ed by a free man.[886] This is a repetition of the opinion of the
ancients that slavery was indispensable (sec. 285). If all the women
were free, some of them would do the housework. A modern Turk is a
tyrant inside his own dwelling. For his wife he has a proverb that she
should have "neither mouth nor tongue." The girls are not educated to
be such wives. They find some support at home against their husbands.
Hence nearly all Turks entertain feelings of dislike and ill will
towards their parents-in-law, and prefer slave concubines, whose
relatives they welcome, if the wife is pretty, or wins their affection.
Great ladies buy promising girls of seven or eight and train them, and
sell them again.[887]

+307. Review of slavery in Islam.+ The injunctions of Mohammedanism
sound just and humane; the practice of Mohammedans is cruel and
heartless. The slave is not a thing or ware; he is a man entitled to
treatment worthy of a man. A man may take his slave as a concubine, but
he must not sell her to vice. A free man may marry a slave, if she is
not his own. A free woman may marry a slave, with the same restriction.
If a slave woman bears a child to her master, the child is free, and the
mother cannot be sold or given away. At the death of her owner she
becomes free. A slave man and woman may marry, with the consent of the
owner, to which they have a claim if they have behaved well. A slave man
is limited to two wives. Emancipation is a religious and meritorious act
on the part of a slave owner.[888] "In general, it must be acknowledged
that neither amongst the people of antiquity, nor amongst Christians,
have slaves enjoyed such good treatment as amongst Moslems."[889] The
provision about a slave woman who becomes a mother by her master is the
one to arouse most Christian shame. Still, the Moslems have so many
special pleas and technical interpretations by which to set aside
troublesome laws that we can never infer that the mores conform to the
laws. It is against the law for a Moslem to reduce a Moslem to slavery,
but the Turks rob the Kurds and other tribes of their women, or buy them
from the barbarous Tcherkess.[890]

+308. Slavery in England.+ Sir Thomas More[891] provided for some of the
troubles of life by slavery. Slaves were to do "all laborsome toil,"
"drudging," and "base business." They were to be persons guilty of debt
and breakers of marriage.[892] Garnier quotes a law of 1547 (I Ed. VI,
c. 3), in which a vilein