man should be set free in the seventh year, and that, if he had brought a wife and children with him into bondage, he should take them out with him. This, however, is not all. We may reckon four principal sources from which the nations of antiquity derived their slaves: (1) Conquest, which was the greatest source of all; (2) Piracy and kidnapping, which was a great source of slaves in early times among the Greeks, and in later times at Rome; (3) Penal servitude for crime, which was a less but still a considerable source; (4) Debt, which, under harsh laws, made the debtor, in default of payment, the slave of the creditor. The early period of Roman history is filled, as is well known, with the troubles caused by the cruelty of creditors, who, having lent money to the poor at usurious interest, seized for the debt the property, the families, and the persons of their insolvent debtors. This was in fact the source of a desperate conflict between classes, ending in a great political revolution. The same thing took place in Attica, where multitudes of the peasant proprietors, overwhelmed with debts contracted by borrowing money of the rich at a high rate of interest, had not only lost their holdings, which they had mortgaged for the money, but were themselves being sold into slavery; till at last affairs came to a desperate crisis, and the government was put, with extraordinary powers, into the hands of Solon, who could only cure the evil by a moderate use of the sponge. The lower orders in ancient Gaul had been in like manner reduced by debt to become bondmen to the nobility when the Romans entered the country, and
