Domitian forbade the mutilation of slaves. Hadrian suppressed the ergastula, or private prisons for the confinement of slaves ; he also restrained proprietors from selling their slaves to keepers of gladiators, or to brothel-keepers, except as a punishment, in which case the sanc tion of a judge (judex) was required. Antoninus Pius adopted an old law of the Athenians by which the judge who should be satisfied of a slave being cruelly treated by his owner, had power to oblige the owner to sell him to some other per son. The judge, however, was left entirely to his own discretion in determining what measure of harshness in the owner should be a proper ground for judicial inter position. Septimius Severus forbade the forcible subjection of slaves to prosti tution. The Christian emperors went further in protecting the persons of slaves. Constantine placed the wilful murder of a slave on a level with that of a freeman ; and Justinian confirmed this law, in cluding within its provisions cases of slaves who died under excessive punish ment. Constantine made also two laws, both nearly in the same words, to prevent the forcible separation of the members of servile families by sale or partition of property. One of the laws, dated A.D. 334, was retained by Justinian in his code. The Church also powerfully in terfered for the protection of slaves, by threatening excommunication against owners who put to death their slaves without the consent of the judge ; and by affording asylum within sacred precincts to slaves from the anger of unmerciful masters. A law of Theodosius I. au thorized a slave who had taken refuge in a church to call for the protection of the judge, that he might proceed un molested to his tribunal in order that his case might be investigated. After Chris tianity became the predominant reli gion in the Roman world, it exercised in various ways a beneficial influence upon the condition of the slaves, without however interfering, at least for centuries, with the institution of slavery itself. Even the laws of the Christian emperors which abolished the master's power of life and death over his slave were long evaded. Salvianus (De Gubernatione J)ei, iv.) informs us that in the provinces of Gaul, in the fifth century, masters still fancied that they had a right to put their slaves to death. Macrobius (Saturn., i. 11) makes one of his interlocutors, though a heathen, expatiate with great eloquence on the cruel and unjust treatment of slaves. In Spain, in the early period the Visigothic kings, the practice of put ting slaves to death still existed, for in the Foro Judicum ' (b. vi. tit. 5) it is said that as some cruel masters in the impetuosity of their pride put to death their slaves without reason, it is enacted that a public and regular trial shall take place previous to their condemnation. Several laws and ecclesiastical canons forbade the sale of Christians as slaves to Jews or Saracens and other un believers.
The northern tribes which invaded the Western empire had their own slaves, who were chiefly Slavonian captives, dis tinct from the slaves of the Romans or conquered inhabitants. In course of time, however, the various classes of slaves merged into one class, that of the " ad scripti glebte," or serfs of the middle ages, and the institution of Roman slavery in its unmitigated form became oblite rated. The precise period of this change cannot be fixed ; it took place at various times in different countries. Slaves were exported from Britain to the Continent in the Saxon period, and the young Eng lish slaves whom Pope Gregory I. saw in the market at Rome were probably brought thither by slave-dealers. Giral dus Cambrensis, William of Malmesbury, and others accuse the Anglo-Saxons of selling their female servants and even their children to strangers, and especially to the Irish, and the practice continued even after the Norman conquest. In the canons of a council held at London, A.D. 1102, it is said, " Let no one from hence forth presume to carry on that wicked traffic by which men in England have been hitherto sold like brute animals." (Wilkins's Concilia, i. p. 383.) But although the traffic in slaves ceased among the Christian nations of Europe, it continued to be carried on by the Venetians across the Mediterranean in the age of the Crusades. The Venetians supplied the markets of the Saracens with slaves purchased from the Slavonian tribes which bordered on the Adriatic. Besides, as personal slavery and the traffic in slaves continued in all Moham medan countries, Christian captives taken by Musselmans were sold in the markets of Asia and Northern Africa, and have continued to be sold till within our own times, when Christian slavery has been abolished in Barbary, Egypt, and the Ottoman empire, by the interference of the Christian powers, the emancipation of Greece, and the conquest of Algiers by the French.
With the discovery of America, a new description of slavery and slave-trade arose. Christian nations purchased African ne groes for the purpose of employing them in the mines and plantations of the New World. The natives of America were too weak and too indolent to undergo the hard work which their Spanish task-masters exacted of them, and they died in great numbers. Las Casas, a Dominican, advocated with a persevering energy before the court of Spain the cause of the American aborigines, and reprobated the system of the " reparti. mentos," by which they were distributed in lots like cattle among their new mas ters. But it was necessary for the settle ments to be made profitable in order to satisfy the conquerors, and it was sug gested that negroes from Africa, a more robust and active race than the American Indians, might be substituted for them. It was stated that an able-bodied negro could do as much work as four Indians. The Portuguese were at that time pos sessed of a great part of the coast of Africa, where they easily obtained by force or barter a considerable number of slaves. The trade in slaves among the nations of Africa had existed from time immemorial. It had been carried on in antient times: the Garamantes used to supply the slave-dealers of Carthage, Cyrene, and Egypt with black slaves which they brought from the interior. The demand for slaves by the Portuguese in the Atlantic harbours gave the trade a fresh direction. The petty chiefs of the interior made predatory incursions into each other's territories, and sold their captives, and sometimes their own sub jects, to the European traders. The first negroes were imported by the Portuguese from Africa to the West Indies in 1503, and in 1511 Ferdinand the Catholic al lowed a larger importation. These, how ever, were private and partial speculations; it is said that Cardinal Ximenes was op posed to the trade because he considered it unjust. Charles V., however, being pressed on one side by the demand for labour in the American settlements, and on the other by Las Casas and others who pleaded the cause of the In dian natives, granted to one of his Fle mish courtiers the exclusive privilege of importing 4000 blacks to the West Indies. The Fleming sold his privilege for 25,000 ducats to some Genoese merchants, who organised a regular slave-trade be tween Africa and America. As the European settlements in America in creased and extended, the demand for slaves also increased ; and all European nations who had colonies in America shared in the slave-trade. The details of that trade, the sufferings of the slaves in their journey from the interior to the coast, and afterwards in their passage across the Atlantic—their treatment in America, which varied not only according to the disposition of their individual masters, but also according to different colonies,—are matters of notoriety which have been amply discussed in every coun try of Europe during the last and present centuries. It is generally understood that the slaves of the Spaniards, especially iu Continental America, were the best treated of all. 13ut the negro slaves in general were exactly in the same con dition as the Roman slaves of old, being saleable, and punishable at the will of their owners. Restrictions, however, were gradually introduced by the laws of the respective states, in order to protect the life of the negro slave against the caprice or brutality of his owner. In the British colonies, especially in the latter part of the last century and the beginning of the present, much was done by the legis lature; courts were established to hear the complaints of the slaves, flogging of females was forbidden, the punishment of males was also limited within certain bounds, and the condition of the slave population was greatly ameliorated. Still the advocates of emancipation objected to the principle of slavery as being unjust and unchristian ; and they also appealed to experience to show that a human being cannot be safely trusted solely to the mercy of another.