Page:The rise, progress, and phases of human slavery.djvu/98

 such were its effects, even before the downfall of the Roman empire, to which event it, in our opinion, in no small degree contributed.

Indeed, Rome was already overrun with paupers and fugitive slaves, and Italy with thieves and vagabonds, before Constantine found it politic to make Christianity a state religion. But, lest we might be suspected of giving scope to invention, or of indulging in idle imaginings, on a subject so fraught with interest to mankind, we shall here use the authority of a profound antiquarian to illustrate this critical period of history, when the great transition from chattel-slavery to proletarianism was effected. Let our readers fail not, in perusing it, to compare it with what we have previously laid down in respect of the condition of slaves under the old pagan system. We quote from the learned work of M. Granier de Cassagnac, entitled "Histoire des Classes Ouvrières et Bourgeoises":—

"Things remained in this state, that is to say, the poor, still far from numerous, had no hospital or asylum in which to take refuge during the first ages of the vulgar era. The Christians dispensed alms freely and bountifully, nourishing the necessitious poor out of their substance. But they were not yet masters; they were still a minority of the population. They could not act collectively, publicly, or in a corporate or legal capacity, but only individually and in an isolated manner, each on his own account. The pagan clergy, on the other hand, who were in possession of immense territorial estates, which proceeded partly from permanent grants or donations disbursed from the imperial treasury, and dating as far back as the age of Numa (who had originated them), and partly from innumerable inheritances and legacies which had subsequently fallen to them, never had any idea of succouring the poor, or of organizing any system of public charity; and when, towards the close of the fourth century, Symmachus addressed to Valentinian II., to Theodosius, and to Arcadius those two celebrated letters on the pagan worship which was falling into decay, in which he complains so bitterly of the emperors having confiscated the property of the priests and the vestals, St. Ambrose, in the first of his two answers to Symmachus addressed to Valentinian II., contrasts with the avarice of the pagan clergy, who kept all their riches to themselves, the self-denial of the Christian church, which possessed nothing (as St. Ambrose expresses it) but its faith, and the whole of whose goods were the property of the poor.

"However, although it is certain the number of permanent poor or professional beggars was not very numerous up to the beginning of the third century, there occurred terrible epochs when this number was fearfully augmented. It was in years of famine—in years when the harvests failed in Sicily or in Africa, or when the two corporations of shippers and bakers—one charged with superintending the importations and the other with the distribution of bread and flour—were suddenly brought to a standstill, that occurred those horrible famines from which the superior administration of modern times preserves the people of our times; it was then that all the slaves of Italy, no longer fed by their masters, were seen