nother: which has happened frequently enough
in history, without its being supposed that the inhabitants of the
districts so transferred became therefore slaves. In this, as in the
former case, the dispute seems about the fashion of the thing, rather
than the fact of it. There are two rocks in mid-sea, on each of which,
neglected equally by instructive and commercial powers, a handful of
inhabitants live as they may. Two merchants bid for the two properties,
but not in the same terms. One bids for the people, buys _them_, and
sets them to work, under pain of scourge; the other bids for the rock,
buys _it_, and throws the inhabitants into the sea. The former is the
American, the latter the English method, of slavery; much is to be said
for, and something against, both, which I hope to say in due time and
place.[74]

132. If, however, slavery mean not merely the purchase of the right of
compulsion, but _the purchase of the body and soul of the creature
itself for money_, it is not, I think, among the black races that
purchases of this kind are most extensively made, or that separate souls
of a fine make fetch the highest price. This branch of the inquiry we
shall have occasion also to follow out at some length, for in the worst
instances of the selling of souls, we are apt to get, when we ask if the
sale is valid, only Pyrrhon's answer[75]--"None can know."

133. The fact is that slavery is not a political institution at all,
_but an inherent, natural, and eternal inheritance_ of a large portion
of the human race--to whom, the more you give of their own free will,
the more slaves they will make themselves. In common parlance, we idly
confuse captivity with slavery, and are always thinking of the
difference between pine-trunks (Ariel in the pine), and cowslip-bells
("in the cowslip-bell I lie"), or between carrying wood and drinking
(Caliban's slavery and freedom), instead of noting the far more serious
differences between Ariel and Caliban themselves, and the means by
which, practically, that difference may be brought about or diminished.

134.[76] Plato's slave, in the _Polity_, who, well dressed and washed,
aspires to the hand of his master's daughter, corresponds curiously to
Caliban attacking Prospero's cell; and there is an undercurrent of
meaning throughout, in the _Tempest_ as well as in the _Merchant of
Venice_; referring in this case to government, as in that to commerce.
Miranda[77] ("the wonderful," so addres