Page:The rise, progress, and phases of human slavery.djvu/76

 by this piece of historic intelligence. It is not the less true, however. Living experience adds the weight of its testimony to that of ancient history to confirm M. de Cassagnac's conclusions. For, to this day, we find that wherever direct or chattel slavery is the normal condition of the mass of the labouring class—as, for instance, in sundry Asiatic nations and in the Southern States of America till recently—there pauperism and mendicity are comparatively unknown. A few beggars and destitute persons may be found, here and there, amongst such people; but, besides that their number is hardly noticeable in the general mass, it will also be found that even these few are decayed freedmen and their offspring, or else the descendants of slaves who had purchased or otherwise obtained their freedom.

M. de Cassagnac mentions another fact confirmatory of this conclusion. It is, that the first great irruption of beggars, prostitutes, thieves, and paupers which overran Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire is ascertained to have taken place from the second to the sixth century—a period which corresponds exactly with the time when the mass of pagan slaves set free was added to the mass of enfranchised Christians; and this irruption made itself manifest at once by the regular organisation of hospitals which then took place, but which were altogether unknown to the ancients, whose custom it was to provide for their sick and infirm slaves in private infirmaries, to which dispensaries were attached, within their own premises. Indeed, wherever we find the word "beggar" or "pauper" occur in primitive writings, we may make sure that those writings belong to an epoch when a great many slaves had already been emancipated—that is to say, to a secondary epoch in the civilization of the country the writings may refer to.

The same remark applies to mercenaries or wages-slaves; for the ancient mercenary is no other than a manumitted slave, who is allowed to sell his labour when he can no longer be sold himself, he being no longer any one's property. There is an allusion to this class of persons in Leviticus xxv. 6: there are a few also in the "Odyssey." Plutarch, in his "Life of Theseus," cites a verse of Hesiod, in which also allusion is made to mercenaries or wages-slaves. In the same poem of Hesiod there is mention made of beggars. These several allusions, however, are made in such a way as to show that the class referred to was insignificantly small. Moreover, it is far from certain that in some of them the word "mercenary" does not refer to a class of slaves corresponding with those modern ones in America, whose masters allowed them, as it were, to farm themselves out to other employers, accepting a fixed sum for themselves, and permitting the slaves to appropriate the overplus; just as a modern London cabman is allowed to pocket all he can make in the day, over and above what he pays his "governor" for the use of his horse and vehicle. It is remarkable that Homer's "Iliad," which was written before the "Odyssey," does not contain a single hemistich having reference to paupers or beggars; from which it has been inferred that the period intervening between the two works was one of those periods of transition when, manumissions occurring