is a mistake in
the date. Christianity had no influence upon Roman society; when the
Barbarians came, that society had disappeared. For such is God's curse
upon property; every political organization based upon the exploitation
of man, shall perish: slave-labor is death to the race of tyrants. The
patrician families became extinct, as the feudal families did, and as
all aristocracies must.

It was in the middle ages, when a reactionary movement was beginning
to secretly undermine accumulated property, that the influence of
Christianity was first exercised to its full extent.

The destruction of feudalism, the conversion of the serf into the
commoner, the emancipation of the communes, and the admission of the
Third Estate to political power, were deeds accomplished by Christianity
exclusively. I say Christianity, not ecclesiasticism; for the priests
and bishops were themselves large proprietors, and as such often
persecuted the villeins. Without the Christianity of the middle ages,
the existence of modern society could not be explained, and would not be
possible.

The truth of this assertion is shown by the very facts which M.
Laboulaye quotes, although this author inclines to the opposite opinion.
[57]

Now, we did not commence to love God and to think of our salvation until
after the promulgation of the Gospel.

1. Slavery among the Romans.--"The Roman slave was, in the eyes of
the law, only a thing,--no more than an ox or a horse. He had neither
property, family, nor personality; he was defenceless against his
master's cruelty, folly, or cupidity. 'Sell your oxen that are past
use,' said Cato, 'sell your calves, your lambs, your wool, your hides,
your old ploughs, your old iron, your old slave, and your sick slave,
and all that is of no use to you.' When no market could be found for the
slaves that were worn out by sickness or old age, they were abandoned to
starvation. Claudius was the first defender of this shameful practice."

"Discharge your old workman," says the economist of the proprietary
school; "turn off that sick domestic, that toothless and worn-out
servant. Put away the unserviceable beauty; to the hospital with the
useless mouths!"

"The condition of these wretched beings improved but little under the
emperors; and the best that can be said of the goodness of Antoninus
is that he prohibited intolerable cruelty, as an ABUSE OF PROPERTY.
_Expedit enim reipublicae ne quis re re sua male utatu