Page:Copley 1844 A History of Slavery and its Abolition 2nd Ed.djvu/39

Rh have often been redeemed from captivity by a ransom paid by their friends; or exchanged for other captives, restored to their own country, and set at liberty.   When did slavery begin? At a very early period. We do not know whether it existed before the flood; but, as the presumptuous wickedness of man had risen to such an awful height, as to call for that judgment from a righteous God, we can scarcely think that, among the monstrous evils that prevailed, the oppression of man by man did not hold a conspicuous place. Indeed, the predictive curse pronounced soon after the flood, against Ham and his posterity, "a servant of servants, (or a slave of slaves,) shall he be unto his brethren," would have been unintelligible if slavery had been unknown.
 * 1) Debtors have sometimes sold themselves to their creditors, either for a limited time, or for life.
 * 2) A vast proportion of slaves have been made so by the treachery of man. They have been enticed by stratagem, or seized by violence, and sold into captivity. Even parents have sold their children in this manner.
 * 3) Children born of parents in a state of slavery, being destitute of the means of claiming the native liberty of man, have inherited the slavery of their parents, and become the property of their possessor; and thus slavery, when once incurred, has been perpetuated from generation to generation.

In rather more than a century after the flood, Nimrod, the son of Cush, grandson of Ham and