"By the civil law the power of making slaves is esteemed a right of nations, and follows, as a natural consequence of captivity in war." This is the first origin of the right of slavery assigned by Justinian. The conqueror, say the civilians, had the right to the life of his captive; and having spared that, has the right to deal with him as he pleases. This position, taken generally, is denied by Blackstone, who observes that a man has a right to kill his enemy, only in cases of absolute necessity for self-defense; and it is plain this absolute necessity did not exist, since the victor did not kill him, but made him prisoner. Since, therefore, the right of making slaves by captivity depends on a supposed right of slaughter, that foundation failing, the consequence drawn from it must fail likewise. Farther, it is said, slavery may begin "jure civili," when one man sells himself to another; but this, when applied to strict slavery, in the sense of the laws of old Rome or modern Barbary, is also impossible. Every sale implies a price, an equivalent given to the seller in lieu of what he transfers to the buyer; but what equivalent can be given for life and liberty, both of which, in absolute slavery, are held to be at the master's disposal? His property, also, the very price he seems to receive, devolves to his master the instant he becomes his slave: and besides, if it be not lawful for a man to kill himself, because he robs his country of his person, for the same reason he is uot allowed to barter his freedom; — the freedom of every citizen constitutes a part of the public liberty. In this case, therefore, the buyer gives nothing, and the seller receives nothing; of what validity, then, can a sale be, which destroys the very principle upon which all sales are founded? Lastly, we are told, that besides these two ways, by which slaves may be acquired, they may also be hereditary; the children of acquired slaves being, by a negative kind of birthright, slaves also; but this being founded on the two former rights, must fall together with them, if neither captivity, nor the sale of one's self, can, by the law of nature and reason, reduce the parent to slavery, much less can they reduce the offspring.[1]
Voluntary slavery was first introduced in Rome by a decree of the senate in the time of the emperor Claudius, and at length was abrogated by Leo. The Romans had the power of life and death over their slaves; which no other nations had. This severity was afterwards modified by the laws of the emperors; and by one of Adrian it was made capital to kill a slave without a cause. The slaves were esteemed the proper goods of their masters, and all they got belonged to them; but if the master was too cruel in his domestic corrections, he was obliged to sell his slave at a moderate price. The custom of exposing old, useless or sick slaves, in an island of the Tiber, there to starve, seems to have been very common in Rome; and whoever recovered, after having been so exposed, had his liberty given him, by an edict of the emperor Claudius, in which it was likewise forbidden to kill any slave merely for old age or sickness. Nevertheless, it was a professed maxim of the elder Cato, to sell his superannu-
- ↑ Blackstone's Com.: Montesquieu's Spirit of Laws.
