the local administration of the cities. All this finally almost entirely crushed the impoverished burghers, and in the second century large numbers of burghers were inscribed in the _curia_. First the poorer shopkeepers, artisans, and small property holders, and then almost all the _viles_, with the exception of the _infames_--that is, those who at any time had undergone any infamous condemnation--became _curiales_. Taxes on lands, houses, and slaves, and also on persons (_per capita_), increased almost daily, and were imposed under various guises and new names. All handicraftsmen, tradesmen, and merchants, had to pay special taxes, and the poorest plebeian had to pay a _capitatio_ or _illatio_. When the cities had thus been reduced to poverty, and were obliged to tax themselves heavily to sustain their existence, the severest of all labor was to be a city official, and every one tried to avoid public honors, as even to be a _curialis_ was considered a heavy calamity. The surplus of the poor free population, no longer supported by the magistrates or _decuriones_, abandoned the cities and became colonists on the imperial domains, on the remaining city domains, or on private lands; and there sank deeper and deeper into the mire of slavery. Soon the _curiales_ began to follow the plebeians, in order to escape from their privileges and dignities. With this, however, an imperial edict interfered, and small proprietors, curiales, etc., were prohibited from selling their property. The eventual acquirer of such property was made _ipso facto_ curial, and responsible for both past and current taxes, and the other exactions and servitudes imposed. The law put various other impediments on the personal liberty of poor but taxable curiales: they became bondmen of the state or of their own municipality; they could not change their residence, and suffered innumerable annoyances. The curiales, thus goaded, often preferred even the hateful military service on the utmost frontiers of the empire: they voluntarily entered the legions, in order to be exempted from taxation and the grip of the imperial and municipal tax-gatherer. More of them, however, chose rather to seek patrons, and became bondmen to the rich, the slaveholders, and exempted persons, giving both themselves and their property to their protectors. Thus frequently the impoverished descendants of former _honoratiores_ became first bondmen and then slaves. During that long epoch of grinding oppression and taxation, the division and subdivision of the community into classes and grades originated. This classification was based on pursuits and occupations, and also according to the imposts levied on each class, from the magnate--as the rich social successors of the oligarchs were now called--down to the lowest laborer and chattel. Finally, the whole property in the Roman world--the country, the city, the lands, houses, and slaves--was centred in the hands of a few magnates, who owned incalculable numbers of colonists, bondmen, serfs, and chattels.
The famous Roman legions were recruited from yeomen, plebeians, workmen and colonists; in one word, from the free population. When freemen diminished, foreigners and barbarians were hired and enrolled. Sylla's military murderers were in great part Spanish Celts; and after Sylla and Marius, foreigners entered more and more into the composition of the Roman armies. Caligula had a kind of body-guard composed of Germans; and soon all the nations conquered by Rome were represented, not only in the armies, but even under the imperial canopy. Then arose the intestine wars for imperial power carried on by pretenders, each _proclaimed_ by some province or legion. These wars resulted in slaughter, devastation, ruin and universal misery; and thus enlarged the number of slaves, and powerfully revived the slave traffic, which survived the downfall of heathenism and the Roman world.
Domestic slavery, acting through long centuries, brought about a thoroughly diseased and depraved condition of society, which, in turn, reacted upon its producing cause, exacerbating and intensifying it. The result was, that domestic slavery quite overmastered the ancient Roman world. At the melancholy period of Rome's disruption, the high-souled, patriotic citizen--that compact and columnar type of character--had become quite extinct, and in his place were large slave-owners, slave-drivers, and slave-traders. The masters and protectors of Rome were foreigners and barbarians. The slaveholders could not defend the empire, and beneath them was a degraded population of so-called freemen, and millions of serfs and slaves, all of them without a spark of love for their country, and destitute even of material incitements to urge them to defend their homes or uphold the existing condition of society. None of them had any interest to sustain their slaveholding masters or the fiscality of the empire; and at times the lower classes, the slaves especially, even joined the invaders. Thus, when Alaric appeared before Rome, over forty thousand slaves joined his camp.
Such was the condition of the Roman world and its western provinces, Spain and Gaul, when the avalanche from the north burst upon it with its torrent of invaders. The oligarchic slaveholders, having destroyed the republic, transmitted to the Cæsars a society which had through their means become utterly degenerate and depraved. The emperors, in their turn, transmitted to the new era a world putrescent with domestic slavery. Often does a virus eat its way so deeply into a healthy organism, as to change its very character and the conditions of its existence. Then the morbid disorganization becomes an apparently normal condition, until finally life is altogether extinct. Such was the effect of chattelhood on the Roman world, and especially on Italy, which was the soul and centre of the system. Nor does it require any great apprehension to see how the tragic analogy holds in the case of the Southern States of the North American confederacy.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 14: The Cæsars proper end with Nero, and then begin the emperors of various families and even nationalities.]
[Footnote 15: See speech of Senator Mason of Virginia.]
[Footnote 16: So to-day no law creates or gives a definition of "sand-hillers," "clay-eaters," and other brutalized poor whites in the South, who are rapidly approaching slavery.]
XIV.
CHRISTIANITY: ITS CHURCHES AND CREEDS.
AUTHORITIES:
_General History, Ecclesiastical History, Councils, Bulls, etc._
Christianity appeared for the purpose of effecting a regeneration in man's moral nature; this necessarily included also his social regeneration.
The primitive Christians, apostles, and martyrs, by their words, actions, and death, taught charity, brotherly love, and equality before God; and thus slowly but powerfully undermined slavery. They consoled in every possible way their lowly and suffering brethren, and tried to inspire the slaveholders with feelings of charity and benevolence toward their bondmen; but as the apostles did not attack any prevalent social or political evil, nay, even seemed to countenance, by their silent recognition or their advice, the existing imperial despotism, so, for obvious reasons, they could not directly attack domestic slavery nor proclaim universal emancipation. They preached to slaves and slaveholders, made converts from both, and considered and treated both as equal before God and the law. The few words of apostolic consolation which have been transmitted to us as referring especially to chattels, logically and morally contain a condemnation of slavery, for it is only misfortune and evil that inspire pity or require consolation. So that the apostles and primitive Christians, by advising slaves to bear their yoke patiently, thereby proclaimed slavery to be an evil, like any of the sufferings, losses, or misfortunes of life.
When, under Constantine, Christianity was embodied in a national ecclesiasticism, the Church watched more directly over the condition of the slaves. In various ways it tried to alleviate their condition and effect their manumission; and this it urged the more earnestly as the Christians belonged mostly to the poorer classes, and also numerous serfs and slaves.
But the Church had now become a material fact, and henceforward, beside its legitimate moral aims, it had also worldly and selfish desires. It received imperial and private donations, became a large proprietor of lands, and therefore also a holder of slaves and serfs. It could therefore take no distinct interest in emancipation, but nevertheless still continued to inspire slaveholders with a milder spirit, and tried to prevent, as far as possible, the slave traffic, at least in Christian chattels.
None of the apostles, fathers, confessors, or martyrs of the Church ever affirmed slavery to be a moral and divine institution, or ever attempted to justify it in any way. These primitive Christians and holy fathers never once thought to refer to the curse of Noah as a justification of slavery. The Biblical story of Noah and his curse was first dragged into this question by the feudalized mediæval clergy, to justify the enslavement, not of black Africans but of white Europeans, among whom, undoubtedly, were the ancestors of many blatant American supporters of the divine origin, on Biblical authority, of slavery.
When the Roman empire was broken in pieces by the northern invaders, the body of the Roman Church and clergy belonged to the subdued and enslaved race. The Franks, Northmen, and Anglo-Saxons were then altogether heathen; but many of the invaders--as the Visigoths and Ostrogoths, the Vandals, Burgundians, Heruli, and Longobards--were Christians; but, being Arians (Unitarians), they were enemies of the Trinitarians, and treated the Roman clergy as they did the rest of the subdued population. The Roman clergy, however, finally succeeded in superseding the Arian dogmas by their own, and they then constituted the sole expounders of Christian doctrine. Moved then by the Christian spirit, as well as by consanguinity with the enslaved population, they never failed to impress on the conquerors, whether heathen or Christian, their duties toward their slaves. They also continued to promote manumissions by declaring them meritorious before God. These manumissions were performed at the sacred altar with all the pomp and impressive rites of the Church, and were often extorted from the slaveholding barbarian in his last agonies.
As before, so during the first centuries of the Germanic settlements of Western and Southern Europe, the Church never recognized the right of one man to enslave another; but rather through the voice of Gregory the Great, bishop, pope, or saint, reaffirmed the ancient axiom of the Roman jurist: "_Homines quos ab initio natura creavit liberos--et jus gentium jugo substituit servitutis_." The efforts of Gregory the Great, as also those of his predecessors and successors, were directed toward stopping the infamous slave traffic, first in Christian slaves, and then in Jews, Mussulmans, and all heathen. The Roman Church and its leaders unceasingly condemned the slave-trade, and the popes menaced with excommunication the traffickers in Mussulman prisoners in Rome, Lyons, Venice, etc., as also those Germans who afterward, in the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries, enslaved the prisoners of war which they made among the Slavonic tribes, Christian and heathen. The popes have likewise perpetually condemned the African or negro slave-trade, from its beginning down to the present day. Gregory XVI. interdicts "all ecclesiastics from venturing to maintain _that this traffic in blacks_ is permitted under any pretext whatsoever;" and prohibits "teaching in public or in private, in any way whatever, any thing contrary to this apostolic letter." Explicit words of this tenor, coming from the pope, were generally considered as expressing the spirit of the Papal Church. In the Roman, as in all other churches and sects, however, both clergy and laity were wont to interpret all such mandates according to their own convenience.
For reasons formerly alluded to, the various national ecclesiastical councils held in countries politically reconstructed by German invaders--as Spain, France, and England--repeatedly and explicitly legislated on slavery. These councils had it constantly in view to moderate the general treatment of slaves and bondmen, and to prevent mutilation and other cruel modes of punishment. The churches were proclaimed inviolable places of refuge for fugitive slaves, and while emancipation was urged as meritorious, the enslavement of freemen was visited with excommunication.
Soon, however, the Church, that is, the priesthood and hierarchy, came to form an integral part of the feudal system. The higher clergy shared the public spoils, and had fiefs and other estates stocked with serfs and chattels. Then the fervor for emancipation abated; nevertheless, the clergy generally recommended a humane treatment of the enslaved. The Irish clergy and councils perhaps proved themselves the most disinterested at that early mediæval epoch: they were the "underground railroad" of the period--assisting in the escape of slaves from bondage; and a council held in Armagh in 1172, gave _liberty_ to all _English_ (that is, Saxon) slaves in Ireland. Nowadays, on the contrary, the immense majority of the Irish Roman clergy on this continent support and sanction chattel slavery.
In the course of time the clerical hierarchies, monasteries, etc., inoculated with the feudal and baronial spirit, became as zealous for the preservation of even the most revolting forms of servitude imposed upon the bondmen, as the most rapacious lay barons could possibly have been. Nowhere did the clergy raise its voice for either a total or a partial abolition of bondage.
Serfdom, which had long previously vanished from Italy, was, at the appearance of Luther, on the point of dissolution in England. The father of the religious reformation of Germany rather avoided blending social with spiritual reform; but the French and Swiss reformers, as well as the anabaptists and other sects, kept especially in view the amelioration of the condition of the oppressed masses. In general, the great movements for a freer spiritual activity which characterized the sixteenth century, contributed to promote the emancipation of serfs: and this first by purifying and elevating the public conscience, and then by bringing about the secularization of church property. The state, on becoming the heir of the clergy, was everywhere foremost in abolishing servitude: the ecclesiastical corporation, on the other hand, never labored for its abolition.
Among the various religious bodies--the Quakers and the modern Unitarians excepted--the absoluteness of Christian doctrine and morals has always been greatly modified by worldly interests. Not the Episcopal nor Scottish churches, nor indeed any other denomination, can claim the merit of having begotten the noble sentiment so universal in England on the subject of human bondage. The Roman clergy continues, as it always has done, to oscillate between duty and interest; and the various Protestant sects do the same. And it is a significant feature that in the American Union almost every religious denomination has its pro-slavery and its anti-slavery factions.
XV.
GAULS.
AUTHORITIES:
_Cæsar, Dieffenbach, Picot, Amadee Thierry, etc._
The Gauls (_Gadhels_, _Gaels_ or _Gals_), a branch of the Aryas, were the first historic race which peopled Central and Western Europe. It is supposed that the Gauls (afterward wrongly called Kelts) emigrated from Asia to Europe before the Greeks, Latins, or Slavonians, as undoubtedly they did long previous to the Teutons or Germans. Already, in prehistoric times, from the regions of the Danube to the Atlantic, on the Alps and the Pyrenees as well as on the British and Irish islands, these first wanderers left their marks in the names of rivers and mountains. Gallia (Gaul) finally became their home, and from thence they repeatedly issued forth and shook the ancient world, ravaged Greece and extended their empire to Asia Minor on the east, and Italy on the south. They burnt republican Rome in its very infancy, and for centuries the Roman republic struggled for life and death with them, until they were finally subdued by Cæsar.
The whole of Gaul was occupied by tribes more or less consanguineous, and their internal social organization was in many respects similar. Cæsar, in his bird's-eye view, says that the two dominant classes were the druids and nobles, while under them were the "_plebs, poene servorem habetur loco, quæ per nihil audet et nullo adhibitur consiglio_." This only explains the absence or perhaps dormancy of political rights. "_Plerique_ (not _all_, it will be noticed, but _many_, and these mainly such as had suffered reverses of fortune) _sesse in servitutem_ DICANT _nobilibus--in hos eadem omnia sunt jura quæ dominis in servis_." This latter phrase only means that certain relations between the chief and his dependents were similar to those of master and chattel--being the only form of servitude known to Cæsar, who did not understand the tribal organization on which the authority of the chief was based.
Parke Godwin, in his highly elaborate and valuable History of France, says very justly that "the Gallic society was a mere conglomeration of chieftains and followers." After giving a picture of Gallic family life and exhibiting the nature of the chieftain's power and functions, that eminent writer thus continues: "The other members of the clan consisted of a number of dependents in various degrees of subordination, and of adherents whose ties were more or less voluntary." Among the dependents were "bondmen (attached to the soil), debtor-bondmen, _obaerati_, strangers found in the country without a protector or lord, and slaves, captives of war or purchased in the open market." Thus far Parke Godwin.
Slaves, if indeed such existed among the Gauls at the time of Cæsar, were certainly exceedingly limited in number, and chattelhood was not an inherent condition of any part of the people. In his history of his long wars with the Gauls, Cæsar makes no allusion to a slave-element in the population--an omission which shows how insignificant it must have been.
The commercial relations of the Gauls with the Phoenicians and with the Greek colony of Massilia, or Marseilles, probably tended to encourage slavery among them. But although our knowledge of their internal relations and domestic economy is very scanty, there are a few facts which prove that domestic slavery was hardly even in an embryonic stage at the epoch when the Gauls, by their contact with Rome and Cæsar, entered the general current of history. The Massaliotes (or colonists established at Marseilles), trafficked in slaves. They also had them in their houses, but did not employ them on lands situated beyond the precincts of the city. For field laborers they hired the Ligurians, who, at given seasons, descended with their wives from the mountains and worked for wages. Lands belonging to Gallic clans or districts were no more worked by slave labor than were the fields of the Massaliotes. Even in the households of the chieftains or nobles, domestic slavery, if it existed, must have been hidden from sight. Possidonius, tutor of Pompey, Cicero, and other eminent Romans, gives a description of the mode of life and domestic customs of the Gauls, in whose country he travelled. He observed, that at their luxurious feasts the guests were served by the children of the family, instead of domestic slaves; which fact authorizes the conclusion that the number of chattels was very small, and that they had no place in family life.
Gallic slaves consisted of criminals, vagabonds, foreigners imported from Massilia, and prisoners of war principally made from nations beyond the Alps and the Rhine. Even after the invasion of the Kimbri and Belgæ, Gaul was inhabited by tribes more or less akin to each other. It was therefore the theatre of almost uninterrupted domestic war between tribes and federations. But when one tribe was conquered by another, the subject people and those who escaped the fury of battle were not reduced to slavery, but simply became tributary, and received their laws from the conqueror. Exceptions to this rule must have been exceedingly rare. If an invading tribe was subdued, it received lands and was obliged to settle among the conquerors. The founders of Rome, as we saw (see "Romans: Republicans"), acted in a similar manner. Prisoners of war were absorbed into the clan, and were held, perhaps exclusively by the chieftain, in the condition of serfs bound to the soil, but not as chattels or marketable objects; and they were neither deprived of personality nor the rights of family.
The arable lands, forests, and pasturages were owned by the clan collectively--the chiefs, of course, receiving the lion's share when distributed for cultivation; and each clan lived on its own lands. These agricultural clansmen it was who constituted the terrible armies which, under various Brenni (chiefs, leaders, kings), so often terrified and scourged almost the whole known world.
With the increase of the wealth and power of the chieftains, their relations with the poorer clansmen became more aggressive, and the lands were held by the latter under conditions more and more onerous. But when Cæsar invaded Gaul, no large estates (_latifundia_) existed, and the soil was in the hands of a numerous peasantry inspired with patriotism and love of independence. This peasantry flocked to the standard of Vercingetorix, and, to the last, sustained him in his deadly struggle against Cæsar.
The living acoustic telegraph used by the Gauls during the wars with Cæsar is another proof that great estates did not exist in Gaul, and that the soil was tilled by freemen possessed of homesteads: for each peasant, from the limit of his homestead, shouted the news to his next neighbor, he to the next, and so on; and thus intelligence was swiftly carried hundreds of miles even during the shortest day of the year. An important event occurring in any one tribe was thus spread in a twinkling all over Gaul. Now, if the country had been divided into large estates worked by slaves, such a mode of communication would of course have been impossible.