as measured by what they
had the power of enforcing; how all who made any resistance to
authorities that had arms in their hands, however dreadful might be
the provocation, had not only the law of force but all other laws,
and all the notions of social obligation against them; and in the
eyes of those whom they resisted, were not only guilty of crime, but
of the worst of all crimes, deserving the most cruel chastisement
which human beings could inflict. The first small vestige of a
feeling of obligation in a superior to acknowledge any right in
inferiors, began when he had been induced, for convenience, to make
some promise to them. Though these promises, even when sanctioned by
the most solemn oaths, were for many ages revoked or violated on the
most trifling provocation or temptation, it is probable that this,
except by persons of still worse than the average morality, was
seldom done without some twinges of conscience. The ancient
republics, being mostly grounded from the first upon some kind of
mutual compact, or at any rate formed by an union of persons not very
unequal in strength, afforded, in consequence, the first instance of
a portion of human relations fenced round, and placed under the
dominion of another law than that of force. And though the original
law of force remained in full operation between them and their
slaves, and also (except so far as limited by express compact)
between a commonwealth and its subjects, or other independent
commonwealths; the banishment of that primitive law even from so
narrow a field, commenced the regeneration of human nature, by giving
birth to sentiments of which experience soon demonstrated the immense
value even for material interests, and which thenceforward only
required to be enlarged, not created. Though slaves were no part of
the commonwealth, it was in the free states that slaves were first
felt to have rights as human beings. The Stoics were, I believe, the
first (except so far as the Jewish law constitutes an exception) who
taught as a part of morality that men were bound by moral obligations
to their slaves. No one, after Christianity became ascendant, could
ever again have been a stranger to this belief, in theory; nor, after
the rise of the Catholic Church, was it ever without persons to stand
up for it. Yet to enforce it was the most arduous task which
Christianity ever had to perform. For more than a thousand years the
Church kept up the contest, with hardly