mon among humane
owners under the Roman Empire; indeed Gibbon observes that the law had
to guard against the swamping of free citizens by the sudden inrush of
"a mean and promiscuous multitude." Clerical manumission of slaves in
mediaeval times was therefore no novelty. On the other hand, bishops
held slaves like kings and nobles. The Abbey of St. Germain de Pres,
for instance, owned 80,000 slaves, and the Abbey of St. Martin de
Tours 20,000. The monks, who according to Mr. Henson, did so much to
extinguish slavery, owned multitudes of these servile creatures.

The acts of a few humane and noble spirits are no test of the effects of
a system. The decisions of Church Councils are a much better criterion.
They show the influence of _principles_, when personal equation is
eliminated. Turning to these Councils, then, what do we find? Why that
from the Council of Laodicea to the Lateran Council (1215)--that is,
for eight hundred years--the Church sanctioned Slavery again and again.
Slaves and their owners might be "one in Christ," but the Church taught
them to keep their distance on earth.

Civilisation, not Christianity, gradually extinguished Slavery in
Europe. Foreign slavery, such as that in our West Indian possessions,
is an artificial thing, and may be abolished by the stroke of a pen. But
domestic slavery has to die a natural death. The progress of education
and refinement, and the growth of the sentiment of justice, help to
extinguish it; but behind these there is an economical law which is no
less potent. Slave labor is only consistent with a low industrial life;
and thus, as civilisation expands, slavery fades into serfdom, and
serfdom into wage-service, as naturally as the darkness of night melts
into the morning twilight, and the twilight into day.

Mr. Henson throws in some not ineloquent remarks about the abolition
by Christianity of the gladiatorial shows at Rome. He himself has stood
within the ruined Colosseum and re-echoed Byron's heroics. Mr. Henson
even outdid Byron, for he looked up to the dome of St. Peter's, where
gleamed the Cross of Christ, and rejoiced that "He had triumphed at
last." "If only Mr. Foote had been there!" Mr. Henson exclaims. Well,
Gibbon was there before Mr. Henson and before Byron. What he thought
in the Colosseum I know not, but I know that the great project of
_The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_ took shape in his mind one
eventful evening as he "sat musing amidst the ruin