called their peculium, whatever they acquired was their master's; they could neither plead, nor be pleaded, but were entirely excluded from all civil concerns; were not entitled to the rights of matrimony, and therefore had no relief in case of adultery; nor were they proper subjects of cognation or affinity. They might be sold, transferred, or pawned, like other goods or personal estate; for goods they were, and as such they were esteemed."[1]
Can there be a greater contrast between the laws of different states than that between the Roman law and the Hebrew law in regard to slaves? And yet Rome was the most powerful empire on the earth, and claimed to be highly civilized. But which code leans more to barbarism? Which is instinct with the spirit of a new and better civilization? Moses was the first to recognize slaves as human beings. No matter how low the slave might be in the scale of rank — how abject his condition — he was a MAN. We boast of this doctrine of equality as if it were a modern discovery, and popular assemblies applaud, or sing in chorus, the noble line of Burns,
"A man's a man for a' that,"
forgetting that the fine sentiment of the poet was a recognized truth and a principle of law more than thirty centuries before he was born. Indeed no other state, ancient or modern, not Scotland or Switzerland, answered more fully to the poet's dream of simplicity and equality than that which was planted on the Judean hills. A state which respected manhood and womanhood, and in which labor was honorable, and agricultural labor above all the most honored of human pursuits, was the very one in which the free-hearted Scot might have
"Walked in glory and in joy
Behind his plough along the mountain side."
- ↑ Horne's Introduction. American edition. Yol. II., p. 166. Note.
