The Spirit of the Laws :: :: University of Virginia Library

Lenity and humane treatment may prevent the dangers to be apprehended from the multitude of slaves in a moderate government. Men grow reconciled to everything, and even to servitude, if not aggravated by the severity of the master. The Athenians treated their slaves with great lenity; and this secured that state from the commotions raised by the slaves among the austere Lacedmonians.

It does not appear that the primitive Romans met with any trouble from their slaves. Those civil broils which have been compared to the Punic wars were the consequence of their having divested themselves of all humanity towards their slaves. [22]

A frugal and laborious people generally treat their slaves more kindly than those who are above labour. The primitive Romans used to live, work, and eat with their slaves; in short, they behaved towards them with justice and humanity. The greatest punishment they made them suffer was to make them pass before their neighbours with a forked piece of wood on their backs. Their manners were sufficient to secure the fidelity of their slaves; so that there was no necessity for laws.

But when the Romans aggrandised themselves; when their slaves were no longer the companions of their labour, but the instruments of their luxury and pride; as they then wanted morals, they had need of laws. It was even necessary for these laws to be of the most terrible kind, in order to establish the safety of those cruel masters who lived with their slaves as in the midst of enemies.

They made the Sillanian Senatus-Consultum, and other laws, [23] which decreed that when a master was murdered all the slaves under the same roof, or in any place so near the house as to be within the hearing of a man's voice, should, without distinction, be condemned to die. Those who in this case sheltered a slave, in order to save him, were punished as murderers; [24] he whom his master [25] ordered to kill him, and who obeyed, was reputed guilty; even he who did not hinder him from killing himself was liable to be punished. [26] If a master was murdered on a journey, they put to death those who were with him and those who fled. [27] All these laws operated even against persons whose innocence was proved; the intent of them was to inspire their slaves with a prodigious respect for their master. They were not dependent on the civil government, but on a fault or imperfection of the civil government. They were not derived from the equity of civil laws, since they were contrary to the principle of those laws. They were properly founded on the principles of war, with this difference, that the enemies were in the bosom of the state. The Sillanian Senatus-Consultum was derived from the law of nations, which requires that a society, however imperfect, should be preserved.

It is a misfortune in government when the magistrates thus find themselves under the necessity of making cruel laws; because they have rendered obedience difficult, they are obliged to increase the penalty of disobedience, or to suspect the slave's fidelity. A prudent legislator foresees the ill consequences of rendering the legislature terrible. The slaves amongst the Romans could have no confidence in the laws; and therefore the laws could have none in them.