at
of the blacks on the continent of America. The two sexes were
confined in separate apartments, because to raise a child cost
the master more than to buy one. Cato, for a very restricted
indulgence to his slaves in this particular, took from them a
certain price. But in this country the slaves multiply as fast as
the free inhabitants.... The same Cato, on a principle of
economy, always sold his sick and superannuated slaves. He gives
it as a standing precept to a master visiting his farm, to sell
his old oxen, old wagons, old tools, old and diseased servants,
and everything else become useless.... The American slaves cannot
enumerate this among the injuries and insults they receive. It
was the common practice to expose in the island AEsculapius, in
the Tiber, diseased slaves whose cure was likely to become
tedious. The Emperor Claudius, by an edict, gave freedom to such
of them as should recover, and first declared that if any person
chose to kill rather than expose them, it should be deemed
homicide. The exposing them is a crime of which no instance has
existed with us; and were it to be followed by death, it would be
punished capitally. We are told of a certain Vedius Pollio, who,
in the presence of Augustus, would have given a slave as food to
his fish for having broken a glass. With the Romans, the regular
method of taking the evidence of their slaves was under torture.
Here it has been thought better never to resort to their
evidence. When a master was murdered, all his slaves, in the same
house, or within hearing, were condemned to death. Here
punishment falls on the guilty only, and as precise proof is
required against his as against a freeman. Yet notwithstanding
these and other discouraging circumstances among the Romans,
their slaves were often their rarest artists. They excelled, too,
in science, insomuch as to be usually employed as tutors to their
master's children. Epictetus, Terence, and Phoedrus, were slaves.
But they were of the race of whites. It is not their condition
then, but nature which has produced the distinction. Whether
further observation will or will not verify the conjecture, that
nature has been less bountiful to them in the endowments of the
head, I believe that in those of the heart she will be found to