state, the very members of
which they were supporting by their labours!

Yet such was their general situation: there were two places however,
where their condition, if considered in this point of view, was more
tolerable. The AEgyptian slave, though perhaps of all others the greatest
drudge, yet if he had time to reach the temple[016] of Hercules, found a
certain retreat from the persecution of his master; and he received
additional comfort from the reflection, that his life, whether he could
reach it or not, could not be taken with impunity. Wise and salutary
law![017] how often must it have curbed the insolence of power, and
stopped those passions in their progress, which had otherwise been
destructive to the slave!

But though the persons of slaves were thus greatly secured in AEgypt, yet
there was no place so favourable to them as Athens. They were allowed a
greater liberty of speech;[018] they had their convivial meetings, their
amours, their hours of relaxation, pleasantry, and mirth; they were
treated, in short, with so much humanity in general, as to occasion that
observation of Demosthenes, in his second Philippick, "that the
condition of a slave, at Athens, was preferable to that of a free
citizen, in many other countries." But if any exception happened (which
was sometimes the case) from the general treatment described; if
persecution took the place of lenity, and made the fangs of servitude
more pointed than before,[019] they had then their temple, like the
AEgyptian, for refuge; where the legislature was so attentive, as to
examine their complaints, and to order them, if they were founded in
justice, to be sold to another master. Nor was this all: they had a
privilege infinitely greater than the whole of these. They were allowed
an opportunity of working for themselves, and if their diligence had
procured them a sum equivalent with their ransom, they could
immediately, on paying it down,[020] demand their freedom for ever. This
law was, of all others, the most important; as the prospect of liberty,
which it afforded, must have been a continual source of the most
pleasing reflections, and have greatly sweetened the draught, even of
the most bitter slavery.

Thus then, to the eternal honour of AEgypt and Athens, they were the only
places that we can find, where slaves were considered with any humanity
at all. The rest of the world seemed to vie with each other, in the
debasement and oppression of these un