Nature des divers genres d’esclavage domestique.

CHAP. 2: > Nature of the diverse kinds of domestic slavery.

I have previously expounded the circumstances under which certain faculties of man develop in preference to others; I have shown that most of the causes that contribute to maintaining a people in barbarism tend to give it all the qualities and all the vices that are suited to making it a conquering people; I have also shown that the same causes that determine a people to adopt the agricultural life, or to practice other peaceful arts, at first cause it to neglect the exercise of the faculties that would be necessary for its defense: from this, I have drawn the consequence that slavery, and the vices and prejudices that are inseparable from it, must have been and really were carried from harsh and cold countries toward those which, by their temperature, are most suited to cultivation.

But one must not lose sight of the fact that this action of peoples upon one another results from a difference of exercises, developments, and needs, and that it is not the immediate and necessary product of a difference in the temperature of the atmosphere, as several philosophers have thought. If, when a barbarous people has invaded the territory of a civilized people and reduced its inhabitants to servitude, it preserves its prejudices and habits; if it continues to devote itself to the exercises that made it a conquering people, it is clear that it will remain suited to military life and will have all its passions, though placed on the soil most favorable to agriculture or to other kinds of industry. This is indeed what has happened in all more or less civilized countries when they have been subjugated by barbarous peoples. To maintain their empire, the individuals of the conquering caste and those who affiliated themselves with them have preserved or acquired all the qualities and all the vices developed in other climates. One could then see conquering armies emerge from the countries most favorable to civilization and move against populations less fortunately situated, to enslave them in turn. In such a case, it is not the vices of the countries suited to civilization that act upon the peoples situated in less favorable lands; it is the vices and prejudices of barbarism that react upon the peoples in whose midst they originated, or upon peoples placed in an analogous position.

There can be no question here of expounding all the particular circumstances that, in each country, have contributed to the establishment of slavery; it is enough that I have expounded the general causes that have set nations at war and that have ensured the triumph of some over others. It is now only a matter of examining what constitutes slavery, and of expounding the general effects that this state has produced in the places where it has been established. To know these effects in their full extent, one must seek them in the physical, intellectual, and moral faculties of the diverse classes of persons who experience their immediate effects; in the increase or decrease of each of the classes of the population; in the moral or religious principles of the masters and slaves; in the formation, distribution, and consumption of national wealth; in the industry and commerce of nations that possess colonies exploited by slaves; in the progress or stationary state of foreign peoples; in the nature of governments, and finally in the mutual relations of nations.

Slavery, not being a state so determinate that it is not susceptible to degrees, has not had the same characteristics in all times and among all peoples; and the effects it has produced have been more or less extensive according to its greater or lesser intensity. One could divide its history into three great periods; the first is that which took place from the most ancient times known to us until the fall of the Roman empire; the second is that of the feudal regime; the third is that of the establishment of European colonies in America or in some other parts of the world, from the sixteenth century to our own day. These periods are not as distinct in history as they are here; the Romans, in the last days of the empire, had slaves who greatly resembled serfs of the glebe; and, after the invasion of the barbarians, there continued to exist a kind of slavery that differed little from that which existed in the time of the republic; but, as I propose less to write the history of servitude than to expound its effects, I have no need here for greater precision in the order of time.

During the first of these three epochs, slavery was admitted by all European nations. No distinction of species existed between masters and slaves. Enslaved men were employed in all sorts of occupations; the only exceptions were for public functions and military service. It resulted from this that the action exercised by peoples with regard to one another never had for its object the setting of limits to the power of masters over their slaves. It even happened very rarely that a people, after victory, thought of reclaiming the prisoners that had been taken from it. In the alternative of abandoning those of its fellow citizens who did not have the means to ransom themselves, or of running the risk of returning the men one possessed as property, the most lucrative course was taken. The restitution of an army of prisoners, for the nation that would have obtained it, would, in general, have profited only the poor classes from which the soldiers came; but the restitution of a multitude of slaves, for the people who would have made it, would have weighed particularly on the aristocratic class. The Roman patricians who, in order to take the inhabitants of a city and transform them into slaves, lost a certain number of soldiers, saw in this operation only a good deal. It was an exchange in which everything was gain for the aristocracy; for a good foreign slave was worth more to it than two national proletarians: the law was designed to serve this interest [3].For the same reasons that one people never acted upon another to limit the power of masters over their slaves, one class of society never acted upon the others for a similar purpose. The most influential men were those who possessed the greatest number of slaves; and their authority, as members of the government, tended only to extend or to guarantee the power they possessed as masters or proprietors. If religion sometimes intervened in the affairs of the State or in foreign wars, it was always to support the power of the aristocracy, or to share in the booty taken by the conquerors. The priests of Apollo would predict victory for all who invoked their god, provided they were promised the tithe of the spoils; and far from demanding the freedom of the male or female captives, they required that their share be delivered to them in kind, when they were young [4].

Slavery, during the second period, was likewise admitted by all the nations of Europe; but it then had a particular character; the slaves were generally attached to agriculture, and were considered part of the soil they cultivated. Since other kinds of industry had made very little progress, the possessors of men could only procure a small number of luxury objects with great difficulty. They were, consequently, obliged to consume immediately and without exchange the greater part of the revenues they drew from the lands they had invaded; and, as it is impossible in such a case for one individual to consume the fruit of the labors of a hundred, the men who were possessed were subjected to less harsh labors or had a larger share of the products to consume. Moreover, since the authority that united the masters was very weak, any one of them who treated his slaves too harshly might have seen them desert his domains to give themselves to another master [5]. Finally, the common chief of the masters often found them disposed to resist him, and, to subjugate them, he sought a point of support among their slaves: the latter thus profited from the losses that the former suffered in their independence. These causes and a few others that are useless to report contributed to making slavery less harsh in the second period than it had been in the first. The slaves who are still attached to the glebe in several parts of Europe are infinitely less miserable than were those who existed before the fall of the Roman empire.

In the third period, domestic slavery appeared under a new aspect. The slaves no longer belonged to the same species or the same race as the masters; they differed from them in color, features, religion, and language. The enslaved men were brought to islands or portions of a continent in which servitude was circumscribed; they were generally devoted to a special branch of agricultural labor. Since the products they obtained could not be consumed on the spot but were destined for commerce, and since an individual had acquired the power to consume immense wealth through the progress made by the arts, excessive labors were demanded of them, and they were left with only what was strictly necessary to keep them alive. But, on the other hand, the possessors of men were not absolutely masters in their own house: because they were subject to governments or nations that did not admit domestic servitude on their own territory, they were hindered in the exercise of their power. The men who were not called to take part in the benefits of servitude then declared themselves more or less, as always happens, in favor of the oppressed against the oppressors. Finally, among the sects into which Christianity divided, the most moral ones energetically demanded the abolition of slavery, and sometimes they reinforced their precepts with their examples [6].

Thus, although the general results of domination and servitude have been nearly the same in all times, one can conceive that these results must have been modified by the circumstances I have just observed, or by other analogous ones. It was necessary to indicate them before going further, in order to better see the relations that exist between effects and causes.

According to Roman custom, men fell into slavery in several ways. All soldiers taken with weapons in hand, all persons found in a city taken by assault, were slaves of the victors. These slaves of all ages, sexes, and ranks were sold at auction for the profit of the republic. Sometimes, they were sold retail; at other times they were sold wholesale to merchants who followed the armies, and who would go on to resell them in fairs or markets [7]. Roman children became slaves if they were sold by their fathers; debtors, if they were delivered as such to their creditors. A father could sell his children even if they were married; he could also sell his grandchildren. The sale of one citizen by another, even with the consent of the one being sold, was at first declared illegal; but, as it happened that individuals allowed themselves to be sold in order to claim their freedom after having profited from the price for which they had been sold, and as these fraudulent sales harmed the prosperity of the republic's commerce, they were eventually declared valid. Men condemned for crimes were sometimes reduced to servitude and became public property; finally, any child born of a slave woman was a slave.

There existed in Rome a market that was always open, in which men, women, and children were displayed for sale. This market was abundantly supplied by the citizens who speculated in this kind of merchandise, and especially by the illustrious patricians who were placed at the head of the armies. A consul who managed to make himself master of an industrious city, and who, after having had almost all the men able to bear arms slaughtered, led forty or fifty thousand individuals of every sex and age in triumph to the market, produced an admiration that still endures. One saw good faith, loyalty, and all the Roman virtues reign in these markets: so as not to deceive the buyers, the merchants stripped their merchandise bare; the mother of the family and the young girl, as well as the men, were stripped of their clothing, publicly exposed to the gaze of the curious, and subjected to all the examinations suitable for preventing fraud. It was in the midst of this market that the young man of great fortune and the old soldier whom war had enriched went to buy the women they needed; it was there also that the respectable matrons went to choose the young men necessary for the service of their house.

In order to give sellers and buyers all possible facilities and thus increase the prosperity of commerce, no regard was had for the family ties that might exist between the individuals displayed for sale. When, after the capture of an industrious city, the population was put up for auction retail, the husband was sold to one individual, the wife to another, the daughter to a third, and so on for the rest of the family, according as the tastes or caprices of the bidders decided. The same liberty reigned in private sales as in public sales: the citizen who possessed several human couples could sell the children and keep the mother, or sell the mother and keep the children, as his interests demanded. As for the father, no one even bothered to know if he existed, or who he was: the child born of a woman ranked among things was himself only a thing, even if he were the son of a senator or a consul.

The Romans being a people very jealous of their liberty, and their first legislators having inspired in them a religious respect for property, no force protected the men or women who were things against the violence of the men or women who were persons; a force that protected the former against the latter would have been an attack on property. If the individuals, men or women, who belonged to a Roman citizen, showed themselves rebellious to his desires, whatever they might be, the magistrate of the republic would arrive with sufficient force to subdue this revolted property, and thus watched over the maintenance of good order and good morals [8].

An individual who, according to Roman morals, was placed in the rank of things, thus had no property, not even that of the smallest part of his person. He had only the skill that it pleased his master to have him exercise; the products of his labor were constantly seized from him by the man who possessed him. He had only the food, clothing, and lodging that his master granted him. No family tie existed for him: he could do nothing for the woman with whom he was united, nor for the children to whom he had given life; he could neither protect them from insult, nor grant them the slightest help in their needs; he could demand nothing of his wife, not even fidelity; he could demand nothing of his children, not even deference; for her part, the wife could demand nothing of her husband, not even simple protection; she could owe him nothing, not even chastity [9].

Servitude of the glebe, which existed among all the nations of Europe and is still the condition of a considerable part of the northern nations, is less harsh in many respects than the slavery practiced among the Romans. The slaves are in some sense considered part of the soil, and pass from one master to another with the land on which they are found. They are therefore not sold retail at the market, and consequently family ties are not broken among them, as they were among the Roman slaves. Since the products resulting from their labors could be transported far away only with difficulty, being of little value compared to their volume, a more or less considerable share remained for the cultivators.

The slavery introduced into the American colonies resembles, in several respects, that which existed among the Romans; but it differs in three remarkable points: the slaves and masters belong to different species; the products obtained by the slaves' labors are generally destined for export, and consequently the enslaved population is reduced to what is strictly necessary for it to live; finally, the masters are placed under the influence of nations that do not admit slavery on their territory, and therefore cannot give themselves over without reserve to their natural inclinations. We will see later how these various circumstances contribute to modifying the existence of the various classes of the population.