Page:Notes on the State of Virginia (1802).djvu/210

196 vetulos, plauſtrum vetus, ferramenta vetera, furvum ſenem, ſervum morboſum, & ſi quid aliud ſuperſit vendat.’ Cato de re ruſticâ. c. 2. The American ſlaves cannot enumerate this among the injuries and inſults they receive. It was the common practice to expoſe in the iſland Æſculapius, in the Tyber, diſeaſed ſlaves, whoſe cure was like to become tedious. The emperor Claudius, by an edict, gave freedom to ſuch of them as ſhould recover, and firſt declare that if any perſon choſe to kill rather than expoſe them, it ſhould be deemed homicide. The expoſing them is a crime of which no inſtance has exiſted with us; and were it to be followed by death, it would be puniſhed capitally. We are told of a certain Vedius Pollio, who, in the preſence of Auguſtus, would have given a ſlave as food to his fiſh, for having broken a glaſs. With the Romans, the regular method of taking the evidence of their ſlaves was under torture. Here it has been thought better never to reſort to their evidence. When a maſter was murdered, all his ſlaves, in the ſame houſe, or within hearing, were condemned to death. Here puniſhment falls on the guilty only, and as preciſe proof is required againſt him as againſt a freeman. Yet notwithſtanding theſe and other diſcouraging circumſtances among the Romans, their ſlaves were often their rareſt artiſts. They excelled too in ſcience, inſomuch as to be uſually employed as tutors to their maſter's children. Epictetus, Terence, and Phædrus were ſlaves. But they were of the race of whites. It is not their condition then, but nature, which has produced the diſtinction.—Whether further obſervation will or will not