d down. In Italy itself the
consumption of life was so great that there was no possibility of the
slaves by birth meeting the requirement, and the supply of others by war
became necessary. To these slaves the laws were atrociously unjust.
Tacitus has recorded that on the occasion of the murder of Pedanius,
after a solemn debate in the senate, the particulars of which he
furnishes, the ancient laws were enforced, and four hundred slaves of
the deceased were put to death, when it was obvious to every one that
scarcely any of them had known of the crime. The horrible maxim that not
only the slaves within a house in which a master was murdered, but even
those within a circle supposed to be measured by the reach of his voice,
should be put to death, shows us the small value of the life of these
unfortunates, and the facility with which they could be replaced. Their
vast numbers necessarily made every citizen a soldier; the culture of
the land and the manufacturing processes, the pursuits of labour and
industry, were assigned to them with contempt. The relation of the slave
in such a social system is significantly shown by the fact that the
courts estimated the amount of any injury he had received by the damage
his master had thereby sustained. To such a degree had this system been
developed, that slave labour was actually cheaper than animal labour,
and, as a consequence, much of the work that we perform by cattle was
then done by men. The class of independent hirelings, which should have
constituted the chief strength of the country, disappeared, labour
itself becoming so ignoble that the poor citizen could not be an
artisan, but must remain a pauper--a sturdy beggar, expecting from the
state bread and amusements. The personal uncleanness and shiftless
condition of these lower classes were the true causes of the prevalence
of leprosy and other loathsome diseases. Attempts at sanitary
improvement were repeatedly made, but they so imperfectly answered the
purpose that epidemics, occurring from time to time, produced a dreadful
mortality. Even under the Caesars, after all that had been done, there
was no essential amendment. The assertion is true that the Old World
never recovered from the great plague in the time of M. Antoninus,
brought by the army from the Parthian War. In the reign of Titus ten
thousand persons died in one day in Rome.

The slave system bred that thorough contempt for trade which animated
the Romans. They