emperor."[1]
[Footnote 1: Vide Gibbons's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
London edition of 1825, vol. 3d, chap. 44, p. 183.]
The above account of slavery and its modifications will be found in
strictest conformity with the Institutes of Justinian. Thus, book 1st,
title 3d, it is said: "The first general division of persons in
respect to their rights is into freemen and slaves." The same title,
sec. 4th: "Slaves are born such, or become so. They are born such of
bondwomen; they become so either by _the law of nations_, as by
capture, or by the civil law." Section 5th: "In the condition of
slaves there is no diversity; but among free persons there are many.
Thus some are _ingenui_ or freemen, others _libertini_ or freedmen."
Tit. 4th. DE INGENUIS.--"A freeman is one who is born free by being
born in matrimony, of parents who both are free, or both freed; or of
parents one free and the other freed. But one born of a free mother,
although the father be a slave or unknown, is free."
Tit. 5th. DE LIBERTINIS.--"Freedmen are those who have been manumitted
from just servitude."
Section third of the same title states that "freedmen were formerly
distinguished by a threefold division." But the emperor proceeds to
say: "Our _piety_ leading us to reduce all things into a better state,
we have amended our laws, and re-established the ancient usage; for
anciently liberty was simple and undivided--that is, was conferred
upon the slave as his manumittor possessed it, admitting this single
difference, that the person manumitted became only a _freed man_,
although his manumittor was a _free_ man." And he further declares:
"We have made all freed men in general become citizens of Rome,
regarding neither the age of the manumitted, nor the manumittor, nor
the ancient forms of manumission. We have also introduced many new
methods by which _slaves_ may become Roman citizens."
By the references above given it is shown, from the nature and objects
of civil and political associations, and upon the direct authority of
history, that citizenship was not conferred by the simple fact of
emancipation, but that such a result was deduced therefrom in
violation of the fundamental principles of free political association;
by the exertion of despotic will to establish, under a false and
misapplied denomination, one equal and universal slavery; and to
effect this result required the exertions of absolute power--of a
power both in theory an
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