Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/66

 in complexion, in language, in habits, the hope of liberty amalgamated the heterogeneous mass. Eunus, their wise leader, in the spirit of the East, employed the power oi superstition to rally the degraded serfs to his banner, and, like Mahomet, pretended a revelation from heaven. Sicily had been divided into a few great plantations; and now the voice of a leader, joining the fanaticism of religion to the enthusiasm for freedom, with the hope of liberty awakened the slaves, not in Sicily only, but in Italy, to the use of army. What need of dwelling on the horrors of a servile war? Cruel overseers were stabbed with pitchforks; the defenseless were cut to pieces by scythes; tribunals, hitherto unheard of, were established, where each family of slaves might arraign its master, and, counting up his ferocities, adjudge punishment for every remembered wrong. Well may the Roman historian blush as he relates the disgraceful tale. Quis aequo animo ferat in principe gentium populo bella servorum? The Romans had fought their allies, yet had fought with freemen; let the queen of nations blush, for she must now contend with victorious slaves. Thrice, nay, four times, were the Roman armies defeated; the insurrection spread into Italy; four times were even the camps of Roman prætors stormed and taken; Roman soldiers became the captives of their bondmen. The army of the slaves increased to 200,000. It is said, that in this war a million of lives were lost; the statement is exaggerated; but Sicily suffered more from the devastations of the servile, than of the Carthaginian war. Twice were Roman consuls unsuccessful. At length, after years of defeat, the benefits of discipline gave success to the Roman forces. The last garrison of the last citadel of the slaves disdained to surrender, and could no longer resist; they escaped the ignominy of captivity by one universal suicide. The conqueror of slaves, a new thing in Rome, returned to enjoy the honors of an ovation.

The object of Tiberius Gracchus, continued by his eloquent and equally unhappy brother, who moreover was the enlightened and energetic advocate of a system of internal improvement in Italy, aimed at ameliorating the condition of the indigent freemen. The great servile insurrection was designed to effect the emancipation of slaves; and both were unsuccessful. But God is just and his laws are invincible. Slavery next made its attack directly on the patricians, and following the order of Providence in the government of the moral world, began with silent but sure influence to corrupt the virtue of families, and even to destroy domestic life. It is a well ascertained fact, that slavery diminishes the frequency of marriages in the class of masters. In a state where emancipation is forbidden, the slave population will perpetually gain upon the numbers of the free. We will not stop to develop the three or four leading causes of this result, pride and the habits of luxury, the facilities of licentious indulgence, the circumscribed limits of productive industry; some of which causes operate exclusively, and all of them principally, on the free. The position is certain and is universal; no where was the principle more amply exemplified than in Rome. The rich slaveholders preferred luxury and indulgence to marriage; and celibacy became so general, that the aristocracy was obliged by law to favor the institution, which, in a society where all are free, constitutes the solace of labor and the ornament of life. A Roman censor could, in a public address to the people, stigmatize matrimony as a troublesome companionship, and recommend it only as a patriotic sacrifice of private pleasure to public duty. The depopulation of the upper class was so considerable, that the waste required to be 6upplied by emancipation; and repeatedly there have been periods, when the majority of the Romans had once been bondmen. Emancipation was essential to the preservation of a class of freemen, who might serve as a balance to the slave population. It was this extensive celibacy and the consequent want of succession, that gave a peculiar character to the Roman laws relating to adoption.

The continued and increasing deleterious effects of slavery on Roman institutions,