dissensions among them, were in fact parts of the economic system of antiquity. The Roman was, as usual, plain in his sentiments and practical in his measures. “So many slaves,” he said, “so many enemies;” and it was a maxim of the Roman writers on agriculture that “a good watch-dog ought not to be on too friendly terms with his fellow-slaves.” The Senate feared to let the slaves wear the same dress, lest they should become conscious of their own numbers. If a master was found dead, every slave in the household was at once and without trial put to death: and the number of victims on one occasion to this horrible safeguard of tyranny was no less than four hundred. Of the relations in which the feudal lords as a class stood to their serfs, the Statute-book of the later Plantagenets and the earlier Tudors is the record. In the Southern States the law forbids the education of slaves, a precaution which goes beyond the cruel fear of the Roman slave-owner; for at Rome not only was the education of slaves freely permitted, but many of them received the highest education, and were employed in callings of the most intellectual kind. The jealousy of the police in the Slave States, as described by Mr. Olmsted,[1] also marks the constant presence of a great social danger. “In Richmond, and Charleston, and New Orleans,” says that writer, “the citizens are as careless and as gay as in Boston or London, and their servants a thousand times as childlike and cordial to all appearance, in their relations with them, as our servants are with us. But go to the bottom of this
- ↑ A Journey to the Back Country, p. 443.
