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The problem of slavery in its worse forms is thus at bottom a cheap-labour problem analogous to that which confronts North America and South Africa to-day; and there is an essential difference which is often ignored between the educated slave in a Roman Government office who did the work of a First Division Civil Servant for his imperial master and his compeer working in the fields of South Italy: and between the household servants of a Virginian family and the plantation-slaves of the farther South.
But under the Empire, as descendants of the plantation-slaves succeeded in purchasing their freedom and forming a new class of shopkeepers and clerks, their religion correspondingly reflected their rise in the world. They remained indifferent, if not hostile, to the Imperial Hellenic tradition, but they began to aspire to a kingdom of their own in this world as well as in the next.
He whose heart is not of iron can never wish to be able to defend it: while he heaves a sigh for the poor negro in captivity, he wishes from his soul that the traffic had been stifled in its birth; but unfortunately the Governments of Europe nourished it, and now that they are exerting themselves to do away the evil, and ensure liberty to the sons of Africa, the situation of the plantation-slaves is depicted as truly deplorable and their condition wretched.
Even when their quarters were invaded and they found themselves surrounded by a score of wild, hairy, half-naked men, who save that they appeared once to have been white looked like a horde of savages, the Spaniards could not believe their eyes. Who could have dreamed that a handful of forgotten plantation-slaves would have dared to take so much upon themselves?
They often experience terrible inflictions; not generally so terrible or so frequent as the field-hands, and very rarely in the presence of guests House-slaves are for the most part treated far better than plantation-slaves, and those under the immediate direction of the master and mistress, than those under overseers and drivers.
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