es are treated
much worse than others: they are considered as more profligate than the
rest, and since they could not be restrained by the advantages of so
excellent an education, are judged worthy of harder usage. Another sort
of slaves are the poor of the neighbouring countries, who offer of their
own accord to come and serve them: they treat these better, and use them
in all other respects as well as their own countrymen, except their
imposing more labour upon them, which is no hard task to those that have
been accustomed to it; and if any of these have a mind to go back to
their own country, which, indeed, falls out but seldom, as they do not
force them to stay, so they do not send them away empty-handed.

"I have already told you with what care they look after their sick, so
that nothing is left undone that can contribute either to their case or
health; and for those who are taken with fixed and incurable diseases,
they use all possible ways to cherish them and to make their lives as
comfortable as possible. They visit them often and take great pains to
make their time pass off easily; but when any is taken with a torturing
and lingering pain, so that there is no hope either of recovery or ease,
the priests and magistrates come and exhort them, that, since they are
now unable to go on with the business of life, are become a burden to
themselves and to all about them, and they have really out-lived
themselves, they should no longer nourish such a rooted distemper, but
choose rather to die since they cannot live but in much misery; being
assured that if they thus deliver themselves from torture, or are willing
that others should do it, they shall be happy after death: since, by
their acting thus, they lose none of the pleasures, but only the troubles
of life, they think they behave not only reasonably but in a manner
consistent with religion and piety; because they follow the advice given
them by their priests, who are the expounders of the will of God. Such
as are wrought on by these persuasions either starve themselves of their
own accord, or take opium, and by that means die without pain. But no
man is forced on this way of ending his life; and if they cannot be
persuaded to it, this does not induce them to fail in their attendance
and care of them: but as they believe that a voluntary death, when it is
chosen upon such an authority, is very honourable, so if any man takes
away his own life without the approbat