an average master being probably not worse than that of the hired labourer;[1] where Paris, a king’s son, keeps his flock on Ida, and Nausicaä, a king’s daughter, goes out with her handmaidens to wash linen at the spring; where the faithful swineherd Eumæus stands almost upon a level with freemen, is treated by Ulysses as a friend, and is deeply attached to his master and his master’s house; but where, nevertheless, “A man loses half his manhood on the day when he becomes a slave.”
Such is the slavery with which the Hebrew Lawgiver deals: and he deals with it, as it was before said that he deals with rude institutions generally, not to establish or perpetuate it, but to mitigate it, restrict it, and prepare the way for its abolition. That he did not introduce it we know; since we see it existing before him in the Patriarchal age.
To keep a Hebrew in perpetual bondage, except by his own consent, is absolutely forbidden. “If thou buy an Hebrew servant, six years he shall serve; and in the seventh he shall go out free for nothing.”[2] “If thy brother, an Hebrew man, or an Hebrew woman, be sold unto thee, and serve thee six years; then in the seventh year thou shalt let him go free from thee.”[3] “It shall not seem hard unto thee, when thou sendest him away free from thee; for he hath been worth a double hired servant to thee, in serving thee six years: and the Lord thy God shall bless thee in all that thou doest.” The occurrence of the year of jubilee might cut the term of servitude still shorter.[4] And even
