Εικόνες σελίδας
PDF
Ηλεκτρ. έκδοση

They were not however denied the rights of burial, and nu- | market, bore an inferior value to the imported slaves, being merous inscriptions attest that monuments were often considered as spoilt and troublesome. The number of slaves erected to the memory of deceased slaves by their masters, born in Roman families appears at all times to have been their fellows, or friends, some of which bear the letters D. far inferior to that of the imported slaves. In general the M 'Diis Manibus,' for according to the Roman principle propagation of slaves was not much encouraged by masters, that slavery was not by nature, but was the effect of law, many of whom considered slaves born at home to cost death was considered as putting an end to the legal dis- more than those who were imported. Ordinary female slaves tinction between slaves and masters, and the manes of a were inferior in numbers to the males, and were generally departed slave might be an object of reverence even to a cheaper in the market. freeman. Slaves were often buried in the family buryingplace of their masters. The sepulchretum' or burialvaults of the slaves and freedmen of Augustus and his wife Livia, discovered in 1726 near the Via Appia, and which has been illustrated by Bianchini and Gori, and another in the same neighbourhood also belonging to the household of the early Cæsars, and containing at least 3000 urns with numerous inscriptions, which have been illustrated by Fabretti, throw much light upon the condition and domestic habits of Roman slaves in the service of great families. [BIANCHINI, FRANCESCO.]

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

With regard to the classification and occupations of slaves, the first division was into public and private. Public slaves were those which belonged to the state or to public bodies, such as provinces, municipia, collegia, decuriæ, &c., or to the emperor in his sovereign capacity, and employed in public duties, and not attached to his household or private estate. Public slaves were either derived from the share of captives taken in war, which was reserved for the community or state, or were acquired by purchase and other civil process. Public slaves of an inferior description were engaged as rowers on board the fleet, or in the construction and repair of roads and national buildings. Those of a superior description were employed as keepers of public buildings, prisons, and other property of the state, or to attend magistrates, priests, and other public officers, as watchmen, lictors, executioners, watermen, scavengers, &c. Private slaves were generally distributed into urban and rustic; the former served in the town houses, and the others in the country. Long lists of the different duties performed by slaves of each class are given by Pignorius, De Servis et eorum apud Veteres Ministeriis, Amsterdam, 1674; Popma, De Operis Servorum,' ibid., 1672; and Blair, 'An Inquiry into the State of Slavery amongst the Romans,' Edinburgh, 1833, which is a very useful little book. It will be enough here to say, that for all the necessities of domestic life, agriculture, and handicraft, and for all the imaginable luxuries of a refined and licentious people, there was a corresponding denomination of slaves. Large sums were occasionally paid for slaves of certain peculiar kinds, some of which we should consider the least useful. Eunuchs were always very dear; the practice of emasculating boys was borrowed by the Romans from the Asiatics, among whom it was a trade as early as the time of Herodotus (viii. 105): it continued to the time of Domitian, who forbade it; but eunuchs continued to be imported from the East. Amorio,' or fool, was sometimes sold for 20,000 nummi, or about 160 pounds. Dwarfs and giants were also in great request. Marc Antony paid for a pair of handsome youths 200 sestertia, or 1600 pounds. Martial (Ep., iii. 62) mentions a single handsome youth who cost as much as those two. Actors and actresses and dancers sold very dear, as well as females of great personal attractions, who were likely to bring in great gains to their owners by prostitution. A good cook was valued at four talents, or 772 pounds. Medical men, grammarians, amanuenses, anagnosta or readers, and shorthand-writers, were in considerable request. With regard to ordinary slaves, the price varied from fifty to twenty pounds, according to their abilities and other circumstances. The lowest legal valuation of a man slave in the time of Justinian was twenty solidi, or about sixteen pounds; and the value seems to have been about the same in the time of Horace (Sat., ii. 7; v. 43). After a victorious campaign, when thousands of captives were sold at once on the spot for the purpose of prize-money, to the slave-dealers who followed the armies, the price sunk very low. Thus in the camp of Lucullus in Pontus slaves were sold for four drachmæ, or two shillings and sevenpence, a head; but the same slaves, if brought to the Roman market, fetched a much higher price. Home-born slaves, distinguished by the name of vernæ,' in contradistinction to servi empti,' or ' venales,' or imported slaves, were generally treated with greater indulgence by their masters in whose families they had been brought up; and for that very reason, when taken to P. C., No. 1371.

[ocr errors]

|

There was a brisk trade in slaves carried on from the coasts of Africa, the Euxine, Syria, and Asia Minor. The island of Delos was at one time a great mart for slaves, who were imported thither by the Cilician pirates. (Strabo, p. 668, Casaub.) The Illyrians procured numerous slaves for the Italian market, whom they bought or stole from the barbarous tribes in their neighbourhood. Thrace was the parent country of numerous slaves, and the selling of children by their pa rents was an antient practice among the Thracian tribes. (Herod., v. 6.) But the chief supply of slaves was derived from Asia and Africa. In most countries it was customary for indigent parents to sell their children to slave-dealers, and even Roman citizens at times sold themselves or their children through distress. Criminals were also in certain cases condemned to slavery, like the galley-slaves of our own times.

Both law and custom forbade prisoners taken in civil wars, especially in Italy, to be dealt with as slaves; and this was perhaps one reason of the wholesale massacres of captives by Sulla and the Triumviri. In the war between the party of Otho and Vitellius, Antonius, who commanded the army of the latter, having taken Cremona, ordered that none of the captives should be detained, upon which the soldiers began to kill those who were not privately ransomed by their friends.

In the latter period of the empire free-born persons of low condition were glad to secure a subsistence by labour on the estates of the great landowners, to which, after a continued residence for thirty years, they and their families became bound by a tacit agreement under the name of adscriptitii, or adscripti glebæ, and this was one of the sources of the servitude of the middle ages.

[ocr errors]

The customary allowance of food for a slave appears to have been four Roman bushels, ' modii,' of corn, mostly 'far,' per month for country slaves, and one Roman libra or pound daily for those in town. Salt and oil were occasionally allowed, as well as weak wine. Neither meat nor vegetables formed part of their regular allowance, but they got, according to seasons, fruit, such as figs, olives, apples, pears, &c. (Čato, Columella, and Varro.) Labourers and artizans in the country were shut up at night in a house ('ergastulum'), in which each slave appears to have had a separate cell. Males were kept apart from females, excepting those whom the master allowed to form contubernia' or temporary connections. Columella adverts to some distinction between the ergastulum for ordinary labourers and that for ill behaved slaves, which latter was in fact a prison, often under ground, but generally speaking the ergastula in the later times of the republic and under the empire appear to have been no better than prisons in which freemen were sometimes confined after being kidnapped. The men often worked in chains. The overseers of farms and herdsmen had separate cabins allotted to them. Slaves enjoyed relaxation from toil on certain festivities, such as the Saturnalia. [SATURNALIA.]

Every individual master had the power of manumitting his slave, and this he could effect in several forms, by Vindicta, Census, or by Testamentum. All slaves manumitted by a Roman citizen (subject to the conditions above mentioned) became Roman citizens and members of his gens, of which they took the name. They laboured however under several disabilities. They were enrolled in the lowest of the city tribes; they were ineligible to the consulship and other high offices; and they were not generally admitted into the best society. [LIBERTINUS.]

The number of slaves possessed by the wealthy Romans was enormous. Some individuals are said to have possessed 10,000 slaves. Scaurus possessed above 4000 domestic and as many rustic slaves. In the reign of Augustus, a freedman who had sustained great losses during the civil wars left 4116 slaves, besides other property

The Lex Aelia Sentia, as already mentioned, laid various restrictions on manumission. Among other things it prevented persons under twenty years of age from manVOL. XXII.--O

mitting a slave except by the Vindicta, and with the approbation of the Consilium, which at Rome consisted of five senators and five Roman equites of legal age (puberes), and in the provinces consisted of twenty recuperatores, who were Roman citizens. (Gaius, i. 20, 38.) The Lex Aelia Sentia also made all manumissions void which were effected to cheat creditors or defraud patrons of their rights. The Lex Furia Caninia, which was passed about A.D. 7, limited the whole number of slaves who could be manumitted by testament to 100, and when a man had fewer than 500 slaves, it determined by a scale the number that he could manumit. This Lex only applied to manumission by testament. (Gaius, i. 42, &c.)

[ocr errors]

right to put their slaves to death. Macrobius (Saturn., 1., 11) makes one of his interlocutors, though a heathen, expatiate with great eloquence on the cruel and unjust treatment of slaves. In Spain, in the early period of the Visigothic kings, the practice of putting slaves to death still existed, for in the Foro Judicum' (b. vi., tit. 5) it is said that as some cruel masters in the impetuosity of their pride put to death their slaves without reason, it is enacted that a public and regular trial shall take place previous to their condemnation. Several laws and ecclesiastical canons forbade the sale of Christians as slaves to Jews or Saracens and other unbelievers.

The northern tribes which invaded the Western empire had their own slaves, who were chiefly Slavonian captives, distinct from the slaves of the Romans or conquered inhabitants. In course of time however the various classes of slaves merged into one class, that of the 'adscripti glebæ,' or serfs of the middle ages, and the institution of Roman slavery in its unmitigated form became obliterated. The precise period of this change cannot be fixed; it took place at various times in different countries. Slaves were exported from Britain to the Continent in the Saxon period, and the young English slaves whom pope Gregory I. saw in the market at Rome were probably brought thither by slave-dealers. Giraldus Cambrensis, William of Malmsbury, and others accuse the Anglo-Saxons of selling their female servants and even their children to strangers, and especially to the Irish, and the practice continued even after the Norman conquest. In the canons of a council held at London, A.D. 1102, it is said, 'Let no one from henceforth presume to carry on that wicked traffic by which men in England have been hitherto sold like brute animals.' (Wilkin's Concilia, p. 383.)

But although the traffic in slaves ceased among the Christian nations of Europe, it continued to be carried on by the Venetians across the Mediterranean in the age of the Crusades. The Venetians supplied the markets of the Saracens with slaves purchased from the Slavonian tribes which bordered on the Adriatic. Besides, as personal slavery and the traffic in slaves continued in all Mohammedan countries, Christian captives taken by Mussulmans were sold in the markets of Asia and Northern Africa, and have continued to be sold till within our own times, when Christian slavery has been abolished in Barbary, Egypt, and the Ottoman empire, by the interference of the Christian powers, the emancipation of Greece, and the conquest of Algiers by the French.

In the earlier ages of the Republic, slaves were not very numerous, and were chiefly employed in household offices or as operatives in the towns; and they were generally treated like members of the family, and joined their masters in offering prayers and sacrifices to the gods. (Horace, Epist., ii. 1, 142.) But after the conquests of Rome spread beyond the limits of Italy, the influx of captives was so great, and their price fell so low, that they were looked upon as a cheap and easily renewed commodity, and treated as such. The condition of the Roman slave, generally speaking, became worse in the later ages of the republic than that of the slave at Athens. It is worthy of remark that many of the emperors, even some of the worst of them, interfered on behalf of the slave. Augustus established courts for the trial of slaves who were charged with serious offences, intending thus to supersede arbitrary punishment by the masters, but the law was not made obligatory upon the latter to bring their slaves before the courts, and was often evaded. The same emperor strongly reprobated Vedius Pollio, a Roman knight, for sentencing a slave to be thrown alive into a fish-pondi, to be devoured by lampreys, and he took the slave into his own household. By a law passed in the time of Claudius, a master who exposed his sick or infirm slaves forfeited all right over them in the event of their recovery. The Lex Petronia, probably passed in the time of Augustus, or in the reign of Nero, prohibited masters from compelling their slaves to fight with wild beasts, except with the consent of the judicial authorities, and on a sufficient case being made out against the slave. Domitian forbade the mutilation of slaves. Hadrian suppressed the ergastula, or private prisons for the confinement of slaves; he also restrained proprietors from selling their slaves to keepers of gladiators, or to brothel-keepers, except as a punishment, in which case the sanction of a judge (judex) was required. The same emperor banished a lady of rank for With the discovery of America, a new description of five years on account of her cruelty to her slaves. Anto- slavery and slave-trade arose. Christian nations purchased ninus Pius adopted an old law of the Athenians, by which heathen negroes for the purpose of employing them in the the judge who should be satisfied of a slave being cruelly mines and plantations of the New World. It was found by treated by his owner, had power to oblige the owner to experience that the natives of America were too weak and sell him to some other person. The judge however was too indolent to undergo the hard work which their Spanish left entirely to his own discretion in determining what mea- task-masters exacted of them, and that they died in great sure of harshness on the part of the owner should be numbers. Las Casas, a Dominican, advocated with a pera proper ground for judicial interposition. Septimius Se- severing energy before the court of Spain the cause of the verus forbade the forcible subjection of slaves to prostitu- American aborigines, and reprobated the system of the tion. The Christian emperors went further in protecting repartimientos, by which they were distributed in lots the persons of slaves. Constantine placed the wilful mur- like cattle among their new masters. [CASAS, BARTHOLOME der of a slave on a level with that of a freeman; and Justi- DE LAS.] But it was necessary for the settlements to be nian confirmed this law, including within its provisions cases made profitable in order to satisfy the conquerors, and it of slaves who died under excessive punishment. Constan- was suggested that negroes from Africa, a more robust and tine made also two laws, both nearly in the same words, to active race than the American Indians, might be substituted prevent the forcible separation of the members of servile for them. It was stated than an able-bodied negro could families by sale or partition of property. One of the laws, do as much work as four Indians. The Portuguese were at dated A.D. 334, was retained by Justinian in his code. The that time possessed of a great part of the coast of Africa, Church also powerfully interfered for the protection of where they easily obtained by force or barter a considerable slaves, by threatening excommunication against owners who number of slaves. The trade in slaves among the nations put to death their slaves without the consent of the judge; of Africa had existed from time immemorial. It had been and by affording asylum within sacred precincts to slaves carried on in antient times: the Garamantes used to supply from the anger of unmerciful masters. A law of Theo- the slave-dealers of Carthage, Cyrene, and Egypt with black dosius I. authorized a slave who had taken refuge in a slaves which they brought from the interior. The demand church to call for the protection of the judge, that he might for slaves by the Portuguese in the Atlantic harbours gave proceed unmolested to his tribunal in order that his case the trade a fresh direction. The petty chiefs of the interior might be investigated. After Christianity became the pre-made predatory incursions into each other's territories, and dominant religion in the Roman world, it exercised in sold their captives, and sometimes their own subjects, to the various ways a beneficial influence upon the condition of the European traders. The first negroes were imported by the slaves, without however interfering, at least for centuries, Portuguese from Africa to the West Indies in 1503, and in with the institution of slavery itself. Even the laws of the 1511 Ferdinand the Catholic allowed a larger importation. Christian emperors abolishing the master's power of life and These however were private and partial speculations; it is death over his slave were long evaded. Salvianus (De Gu- said that Cardinal Ximenes was opposed to the trade because bernatione Dei, iv.) informs us that in the provinces of Gaul, he considered it unjust. Charles V. however being pressed in the fifth century, masters still fancied that they had a on one side by the demand for labour in the American

[ocr errors]

settlements, and on the other by Las Casas and others who pleaded the cause of the Indian natives, granted to one of his Flemish courtiers the exclusive privilege of importing 4000 blacks to the West Indies.

The Fleming sold his privilege for 25,000 ducats to some Genoese merchants, who organised a regular slave-trade between Africa and America. As the European settlements in America increased and extended, the demand for slaves also increased; and all European nations who had colonies in America shared in the slave-trade. The details of that trade, the sufferings of the slaves in their journey from the interior to the coast, and afterwards in their passage across the Atlantic-their treatment in America, which varied not only according to the disposition of their individual masters, but also according to different colonies, are matters of notoriety which have been amply discussed in every country of Europe during the last and present centuries. It is generally understood that the slaves of the Spaniards, especially in Continental America, were the best treated of all. But the negro slaves in general were exactly in the same condition as the Roman slaves of old, being saleable, transferable, pawnable, and punishable at the will of their owners. Restrictions however were gradually introduced by the law of the respective states, in order to protect the life of the negro slave against the caprice or brutality of his owner. In the British colonies, especially in the latter part of the last century and the beginning of the present, much was done by the legislature; courts were established to hear the complaints of the slaves, flogging of females was forbidden, the punishment of males was also limited within certain bounds, and the condition of the slave population was greatly ameliorated. Still the advocates of emancipation objected to the principle of slavery as being unjust and unchristian; and they also appealed to experience to show that a human being cannot be safely trusted solely to the mercy of another.

But long before they attempted to emancipate the slaves, the efforts of philanthropists were directed to abolish the slave traffic, which desolated Africa, wholly prevented the advance in civilization, and encouraged the maltreatment of the negroes in the colonies, by affording an unlimited supply, and making it not the planter's interest to keep up his stock in the natural way. The attention of mankind was first effectually awakened to the horrors of this trade by Thomas Clarkson. His labours, with the aid of the zealous men, chiefly Quakers, who early joined him, prepared the way for Mr. Wilberforce, who brought the subject before parliament in 1788, and although, after his notice, the motion, owing to his accidental illness, was first brought forward by Mr. Pitt, Mr. Wilberforce was throughout the great parliamentary leader in the cause, powerfully supported in the country by Thomas Clarkson and others, as Richard Phillips, George Harrison, William Allen, all of the Society of Friends, Mr. Stephen, who had been in the West Indies as a barrister, and Mr. Z. Macaulay, who had been governor of Sierra Leone, and had also resided in Jamaica. A bill was first carried (brought in by Sir W. Dolben) to regulate the trade until it could be abolished, and this in some degree diminished the horrors of the middle passage. But the question of abolition was repeatedly defeated, until 1804, when Mr. Wilberforce first carried the bill through the Commons; it was thrown out in the Lords, and next year it was again lost even in the Commons. Meanwhile the capture of the foreign colonies, especially the Dutch, during the war, frightfully increased the amount of the trade, by opening these settlements to British capital; and at one time the whole importation of slaves by British vessels amounted to nearly 60,000 yearly, of which about a third was for the supply of our old colonies. At length, in 1805 an order in council prohibited the slave-trade in the conquered colonies. Next year the administration of Lord Grenville and Mr. Fox carried a bill through, prohibiting British subjects from engaging in the trade for supplying either foreign settlements or the conquered colonies. A resolution moved by Mr. Fox, the last time he took any part in public debate, was also carried in 1806, pledging the Commons to a total abolition of the trade early next session, and this was, on Lord Grenville's motion, adopted by the Lords. Accordingly next year the General Abolition Bill was brought in by Lord Howick (afterwards Earl Grey), and being passed by both houses, received the royal assent on the 25th of March, 1807. This act prohibited slavetrading from and after the 1st of January, 1808; but as

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

it only subjected offenders to pecuniary penalties, it was found that something more was required to put down a traffic the gains of which were so great as to cover all losses by capture. In 1810 the House of Commons, on the motion of Mr. Brougham, passed unanimously a resolution, pledging itself early next session effectually to prevent such daring violations of the law;' and he next year carried a bill making slave-trading felony, punishable with fourteen years' transportation, or imprisonment with hard labour. In 1824 the laws relating to the slave-trade were consolidated, and it was further declared to be piracy, and punishable capitally, if committed within the Admiralty jurisdiction. In 1837 this was changed to transportation for life, by the acts diminishing the number of capital punishments. Since the Felony Act of 1811, the British colonies have entirely ceased to have any concern in this traffic. If any British subjects have engaged in it, or any British capital has been embarked in it, the offence has been committed in the foreign trade.

The influence of Great Britain was strenuously exerted at the peace in 1814 and 1815, and afterwards at the congress of Aix-la-Chapelle, to obtain the concurrence of foreign powers in the abolition; and with success thus far, that all of them have passed laws prohibiting the traffic, and all, except the United States of North America, have agreed to the exercise of a mutual right of search, the only effectual means of putting it down. As the United States were the first to abolish the foreign trade by law, having passed their abolition act before ours, and as early as the constitution gave congress the power to do so, it is the more to be lamented that they should still refuse a right of search, which France herself has given, and should thus enable slave-traders to use their flag to a dreadful extent. The Duke of Wellington, while ambassador at Paris in 1814, used every effort to obtain from the restored government a prohibition of the traffic; but the West Indian interest, and commercial jealousy of England, frustrated all his attempts, and Napoleon, during the hundred days, on his return from Elba, first abolished the trade by law. The right of search has been most honourably granted by the revolutionary government of 1830. The History of the Abolition is to be found in the work under that, title, by T. Clarkson (edition 1834), and the state of the law, as well as the treatment of slaves practically in the colonies, is most fully treated of in a work on that subject by Mr. Stephen. T. Clarkson's other works on the nature of the traffic, which first exposed it to the people of this country, were published in 1787.

The slave-trade was suppressed, but slavery continued to exist in the colonies. In 1834 the British parliament passed an act by which slavery was abolished in all British colonies, and twenty millions sterling were voted as compensation money to the owners. This act stands prominent in the history of our age. No other nation has imitated the example. Slavery exists in the French, Dutch, Spanish, and Portuguese colonies, and in the southern states of the North American Union. The new republics of Spanish America, generally speaking, emancipated their slaves at the time of the revolution. As the slave population in general does not maintain its numbers by natural increase, and as plantations in America are extended, there is a demand for a fresh annual importation of slaves from Africa, which are taken to Brazil, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Monte Video, and, it is said, clandestinely and circuitously, also to Texas. In a recent work, The African Slave-Trade and its Remedy,' by Sir T. Fowell Buxton (who, after Mr. Wilber force's retirement, took a most active part in parliament on the subject of slavery), it is calculated, apparently on sufficient data that not less than 150,000 negro slaves are annually imported from Africa into the above-mentioned countries, in contravention to the laws and the treaties existing between Great Britain and Spain and Portugal, the local authorities either winking at the practice or being unable to prevent it. But another appalling fact is, that since the slave-trade has been declared to be illegal, the sufferings of the slaves on their passage across the Atlantic have been greatly increased, owing to its being necessary for masters of slave-traders to conceal their cargoes by cooping up the negroes in a small compass, and avoiding the British cruizers; they are often thrown overboard in a chase. There is a considerable loss of life incident to the seizing of slaves by force in the hunting excursions after negroes, and in the wars between the chieftains of the interior for the purpose of

making captives. There is a loss on their march to the seacoast: the loss in the middle passage is reckoned on an average at one-fourth of the cargo; and, besides this, there is a further loss, after landing, in what is called the 'seasoning' of the slaves. At present the Portuguese and Brazilian flags are openly used, with the connivance of the authorities, for carrying on the slave-trade. The Spanish flag is also used, though less openly, and with greater caution, owing to the treaty between England and Spain which formally abolishes the slave-trade on the part of Spain. A mixed commission court of Spaniards and British exists at Havana to try slavers; but pretexts are never wanting to elude the provisions of the treaty. There seems indeed to be a great difficulty in obtaining the sincere co-operation of all the Christian powers to put down the slave-trade effectually, although it is certain that in all but the Portuguese and Spanish settlements the traffic has now almost entirely ceased.

|

is still styled in official documents the kingdom of Slavoria, It is situated between 44° 50′ and 46° 12' N. lat., and beIt is bounded on the west tween 17° and 20° 40′ E. long by Croatia, on the north and east by Hungary, and on the south by Turkey. It is separated from Hungary by the Drave and the Danube, from Turkey by the Save, and has the Iilowa on part of the western frontier. It consists of two parts, the province of Slavonia, and the Slavonian part of the Military Frontier. The area of the whole is 6600 sq. miles, and the population is 598,800. The province has an area of 3570 square miles, divided into the three counties of Posega, Veröez, and Sirmium, with 348,000 inhabitants. A chain of high mountains coming from Croatia traverses the province. Where this chain enters the province the valleys are narrow, but they gradually become more open towards the middle of the province, and form near Posega a wide plain bounded by lofty mountains, which is called the Posega Besides the slave-trade on the Atlantic, there is another Valley; but at the eastern frontier of this county, the periodical exportation of slaves by caravans from Soudan branches of the mountains again join in one principal chain, to the Barbary states and Egypt, the annual number of which covers all the northern part of the county of Sirwhich is variously estimated at between twenty and thirty mium. This chain is covered with vast forests. The highthousand. There is also a trade carried on by the subjects est points are 2800 feet above the surface of the three of the Imam of Muscat, who export slaves in Arab vessels principal rivers. The remaining part of Slavonia consists from Zanzebar and other ports of the eastern coast of partly of fertile eminences planted with vines and fruitAfrica, to Arabia, Persia, India, Java, and other places. In trees, and partly of beautiful and extensive plains. But as a despatch, dated Zanzebar, May, 1839, Captain Cogan esti- many tracts of land on the Save and Drave are very low, mates the slaves annually sold in that market to be no less they are subject to be frequently overflowed, and there are than 50,000. The Portuguese also export slaves from their several large and small pieces of stagnant water, and extensettlement on the Mozambique coast, to Goa, Diu, and their sive marshes. Many of these are presumed to have been other Indian possessions. formed through neglect, and some have already been By a law of the Korán, which however is not always ob-drained and cultivated. The country produces corn of all served in all Mohammedan countries, no Mussulman is kinds, hemp, flax, tobacco, and great quantities of liquorice. allowed to enslave one of his own faith. The Moslem There are whole forests of plum-trees: chesnut, almond, negro kingdoms of Soudan supply the slave-trade at the and fig-trees are likewise found, and the white mulberry expense of their pagan subjects or neighbours, whom they abounds. Slavonia is rich in useful domestic animals. The sell to the Moorish traders. There is no likelihood that horses are of a small race, and sheep are not numerous. Mohammedan powers will ever suppress this trade of their Of wild animals, the bear, wolf, fox, pole-cat, and vulture are common. Swarms of troublesome insects are bred in the marshes, and a long continuance of southerly winds sometimes brings locusts from Turkey. The only minerals of which there are considerable quantities are sulphur, limestone, coal, salt, and iron. It may be said that there are no manufactures in Slavonia. The peasant makes all his farming implements-his cart, his plough, &c., and his wife and daughters weave the cloth and knit the stockings for the family. The anonymous author of the 'Geographical and Statistical Description of Hungary, Croatia, and Slavonia,' says that wheat yields 20-fold and sometimes 30-fold, and that one grain of maize yields 2000. In so fertile a country agriculture and the breeding of cattle are the most profitable occupations of the inhabitants. The culture of silk is flourishing. The quantity of wine produced is very large, especially in the county of Sirmium, where the vine was planted in the third century by the soldiers of the emperor Probus: about 560,000 eimer (the eimer is 10 gallons) are produced in one year in that county. The wines, both red and white, are very fiery, but will not keep long, and are therefore not fit for exportation. The export trade is confined almost entirely to the natural productions of the soil, such as corn, swine, and oxen to Austria; tobacco to Italy, France, and Belgium; spirits, distilled from plums, to Hungary, Turkey, and Germany; silk to Ofen; honey, wax, liquorice, gall-nuts, and raw hides to Austria and Italy; pipe-staves and wooden hoops are sent to Hungary; some salt and oil are also exported; and Peterwardein has a considerable trade in fruit.

own accord.

There is also a considerable internal slave-trade in the United States of North America. Negroes are purchased in Maryland and Virginia, and some other of the slaveholding states, and carried to the more fertile lands of Alabama, Louisiana, and other southern states.

It is maintained by some that the African slave-trade cannot be effectually put down by force, and that the only chance of its ultimate suppression is by civilizing central Africa, by encouraging agricultural industry and legitimate branches of commerce, and at the same time spreading education and Christianity; and also by giving the protection of the British flag to those negroes who would avail themselves of it. It is certain that if other countries will not exert themselves to enforce these laws, the abolition must be postponed to this remote period. The Africans sell men because they have no other means of procuring European commodities, and there seems no doubt that one result of the slave-trade is to keep central Africa in a state of barbarism. We refer for evidence of this, and of the nature of the traffic generally, to the numerous authorities quoted in Sir T. Buxton's book, and to the works of T. Clarkson, and Messrs. Wilberforce, J. Stephen, Brougham, and Macaulay.

The amount of the slave population now existing in America is not easily ascertained. By the census of 1835 Brazil contained 2,100,000 slaves. The slaves in Cuba, in 1826, were, according to Humboldt, about 260,000. In the United States, in 1830, the number of slaves was a little more than two millions. For more precise details we refer to the separate heads of each state, CAROLINA, GEORGIA, VIRGINIA, &c.

Societies for the ultimate and universal abolition of slavery exist in England, France, and the United States, and they publish their Reports; and a congress was held in London, June, 1840, of delegates from many countries to confer upon the means of effecting it. The American Society has formed a colony called Liberia, near Cape Mesurado, on the west coast of Africa, where negroes who have obtained their freedom in the United States are sent, if they are willing to go. The English government has a colony for a similar purpose at Sierra Leone, where negroes who have been seized on board slavers by English cruizers are settled. [SIERRA LEONE.]

SLAVONIA is a province of the Austrian dominions, which, though incorporated with the kingdom of Hungary,

Religion and Education.-The inhabitants are Roman Catholics and Non-united Greeks; the latter are the most numerous, in the proportion of about five to three. Till 1827, the law excluded Protestants from Slavonia, though it made an exception in favour of those who were settled in the country in 1791. There are now two flourishing Protestant communities in Old and New Panza, consisting of about 3500 persons; and a few Jews, mostly in Peterwardein, and about 300 in Semlin. There are about 30 Roman Catholic schools in the province, and as many in the Military Frontier; and two Roman Catholic gymnasia at Essek and Posega. The Non-united Greeks have an archbishop at Carlowitz, where there is a flourishing lyceum. There is likewise a clerical school at Carlowitz, and another at Pakratz. In the archbishopric there are above 260 national schools.

The earliest known inhabitants of Slavonia were the Scordisci; it was afterwards inhabited by the Pannonians,

who were subdued by Augustus. The country was afterwards part of Pannonia Inferior, and was called Pannonia Savia. The emperor Probus, who was a native of Sirmium, did much to improve the cultivation of the country, and caused the first vines to be planted in the year 270. Subsequently, several portions of Slavonia were detached from the Byzantine empire; but Sirmium continued to belong to it, even when the whole country was a prey to the Avari. When the Avari were overpowered, in 796, by Pepin, the father of Charlemagne, the greater part of Pannonia Savia was a desert, and Charlemagne afterwards allowed a Slavonian tribe living in Dalmatia to settle in it. The first settlers were soon followed by others, and the Slavi (or Slavonians) soon became a numerous people, who in the time of the emperor Louis the Pious had their own prince, named Lindewit, subject however to the Franks. In 827 the Bulgarians invaded the country, but were repulsed by the Franks. The Slavonians had indeed been partially converted to Christianity on their first settling, but as they fell into gross ignorance for want of instruction, two brothers, Cyrillus and Methodius, went in 864 to visit the Slavonian tribes in the west, and to instruct them. In the tenth century, the Magyars, having conquered all Pannonia, afterwards subdued Slavonia also; Sirmium however still remained subject to the Byzantine empire, but by degrees became independent, and had its own princes. In 1019 it was again, for a short time, subject to Byzantium, and continued for many years the theatre of war between the Byzantines and the Hungarians; the latter ultimately got possession of it, till it was finally ceded to the Hungarians in 1165. In 1471 the Turks invaded Slavonia for the first time. In 1524 the whole country was conquered by the Turks, to whom the counties of Valpo, Posega, Veröez, and Sirmium were ceded in 1562, and erected by them into a distinct pashalik. It was recovered by the emperor Leopold I., and after having been for a long time the theatre of war, was ceded to Austria by the treaty of Carlowitz in 1699. The country having become almost a desert while under the Turks, numbers of Illyrians were settled in it. In 1690 and the following years the country was placed under a military administration; the inhabitants were exempted from taxes, but were bound to arm themselves, and be always ready for the defence of the country. This military administration was abolished in 1745, but in later times it has been again introduced under a better form, which is chiefly confined to the tract along the Turkish frontier.

The Slavonian Military Frontier (including what is called the district of the Czaikist Battalion, between the Danube and the Theis) has an area of 3030 square miles and 250,000 inhabitants, and is divided into the three regimental districts of Peterwardein, Brod, and Gradiska, and the Czaikist district. [ESSEK; MILITARY FRONTIER; PETERWARDEIN; SEMLIN.]

he calls the Venedian Gulf. This is the oldest account that we have about the country inhabited by the Slavonians; but whence and when they came to these parts is unknown. Jornandes gives the following account of them :- Dacia is secured by Alps (i.e. Carpathian), on whose left side, which from the source of the Vistula runs to the north through an immense extent, the nation of the Winidi have their settlements. Although their names vary in various tribes and places, they call themselves Slavonians and Antæ.' Jornandes also says that this nation was conquered, A.D. 376, by Hermanarik, king of the Goths; and he says in another place, These, as we have said, proceed from the same blood, and have three names, Venedi, Antæ, and Slavonians, who for our sins are now ravaging everywhere' (i.e. in the Roman empire).

The evidence of Jornandes proves that the Venedi, Antæ, and Sclavini or Slavonians were the same race, although they may have formed separate tribes or nations, as the Bohemians, Poles, and Russians of our days; and we may add that the Slavonians of Lusatia and Saxony are even now called Vendes by the Germans.

The Slavonians appeared on the borders of the empire about A.D. 527, and having invaded the Greek provinces committed terrible ravages. The Imperial legions were defeated by them, and the wall erected by the emperor Anastasius to arrest the savage tribes of the north was forced by the Slavonians, who devastated all the country from the Ionian Sea to the walls of Constantinople. They besieged the capital itself, and nobody dared to encounter them. Belisarius at last succeeded, more by presents than force, in removing this dangerous enemy from Constantinople. After that time they settled on the banks of the Danube, alternately ravaging the provinces of the empire or serving in its armies. The Slavonians were conquered in the sixth century by the Avari, with the exception of those who were settled on the Danube, and who, in the year 581, invaded the empire. The emperor Tiberius, who was occupied at that time with the Persian war, was unable to repel the Slavonians, and he induced the Khan of the Avari to attack them. The power of the Slavonians was destroyed, and they were obliged to submit to the Khan. After that time they served in the wars of their new master, and the Greeks experienced their desperate valour when the Avari besieged Constantinople in 629, on which occasion the Slavonians nearly carried the town.

The Slavonians who inhabited the vicinity of the Baltic remained free, while their brethren of the south were under the yoke of the Avari. This yoke was at last broken by the Slavonians of Bohemia, who rose against their oppressors, and defeated them under the command of a chieftain called Samo, who was chosen king by his grateful countrymen. The emancipation of the Slavonians from the dominion of the Avari was followed by an extension of their possessions. In the seventh century, having concluded an alliIllyria, and after having expelled the Avari, they founded new colonies under the name of Slavonia, Croatia, Servia, Bosnia, and Dalmatia. The Greek emperors favoured their settling in the Imperial provinces. In the seventh century there were Slavonian settlements on the river Strymon in Thrace, in the vicinity of Thessalonica, and in Moesia, or the modern Bulgaria. Many of them settled in the Peloponnesus, and a considerable number passed into Asia and settled in Bithynia and other provinces.*

(Oesterreichische National Encyclopedie; StatistischGeographische Beschreibung des Königreichs Ungarn, Cro-ance with the emperors of Constantinople, they entered atien, und Slavonien; Stein; Hassel; Hörschelmann.) SLAVONIANS. The Slavonian or Slavic race, which now extends from the Elbe to the Pacific, and from the northern ocean to the frontiers of China, Persia, and the Mediterranean, comprehends about 70,000,000 inhabitants, divided into several nations, who speak various cognate dialects, and live within the dominions of Russia, Austria, Turkey, Prussia, and Saxony. The name 'Slavonian' is deduced from the word slava, 'glory,' or slovo,' word.' The advocates of the first etymology support it by referring to the usual termination of Slavonian names in slav, such as Stanislav, establisher of glory; Vladislav, 'ruler of glory;' and Yaroslav, furious for glory. Others maintain that the name of Slavonians, which is often written Slovenie instead of Slavenie, is derived from slovo, 'word,' and that the Slavonians being unable to understand the language of the nations with whom they came into contact, called them Niemetz, that is, 'mute,' an appellation which is given to the Germans in all the Slavonian dialects, whilst they called themselves Slovenie, that is, 'men endowed with the gift of the word.' The Byzantine writers changed the appellation of Slavonians into Sclaben or Sclav (Ekλaßnvoi, Procopius); and hence the appellation of Sclavonians, adopted by the western authors.

According to Jornandes, the first writer who mentions the Slavonians, they were formerly called Venedi; and Pliny (iv. 13) says that they lived about the banks of the Vistula. Ptolemy places them on the eastern shore of the Baltic, which

From this time the Slavonians are no longer historically known under that general appellation, but they continued to take a prominent part in political affairs under the various denominations by which the nations belonging to that race are distinguished, as Poles, Russians, Bohemians, &c.

The customs, religion, and language of the Slavonian race are still characterised by a family likeness, which is preserved in the numerous nations which have sprung from the same stock, notwithstanding the modifications produced in the respective nations by local circumstances and historical events.

Procopius (De Bello Goth., iii.) gives the following account of the Slavonians: The nations of the Slavonians and Antæ do not obey a single master, but live under a democratical government; therefore the gains and losses are common amongst them, and all other things go in the same

syuod of Constantinople (A.D. 680) enumerates the Slavonians among the At the same time Christianity began to spread among them. The sixth Christian nations,

« ΠροηγούμενηΣυνέχεια »