2.Of servitude.--"I see, in the lord's manor, slaves charged with domestic duties.Some are employed in the personal service of the master; others are charged with household cares.The women spin the wool; the men grind the grain, make the bread, or practise, in the interest of the seignior, what little they know of the industrial arts.The master punishes them when he chooses, kills them with impunity, and sells them and theirs like so many cattle.The slave has no personality, and consequently no _wehrgeld_ peculiar to himself: he is a thing.The _wehrgeld_ belongs to the master as a compensation for the loss of his property.Whether the slave is killed or stolen, the indemnity does not change, for the injury is the same; but the indemnity increases or diminishes according to the value of the serf.In all these particulars Germanic slavery and Roman servitude are alike." _Weregild_,--the fine paid for the murder of a man.So much for a count, so much for a baron, so much for a freeman, so much for a priest; for a slave, nothing.His value was restored to the proprietor.
This similarity is worthy of notice.Slavery is always the same, whether in a Roman villa or on a Barbarian farm.The man, like the ox and the ass, is a part of the live-stock; a price is set upon his head; he is a tool without a conscience, a chattel without personality, an impeccable, irresponsible being, who has neither rights nor duties.
Why did his condition improve?
"In good season..." "the serf began to be regarded as a man; and, as such, the law of the Visigoths, under the influence of Christian ideas, punished with fine or banishment any one who maimed or killed him."Always Christianity, always religion, though we should like to speak of the laws only.Did the philanthropy of the Visigoths make its first appearance before or after the preaching of the Gospel? This point must be cleared up.
"After the conquest, the serfs were scattered over the large estates of the Barbarians, each having his house, his lot, and his peculium, in return for which he paid rent and performed service.They were rarely separated from their homes when their land was sold; they and all that they had became the property of the purchaser.The law favored this realization of the serf, in not allowing him to be sold out of the country."What inspired this law, destructive not only of slavery, but of property itself? For, if the master cannot drive from his domain the slave whom he has once established there, it follows that the slave is proprietor, as well as the master.
"The Barbarians," again says M.Laboulaye, "were the first to recognize the slave's rights of family and property,--two rights which are incompatible with slavery."But was this recognition the necessary result of the mode of servitude in vogue among the Germanic nations previous to their conversion to Christianity, or was it the immediate effect of that spirit of justice infused with religion, by which the seignior was forced to respect in the serf a soul equal to his own, a brother in Jesus Christ, purified by the same baptism, and redeemed by the same sacrifice of the Son of God in the form of man? For we must not close our eyes to the fact that, though the Barbarian morals and the ignorance and carelessness of the seigniors, who busied themselves mainly with wars and battles, paying little or no attention to agriculture, may have been great aids in the emancipation of the serfs, still the vital principle of this emancipation was essentially Christian.Suppose that the Barbarians had remained Pagans in the midst of a Pagan world.As they did not change the Gospel, so they would not have changed the polytheistic customs; slavery would have remained what it was; they would have continued to kill the slaves who were desirous of liberty, family, and property; whole nations would have been reduced to the condition of Helots; nothing would have changed upon the terrestrial stage, except the actors.The Barbarians were less selfish, less imperious, less dissolute, and less cruel than the Romans.Such was the nature upon which, after the fall of the empire and the renovation of society, Christianity was to act.But this nature, grounded as in former times upon slavery and war, would, by its own energy, have produced nothing but war and slavery.
"GRADUALLY the serfs obtained the privilege of being judged by the same standard as their masters...."When, how, and by what title did they obtain this privilege?
GRADUALLY their duties were regulated."
Whence came the regulations? Who had the authority to introduce them?
"The master took a part of the labor of the serf,--three days, for instance,--and left the rest to him.As for Sunday, that belonged to God."And what established Sunday, if not religion? Whence I infer, that the same power which took it upon itself to suspend hostilities and to lighten the duties of the serf was also that which regulated the judiciary and created a sort of law for the slave.
But this law itself, on what did it bear?--what was its principle?--what was the philosophy of the councils and popes with reference to this matter? The reply to all these questions, coming from me alone, would be distrusted.The authority of M.
Laboulaye shall give credence to my words.This holy philosophy, to which the slaves were indebted for every thing, this invocation of the Gospel, was an anathema against property.
