shew that his condition, before public opinion had begun to guard the poor, was hard, and liable to oppression. Achilles in Homer, when he wishes to express the dreariness of the realms below, says that he would rather be the hired labourer of a poor man than reign over all the Dead.
Accordingly we find that servitude among the Hebrews is sometimes voluntary. “And it shall be, if he (the bondman) say unto thee, I will not go away from thee; because he loveth thee and thine house, because he is well with thee; then thou shalt take an awl and thrust it through his ear into the door, and he shall be thy servant for ever. And also unto thy maidservant thou shalt do likewise.”[1] So in the early part of the Middle Ages, amidst the wild unsettlement of the times, many persons gave up their independence for the protection of a lord.
Slavery was domestic among the Hebrews, as it is generally in the East. The slave would live constantly with his master, have daily opportunities of winning his regard, and derive from his society all the benefits which an inferior can derive from the society of a superior. On the great American plantations, on the contrary, the slaves live in “quarters” of their own, separate from the whites: they work in the field by themselves all day, no white being present but the overseer. The master of the plantation seldom appears upon the scene of labour, and barely knows his human chattels by sight. In fact, the overseer is often the only white with whom the slaves come into con-
