15.18. 18. Of Freedmen and Eunuchs.
Thus in a republican government it is
frequently of advantage that the situation of the freedmen be but little
below that of the free-born, and that the laws be calculated to remove a
dislike of their condition. But in a despotic government, where luxury
and arbitrary power prevail, they have nothing to do in this respect;
the freedmen generally finding themselves above the free-born. They rule
in the court of the prince, and in the palaces of the great; and as they
study the foibles and not the virtues of their master, they lead him
entirely by the former, not by the latter. Such were the freedmen of
Rome in the times of the emperors.
When the principal slaves are eunuchs, let never so many privileges
be granted them, they can hardly be regarded as freedmen. For as they
are incapable of having a family of their own, they are naturally
attached to that of another: and it is only by a kind of fiction that
they are considered as citizens.
And yet there are countries where the magistracy is entirely in
their hands. "In Tonquin,"
[41]
says Dampier,
[42]
"all the mandarins,
civil and military, are eunuchs." They have no families, and though they
are naturally avaricious, the master or the prince benefits in the end
by this very passion.
Dampier tells us, too,
[43]
that in this country the eunuchs cannot
live without women, and therefore marry. The law which permits their
marriage may be founded partly on their respect for these eunuchs, and
partly on their contempt of the fair sex.
Thus they are trusted with the magistracy, because they have no
family; and permitted to marry, because they are magistrates.
Then it is that the sense which remains would fain supply that which
they have lost; and the enterprises of despair become a kind of
enjoyment. So, in Milton, that spirit who has nothing left but desires,
enraged at his degradation, would make use of his impotency itself.
We see in the history of China a great number of laws to deprive
eunuchs of all civil and military employments; but they always returned
to them again. It seems as if the eunuchs of the east were a necessary
evil.
Footnotes
[41]
It was formerly the same in China. The two Mahometan Arabs who
travelled thither in the ninth century use the word eunuch whenever they
speak of a governor of the city.
