BONDAGE. Is a term which has not ob tained a juridical use distinct from the ver nacular, in which it is either taken as a synonym with slavery, or as applicable to i any kind of personal servitude which is n voluntary in its continuation.
2. The propriety of making it a distinct juridical term depends upon the sense given to the word slavery. If slave be understood to mean, exclu sively, a natural person who, in law, is known as an object in respect to which legal persons may have rights of possession or property, as in respect to domestic animals and inanimate things, it is evi dent that any one who is regarded as a legal person, capable of rights and obligations in other relations, while hound by law to render service to another, is not it slave in the same sense of the word. Such a one stands in a legal relation, being under an obligation oorrelative to the right of the person who is by law entitled to his service, and, though not an object of property, nor possessed or owned as a chattel or thing, he is a person bound to the othor, and may be called a bondman, in distinction from a slave as above understood. A greater or less number of rights may be attributed to persons bound to render service. Bondage, may subsist under many forms. Where the rights attributed are such as can be exhibited in very limited spheres of action only, or are very imperfectly protected, it may be difficult to see wherein the condition, though nominally that of a legal person, differs from chat tel slavery. Still, the two conditions have been plainly distinguishable under many legal systems, and even as existing, at the same time under one source of law. The Hebrews may have held per sons of other nations as slaves of that chattel con dition which anciently was recognized by the laws of all Asiatic and European nations; but they held persons of their own nation in bondage only as legal, persons capable ag rights, while under an obligation to serve. Cobb's Hist. Sketch, ch. 1. When the serfdom of feudal times was first esta blished, the two conditions were co-existent in e0ery part of Europe (ibid. ch. 7), though afte? wards the bondage of serfdom was for a long period the only form known there until the revival of chattel slavery, by the introduction of negro slaves into European commerce, in the sixteenth century. Every villein tinder the English law was
clearly a legal person capable of some legal rights, whatever might be the nature of his services. Coke, Litt. 123 b; Coke, 2d Inst. 4, 45. But at the first recognition of negro slavery in the jurisprudence of England and her colonies the slave was clearly a natural person, known to the law as an object of possession or property for others, having no legal 'personality, who therefOre, in many legal respects, resembled's, thing or chattel. It is true that the moral responsibility of the slave and the duty of others to treat him.as an accountable human being and not as a domestic animal were always more or lees clearly recognized in the criminal jurisprudence. There has always been in his condition a mingling of the qualities of person and of thing, which has led to teeny legal contradictions. But, while no rights or obligations, iri relations between him and other natural persons such as might be judicially enjoreed by or against him, were attributed to him, there was a propriety in distinguishing the condi tion as chattel slavery, even though the term itself implies that there is an essential distinction between such a person and natural things, of which it seems absurd to say that they are either free or not free. The phrases instar return, tanquam bona, are aptly used by older writers.. The 'bondage of the villein could not be thus characterized; and there is no historical connection between the principles which determined the existence of the one and those which sanctioned the other. The law of English villenage furnished no rules applicable to negro slavery in America. 5 Rand. Va. 680, 683; 2 Hill, Ch. So. C. 390; 9 Ga. 561; 1 Hurd, Law of Free dom and Bondage, c. 4, 5. Slavery in the colonies was entirely distinct from the condition of those white persons who were held to service for years, which was involuntary in its continuance, though founded in most instances on contract. These per sons had legal rights, not only in respect to the community at large, but also in respect to the per son to whom they owed service.