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.
