posed only of savage tribes, of which the Roman armies were destined to commence the civilisation at a later period, but which would have been lost, like the rest of the world, in the darkness of Oriental slavery.

The defeat of the Persians was then a fortunate circumstance for humanity; but it did not end the contest, since this contest still lasts after so many ages; and in our own times the nations of Europe are still found to be divided, as were formerly Greece and Asia. On the one hand, a free people; on the other, autocrats and absolute kings. The spectacle has only changed its locality; it has passed from the east to the west; but the army of the free people advances; it reckons at the present day in its ranks all that is enlightened, noble, and generous upon the earth; besides, it knows that it fulfils the law of Providence, which Themistocles did not know; and it has thus been able to take for its device the victorious cry of the crusaders, "God wills it."

CHAPTER XXV.

HOW THE IDEA OF THE UNITY OF GOD BECAME PREVALENT AMONG THE PEOPLE.

"Les hommes dont la passion a corrompu le jugement ne savent pas suivre les traces de la vérité."

BOSSUET.

THE civil liberty of nations is the first step of the human race in the path of progress, that is to say, the primary condition of all other progress.

The chains of despotism do not weigh less on the mind than on the body; despots reign only by force and falsehood; they know that the sword may sometimes destroy them, but that truth always destroys them.

It is then only among a free people that truth can arise. And if there had not been free nations on the earth, the thought of an only God, of a God the Creator, could never have consoled the human race.

Observe, in point of fact, whence this thought has arisen; seize it at its origin, that you may prostrate yourself and worship it. You will neither prostrate yourself before Babylon nor before Memphis, those towns of idolatry and opprobrium. The first revelation of the unity of God manifested itself to two nations who had escaped as if by a miracle from the chains of slavery; to the Israelites who had become free by the genius of Moses; to the Greeks who had become free by the institutions of Solon.

And, although expanded by the joys of liberty, the heart of these people was not sufficiently enlarged to contain this thought. Moses remained alone without being understood; and at a later period Socrates experienced the same fate. All that these two great men could do, was to protest before God against the blindness of the people, and to bequeath their ideas to future ages.

CHAPTER XXVI.

MAN IS COMPLETE;

HE IS ALL THAT WHICH HE MAY BE; HE PRODUCES ALL THAT HE CAN PRODUCE,ONLY WHEN IN THE ENJOYMENT OF HIS LIBERTY -A PHYSICAL AND MORAL LAW OF NATURE.

"L'esclavage deshonore le travail, il introduit l'oisiveté dans la société, et avec elle l'ignorance et l'orgueil, la pauvreté et le luxe. 11 énerve les forces de l'intelligence, et endort l'activité humaine."

DE TOCQUEVILLE. De la Démocratie en Amerique.

NATURE wills that not only our moral interests, but likewise that all our temporal interests, those to which the multitude are most sensible,-should be impaired by slavery. It is thus that she protects liberty: she foresaw the case in which entire nations would adopt the vices and the crimes which tend to the acquisition of wealth, without caring to justify them, except by their prejudices; and this case having been foreseen, she opposes to it a law, the power of which can move the most venal souls, viz. man is complete; he is all that which he may be; he produces all that which he can produce, only when in a state of liberty.

In fact, it is now proved that free hands can produce more than hands fettered by slavery; that the free man works better than the man brutalised by slavery, or even by despotism; lastly, that it is more lucrative to pay a workman who acts with intelligence, than to feed a slave who acts like a piece of mechanism. In order to force us to respect man, God has made liberty a source of riches.

This law, which impels us to justice by avarice, bears

evidence of the solicitude of Providence for his favourite creature. This ought not to render us too proud, for it likewise bears evidence of our baseness, since it places in some measure man's liberty under the safeguard of his cupidity-man comprehends his interest before comprehending justice.

Now, cast your eyes upon the America of Washington; study the state of its manners, the multitude of barbarous prejudices which consume it, which threaten it with a return of the middle ages; and you will judge that among a people who have two millions of slaves, and where the slave is not regarded as a man, but as merchandise-a beast of burden, of which each head is worth ten acres of cultivated land, you will judge, I say, that among these people, merchants in human flesh, the law which we have just expressed is of a much more powerful, and of much more intelligible application than the most sublime precepts of the Gospel.

But, there is in the law a second article more fatal than the first. After having verified the idleness and the brutalisation of slavery, the terrible law carries with it a sentence of death, and declares the master to be a homicide. It may be expressed in a few words: man is so evidently intended to be free, that slavery destroys the species.

In fact, populations of slaves are only renewed by fresh importations.

The Romans seemed to conquer the world only in order to supply their slave-markets: they consumed whole nations; their most illustrious warriors were but their purveyors.

Strabo mentions a town where as many as ten thousand slaves a day were sold for the exclusive service of the Romans, and this market was not the most considerable one. During the wars of Gaul, Cæsar caused the inha

bitants of the conquered towns to be put up to auction; the number of individuals amounted more than once to fifty thousand. We may by these examples estimate the consumption of slaves.

Christian nations offer similar illustrations. It is proved that the slave population of the West Indies is renewed every fifteen years. It is, then, at this rate that the longest average duration of the life of man, when mutilated by slavery, must be estimated.*

Such is the physical law of nature it declares the possessors of slaves to be homicides. As to the moral law, God recals it to our memory every morning and evening, in the first words of the prayer, "Our Father!" Consider

well these words, "Our Father!" and not, My Father. It is a single man who speaks, and yet he speaks in the name of all. In addressing himself to God, in invoking him by the most sacred title, he is not permitted to isolate himself. His prayer is collective: it recals to his mind his family, the great family of God,-a truly celestial prayer, in which each individual presents himself before his Father, surrounded by all his brethren, and in which, from his solitary chamber, he prays in the name of the whole human race.

Break, then, the chains of thy slaves, or cease to raise thy soul to God. Thou mayest perceive that each word of thy prayer denounces to him a fratricide.

There is an ancient tradition of the East, that Solomon possessed a ring, on which angels had engraved the true name of God. By the magic of this name, unknown to men, the sage discovered treasures, subjected nations to his

*This is no proof that slavery is the cause of death, for numbers of slaves attain a great age, and the average mortality among Europeans in the West Indies is certainly much greater than that above mentioned.-Note of Translator.