er case History evidently lost a chance of self-repetition in the
person of some leader like Moses, the Hebra-Egyptian Spartacus, arising
to avenge and deliver his people.

We now shall note how he proceeds to descant on slavery
itself:--"Slavery," says he, "was a survival from a social order which
had passed away, and slavery could not be continued. IT DOES NOT
FOLLOW THAT per se IT WAS A CRIME. The negroes who were sold to the
dealers in the factories were most of them either slaves already to
worse masters or were servi, servants [164] in the old meaning of the
word, or else criminals, servati or reserved from death. They would
otherwise have been killed, and since the slave trade has been
abolished, are again killed in the too celebrated customs...."

Slavery, as Mr. Froude and the rest of us are bound to discuss it at
present, is by no means susceptible of the gloss which he has
endeavoured, in the above extract, to put on it. The British nation,
in 1834, had to confront and deal with the only species of slavery
which was then within the cognizance of public morals and practical
politics. Doubtless our author, learned and erudite as he is, would
like to transport us to those patriarchal ages when, under theocratic
decrees, the chosen people were authorized to purchase (not to kidnap)
slaves, and keep them as an everlasting inheritance in their posterity.
The slaves so purchased, we know, became members of the families to
which their lot was attached, and were hedged in from cruel usage by
distinct and salutary regulations. This is the only species of slavery
which--with the addition of the old Germanic self-enslavements and the
generally prevailing ancient custom of pledging one's personal services
[165] in liquidation of indebtedness--can be covered by the singular
verdict of noncriminality which our author has pronounced. He, of
course, knows much better than we do what the condition of slaves was
in Greece as well as in Rome. He knows, too, that the "wild and guilty
phantasy that man could hold property in man," lost nothing of its
guilt or its wildness with the lapse of time and the changes of
circumstances which overtook and affected those reciprocal relations.
Every possibility of deterioration, every circumstance wherein man's
fallen nature could revel in its worst inspirations, reached
culmination at the period when the interference of the world, decreed
by Providence, was rendered imperative by th