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THE HISTORY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 
 
HISTORY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 WORKING 
 
 AND 
 
 BURGHER CLASSES 
 
 BY 
 M. ADOLPHE GRANIER DE CASSAGNAC, 
 
 PARIS, FRANCE, A.D. 1838. 
 
 TRANSLATED BY 
 
 BEN. E. GREEN, 
 
 OF DALTON, WHITFIELD CO., GEORGIA. 
 
 A 
 
 PHILADELPHIA: 
 CLAXTON, REMSEN & HAFFELFINGER, 
 
 819 AND 821 MARKET STREET. 
 1871. 
 
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1871, by 
 
 CLAXTON, REMSEN & HAFFELFINGER, 
 in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 
 
 STEREOTYPED BY J. PAGAN & SON, PHILADELPHIA. 
 
TO THE 
 WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES OF AMERICA, 
 
 UNDER WHICH DESIGNATION I INCLUDE, NOT ONLY " LABORERS, MECHANICS, 
 
 HUSBANDMEN, AND MERCHANTS IN GENERAL," BUT ALSO LAWYERS, 
 
 PHYSICIANS, MINISTERS OF THE GOSPEL, AND ALL OTHERS 
 
 OF THE LEARNED PROFESSIONS, ALL, WHO LIVE, 
 
 AND SEEK TO GROW RICH, BY THE FRUITS 
 
 OF THEIR OWN LABOR AND 
 
 INDUSTRY, 
 
 WHETHER OF THE HEAD, 
 
 OR OF THE HAND ; AND NOT BY THE 
 
 " SUBTLE AND ARTFUL FISCAL CONTRIVANCES " 
 
 OF MODERN CLASS LEGISLATION, NOR BY PUBLIC OFFICE 
 
 AND PUBLIC PLUNDER, THIS WORK .IS RESPECTFULLY 
 
 t&mitfi. 
 
 BY THE TRANSLATOR. 
 
 851930 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 TRANSLATOR S PREFACE vii 
 
 AUTHOR S PREFACE Ixxi 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 GENERAL IDEA OF THE PROLETARIAT. 
 
 The working classes do not exist among all peoples Why ? No one has 
 dreamed of writing their history Gap which the absence of that history 
 leaves in politics The working classes come from the proletariat Mod 
 ern signification of this word The proletariat comprises working-men, 
 beggars, thieves, and prostitutes 81 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 ORIGIN OF THE PROLETARIAT. 
 
 Political prejudices which the history of the four branches of the proletariat 
 ought to dispel The proletariat produced by the emancipation of slaves 
 
 Among all peoples before the emancipation of slaves there were neither 
 working-men, nor beggars, nor thieves, nor prostitutes Why ? By Chris 
 tianity the proletaries greatly multiplied Slavery having preceded the 
 proletariat among all peoples, whence comes that universal slavery which 
 
 is thus found among all peoples ? Is it a natural or violent fact ? . .86 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 ORIGIN OF SLAVERY. 
 
 The first epoch of every society contains two classes of men, masters and 
 slaves This fact anterior to all institutions, and therefore not instituted 
 
 In what sense slavery may be said to be by divine right Slavery is a 
 primitive and spontaneous element of all societies The history of the 
 masters gives the history of the slaves Whence come masters ? The 
 first masters the first fathers Of the paternal power in noble families 
 Names designating these families in the Greek and Latin poets Signifi 
 cation of the word plus Paternal power absolute in noble families 
 
 7 
 
CONTEXTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Proofs establishing this fact Fathers could kill or sell their children 
 The first children therefore the first slaves This js the only theory by 
 which all the facts relative to slavery can be explained Multiplicity of 
 children in the first families 95 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 ORGANIZATION OF SLAVERY BY POSITIVE LAWS. 
 
 Political institutions, having found slavery already established as a fact in the 
 family, generalized it as a right in society New sources of slavery opened 
 by positive laws War Asylums Debt Marriage Explanation of 
 a passage of Homer Slavery, then, became an institution in course of 
 time; but it commenced as a spontaneous fact Positive laws sanctioned 
 and regulated, but did not create it Every other theory contradicted by 
 facts The noble and slave races, therefore, two primitive and contempo- 
 
 - raneous facts Together they constitute humanity This volume devoted 
 to the history of the slave races: that of the noble races will be treated 
 of in another Io8 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 EMANCIPATION OF SLAVES AND FORMATION OF BURGHERS. 
 
 Meaning of the words free race and slave race in this book Slaves lived 
 apart, multiplied among themselves, and ended by becoming a distinct race 
 of men Their food Their maladies Until what epoch pure slavery 
 continued among nations Beggars and hirelings indicate the commence 
 ment of emancipations Why ? The ancients did not practise sys 
 tematic emancipations Christianity multiplied emancipations and swelled 
 the mass of proletaries The slave race always scoffed at, even by the 
 freedmen Roman emperors who had been slaves Emancipated slaves, 
 repelled from the society of the nobles, form a society of their own 
 This is the commune 117 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 GENERAL IDEA OF THE COMMUNE TWO KINDS. 
 
 The commune, the government proper for freedmen, is, then, a universal 
 historic element The author dissents from received opinions on this sub 
 ject Ideas of M. Raynouard about the communes Ideas of M. Au- 
 gustin Thierry These two contradictory systems both refuted by facts 
 Ideas of M. Guizot They are correct, but incomplete We must distin- 
 
CONTENTS. . 9 
 
 FACE 
 
 guish -between the spontaneous and the artificial commune What the 
 author understands by these words Analysis of a passage of Aulus Gel- 
 lius, misunderstood by M. Raynouard Comparison of the French com 
 munes of the time of Philip Augustus with the Greek communes of the 
 time of Pericles 131 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE FRENCH COMMUNE. 
 
 In what the right of commune consists Charter of Autun Different 
 names for the commune The names various, the essence always the 
 same Errors of M. Augustin Thierry, who only recognizes a commune 
 by the name communia, and by the insurrectional conspiracy, giving to its 
 magistrates the name of jures Communes which are not called com 
 munia Jures who have not conspired Error of those who believe that 
 the commune only dates from the twelfth century Communes existed in 
 all ages of history Communes formed from the sixth to the eleventh 
 century French communes are of two kinds, one of Roman origin, the 
 other indigenous Communes formed by freedmen recently set free 
 Passage in the chronicle of the anonymous canon of Laon misunder 
 stood by M. Augustin Thierry Communes contain two kinds of men 
 Interior organization of a commune Error of the constituent assembly . 138 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 SYMPTOMS OF THE ANCIENT COMMUNE HIRELINGS AND BEGGARS. 
 
 What the author understands by the ancient commune Why he relies upon 
 the Bible The existence of hirelings and beggars indicate the existence 
 of communal government Why ? Beggars in the Odyssey and in 
 Hesiod; none in the Iliad Explanation of two passages of Homer . 151 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 SYMPTOMS OF THE ANCIENT COMMUNE ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Walled cities were communal cities History of architecture not written 
 The author gives a partial sketch of it Radical difference between iso 
 lated castles and associated houses The tower for the gentlemen, the 
 party-wall for two burghers Why noble families have necessarily inhab 
 ited isolated castles Signification of a tower in architecture Explana 
 tion of a passage in Horace Character of noble houses Castles of 
 Patroclus, Hector, /Eneas, King Demetrius, Herod the Great, Augustus, 
 
IO CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Velleda, Ulysses, Alcibiades, Asidates, Gobryas Platform, battlement, 
 machicolation Associated houses Formation of cities All have a 
 castle for their centre The Acropolis of Athens? the Palace of France, 
 The Tower of London Town and city Open and walled towns 
 Open towns belonged to nobles Sparta Walled towns were communal 
 
 Why ? Houses associated in walled towns Hotel de ville of Tegea 
 
 History of the Roman party -wall The wall of enclosure the necessary 
 
 complement of houses built in blocks The wall of enclosure and the 
 party-wall infallible signs of burghers I5 6 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 SYMPTOMS OF THE ANCIENT COMMUNE JURISPRUDENCE. 
 
 The author sketches the history of property Noble and burgher property 
 
 Their characteristics Burgher property only found in walled cities 
 Noble property only found without walls The existence of walled towns 
 proves the existence of burghers There were communes in the walled 
 towns At Jericho, Troy, Gortyna, and Calydon . . . . 173 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 THE PEASANTS. 
 
 Historians have forgotten the peasants Why ? This forgetfulness renders 
 general history incomplete The history of the peasants requires the pre 
 vious history of the landed proprietors Sketch of this There was a 
 Greek and Roman feudality anterior to the emancipation of the communes 
 in Italy and Greece Proofs of this fact The words vassal and arritre 
 vassal belong to the ancient Roman law Proofs The expression sr/" 
 of the glebe found in a law of Honorius and Theodosius What proletaries 
 were in the ancient Roman law Foundation of towns and villages 
 Exact idea of the peasants of antiquity Law of the Emperor Anastasius 
 
 Revolution in the cultivation of lands Different kinds of peasants 
 The words gentleman, chevalier (knight), baron, count, marquis, duke, 
 prince, taken from the Latin language Establishment of fairs among the 
 ancients 182 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 ANCIENT TRADES UNIONS FORMATION. 
 
 Slaves having attained the commune, or feudalism, some labor, and form the 
 trades unions ; others do not labor, and become beggars and thieves 
 Trades unions existed from the time of Solomon in Judea ; from the time 
 
CONTENTS. II 
 
 PAGB 
 
 of Theseus in Greece ; from the time of Numa in Italy Proofs Three 
 epochs in the Roman trades unions Purpose and use of these unions 
 Their employment by government Two kinds of Roman trades unions 
 
 Commercial unions Industrial unions Number and functions of the 
 first Sailors Bakers Butchers Internal organization Enumera 
 tion of the industrial unions . . .198 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 ANCIENT TRADES UNIONS DEVELOPMENT. 
 
 Transition of the Roman unions from the free to the obligatory state His 
 tory of their reform up to the time of Trajan They- become a necessary 
 corps Members could not leave They could not sell their property 
 The unions seized upon the person, property, and family of every member 
 
 Their inconveniences Their advantages Their revenues Their 
 endowments Their privileges Their legacies Alienability of their 
 property Their flourishing epoch 213 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 Their decline commenced with Constantine Its cause They were respon 
 sible for part of the taxes They were victims of the insolvency of the 
 farmers of the domain Ruined by the foolish extravagance of the empe 
 rors Caligula Claudius Nero Disorganization of the unions 
 They reclaim their fugitive members Their fragments Later, one of 
 these fragments formed the Commune of Paris 225 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 BEGGARS AND HOSPITALS. 
 
 Beggars are not ancient Why ? Few when Christianity came Roman 
 beggars The ancients had no hospitals Christianity multiplied *the 
 poor Pauperism in Italy at the end of the fourth century Why Chris 
 tianity multiplied the poor Foundation of hospitals Different kinds . 235 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 LITERARY SLAVES. 
 
 Three kinds of slaves seek to rise above their condition Literary slaves 
 Courtesans Bandits Slaves only cultivate some literary specialties 
 
12 CONTENTS. 
 
 FACE 
 
 Slave grammarians Their history Slaves do not cultivate rhetoric 
 Why ? History written by gentlemen Slave pets and buffoons Their 
 history Slave philosophers Their history 243 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 THE COURTESANS. 
 
 Courtesans of houses of debauch They were slaves Slave merchants 
 Their skill in the toilette of women Freedwomen Their talent 
 Their luxury Their influence Error of the French elegy-writers of the 
 eighteenth century Nearly all these freedwomen were Greeks Their 
 devotion Their domestic life Gentlemen visited them The soiree 
 Nightly brawls Serenades The mother Their toilette Dress 
 Errors of the moderns as to dress of ancients The bath Importance 
 of swimming among the ancients Perfumed soap Avarice of the freed 
 women Twenty-three odes of Horace addressed to freedwomen Ci- 
 nara Thargelia Theodota Timandra Lais Flora Aspasia 
 Praecia 258 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 BANDITS. 
 
 The ancients had no idea of the equality of men Homer, Plato, and Aris 
 totle believed in the duality of human nature Slaves believed in the 
 legitimacy of slavery Anecdote Slaves revolt from other motives than 
 ideas of liberty Ten slave revolts Caused by tampering with them, by 
 harshness of masters, and by failure to execute the laws History of the 
 three last revolts Eunus the Syrian Athenion Spartacus Revolted 
 slaves did not preach the doctrine of equality Thieves and pirates result 
 from slave revolts Guards Troops (gendarmerie) Brigand bands of 
 10,000 men The brigand Tabary The pirates Their history They 
 were slaves Agathocles 274 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 MODERN TRADES UNIONS. 
 
 Objection to the historic theory of this book Why were there no communes 
 nor trades unions in France before the twelfth century ? Answer In 
 what the barbarism of the barbarians of the North consisted The revo 
 lutions in the family serve to measure degrees of civilization The peoples 
 of the North had passed through fewer phases of the family This con 
 stituted their barbarism Backset impressed on the Roman world by the 
 
CONTENTS. 13 
 
 PAGS 
 
 invasion Error of Vico The invasion suspended emancipations 
 Everything recommenced in Gaul Seven centuries required for Gaul to 
 get back to the point where the invasion found it Condition of Gaul at 
 the time of the invasion Error of the Abbe Dubos, Montesquieu, and M. 
 de Savigny The barbarians destroyed the trades unions incompletely 
 Traces of trades unions through the middle ages Trades unions organ 
 ized under St. Louis The public powers that governed Paris Prevot of 
 merchants PreV6t of Paris Stephen Boileau regulates the trades 
 unions The register of trades contains the statutes of one hundred pro 
 fessions The trades unions considered in their relation to the State 
 Authorization Considered in relation to their members Liberty Ap 
 prentices Conditions of apprenticeship Unions considered in them 
 selves Administration Community and fraternity Invocation of 
 saints The corps and the trades (metiers} The prud hommes Juris 
 diction The six corps of Paris Their history Their heraldry Use 
 fulness of trades unions Causes of their fall Blindness of the con 
 stituent assembly ... ........ 289 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 Summary ............ 327 
 
 Postscript to Translator s Preface 329 
 
 Addenda to Translator s Preface 343 
 
 Index to Translator s Preface 351 
 
TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. 
 
 FOR several years prior to the Civil War in America, the 
 late STEPHEN COLWELL, of Philadelphia, withdrawing 
 from active business, had shut himself up in his library, devot 
 ing himself principally to the study of Political Economy, on 
 which subject his work on " The Ways and Means of Pay 
 ment" is, perhaps, one of the ablest ever given to the public. 
 Absorbed* in this study from his own personal standpoint, 
 that of a retired merchant and manufacturer, he gave little 
 attention to matters of general politics occurring around him. 
 
 The news of the " Great Rebellion " reached him in the 
 privacy of his library, and he again emerged into active life. 
 Believing, like many other able and good men at the North, 
 that the war was a " slaveholders rebellion," and that every 
 thing should be sacrificed to the preservation of the Union, 
 he took an active part in sustaining the Government. By 
 degrees he became, under the excitements of the war, a thor 
 ough - going Abolitionist. He took great interest, and was 
 one of the most active agents and liberal contributors, in 
 sending teachers South to instruct the negroes. 
 
 When the war was over, he went to Paris, and again shut 
 himself up in the libraries of that city. There he found De 
 Cassagnac s " History of the Laboring and Burgher Classes." 
 Struck with the great erudition of the work, and its peculiar 
 views, he went to a book-dealer, and gave orders for the pur 
 chase of every copy that could be found for sale in Paris. It 
 was out of print, and he could only secure three copies. 
 
viii TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. 
 
 him : in.Philadelphia in 1868. In a brief interview, in 
 whfch I -gave fiirri * my views of the causes and results of the 
 : \Var,:f\e: paid md the compliment of saying that I had studied 
 VncT understood t Ke* subject better than any one whom he 
 had met ; that he had brought this book from Paris to have 
 it translated and published in the United States ; that he was 
 too old to do it himself, and had been looking for some one 
 qualified for the task. He urged me to do it, and gave me 
 the book. 
 
 Perhaps it is due to myself, and to my old preceptors 
 of Georgetown College and the University of Virginia, to 
 whose thorough training I am indebted for whatever merit 
 there may be in the translation, that I should disarm the 
 critics in advance, by an apology for any errors. Most of 
 this work has been done hurriedly, under the pressure of 
 much business and many cares, of my own and of others, at 
 my home in Georgia, without access to dictionaries or books 
 of reference, to compensate for twenty years disuse of the 
 Latin and Greek, and fifteen years disuse of the French lan 
 guage ; and I have sought always to give the author s exact 
 meaning, sometimes perhaps sacrificing classic English to the 
 exigencies of a close translation from the French. 
 
 This History was published in Paris in 1838, and is now for 
 the first time offered to the American public. Heretofore it 
 has been accessible to a very few only of the very few Amer 
 ican readers of this class of French works. But through these 
 few, some of the author s ideas, very soon after their publica 
 tion in Paris, began to permeate into the American mind, and 
 in course of time they became part of the political creed of a 
 great party in the United States, resulting in the greatest and 
 bloodiest civil war of recorded time. 
 
 De Cassagnac starts out with the declaration that his book 
 is one of history, and not of politics. Evidently he was a 
 student; poring over musty tomes ; delighting in books, old 
 and new ; absorbed in the solution of the facts and philosophy 
 
TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. IX 
 
 of history. Certainly, so far as depends on ancient and mod 
 ern law, history, and literature, he has in his seven years of 
 preparatory study treated his subject exhaustively, and, as an 
 historian, faithfully. But he probably little dreamed that in 
 less than a quarter of a century, and on another continent, 
 his ideas would take a new form of expression in the dogma 
 that " free labor is cheaper than slave labor," and drench that 
 continent in blood. 
 
 De Cassagnac dedicates his work to M. Guizot. Guizot 
 was not a mere closet student. He was a statesman, intent 
 on giving to the facts of history a gloss to suit the political 
 purposes of the royal master, whose throne he sought to 
 establish. He was the trusted minister of King Louis Phi 
 lippe, whose every thought was directed to the perpetuation 
 of his dynasty, and the repression of the "fierce democracie" 
 of France. A translation of Guizot s Lectures on the History 
 of Civilization was published in this country in 1838, about 
 the time that De Cassagnac s book appeared in Paris. Those 
 lectures were prepared for a special purpose : to strengthen 
 the throne of Louis Philippe, by presenting to France cen 
 tralization and monarchy, as represented by the Orleans dyn 
 asty, in their most attractive lights and colors. Guizot taxed 
 his great abilities to the utmost to prove that " whenever the 
 reflection or the imagination of men has especially turned toward 
 the contemplation or study of legitimate sovereignty, and of its 
 essential qualities, it has inclined toward monarchy" and that 
 " republicanism, under the most favorable circumstances, does not 
 contain the principles of progress, duration, and extension." 
 
 Perhaps for the reason that the Americans are a more 
 book-reading people than the French, it is probable that M. 
 Guizot had more readers and it is not going too far to say, 
 more converts in the United States than in France ; and 
 what was written with special reference to a political effect 
 in France, exerted a potent influence in bringing about the 
 civil war in America. M. Guizot has lived to see a great 
 
x TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. 
 
 party in the United States, under the name of that repub 
 licanism which he sought to disparage in France, preparing 
 the way for that centralization, which, to use his language, 
 " naturally and as if by instinct," inclines the minds of men 
 to monarchy. Lest any of my readers should be startled at 
 this assertion, and a prejudice be thereby aroused to hinder 
 a dispassionate reception of what more I have to say, I ask , 
 have they ever heard Mr. Sumner s lecture on " Are we a 
 Nation?" and read M. Guizot s Lecture XL, on the " Central 
 ization of Nations and Governments ? " 
 
 Lest any of my readers may have fought under Grant or 
 Sherman, and should throw down this book in disgust at the 
 bare intimation that they carried fire and sword and famine 
 into the South, in the interests of centralization and mon 
 archy, let me here quote briefly from M. Guizot s eleventh 
 lecture : 
 
 " Europe, however, was then (at the close of the fourteenth 
 century) very far from understanding her own state, such as 
 I have now endeavored to explain it to you. She did not 
 know distinctly what she required, or what she was in search 
 of, yet set about endeavoring to supply her wants as if she 
 knew perfectly what they were. When the fourteenth cen 
 tury had expired, after the failure of every attempt at political 
 organization, Europe entered, naturally and as if by instinct, 
 into the path of centralization. It is the characteristic of the 
 fifteenth century that it constantly tended to this result ; that 
 it endeavored to create general interests and general ideas ; 
 to raise the minds of men to more enlarged views ; and to 
 create, in short, what had not, till then, existed on a great 
 scale nations and governments. 
 
 "The actual accomplishment of this change belongs to the 
 sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, though it was in the fif 
 teenth that it was prepared. It is this preparation, this silent 
 and hidden process of centralization, both in the social rela 
 tions and in the opinions of men a process accomplished, 
 
TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. XI 
 
 without premeditation or design, by the natural course of 
 events that we have now to make the subject of our inquiry. 
 
 " It is thus that man advances in the execution of a plan 
 which he has not conceived, and of which he is not even 
 aware. He is the free, intelligent artificer of a work, which is 
 not his own. He does not perceive or comprehend it till it 
 manifests itself by external appearances and real results ; and 
 even then he comprehends it very imperfectly. It is through 
 his means, however, and by the development of his intelli 
 gence and freedom, that it is accomplished. Conceive a 
 great machine, the design of which is centred in a single 
 mind, though its various parts are intrusted to different work 
 men, separated from and strangers to each other. No one of 
 them understands the work as a whole, nor the general re 
 sults, which he concurs in producing; but every one executes, 
 with intelligence and freedom, by rational and voluntary acts, 
 the particular task assigned to him. It is thus that by the 
 hand of man the designs of Providence are wrought out in 
 the government of the world. It is thus that the two great 
 facts, which are apparent in the history of civilization, come 
 to co-exist; on the one hand, those portions of it, which may 
 be considered as fated, or which happen without the control 
 of human knowledge or will ; on the other hand, the part 
 played in it by the freedom and intelligence of man, and what 
 he contributes to it by means of his own judgment and will." 
 
 When the true history of yet recent events shall have been 
 written, many, who have been accustomed to believe that 
 President Lincoln was the author and father of emancipation, 
 will be surprised to learn that to the very last he was averse 
 to it, and anxious to prevent the adoption of the Thirteenth 
 Amendment to the Constitution, which was carried, not only 
 without the concurrence of, but in direct opposition to, his 
 judgment and will. When he visited Richmond, immediately 
 after the evacuation in 1865, a message from my father, 
 General Duff Green, asking an interview, reached him after 
 
xii TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. 
 
 he had re-embarked and the command had already been 
 given to go ahead on the return to Washington. He imme 
 diately stopped the steamer, and waited for my father to come 
 aboard. When they met, Mr. Lincoln said, " My dear old 
 friend, how are you, and what can I do for you ? " My father 
 replied : " Mr. President, I went to see you at Springfield in 
 December, 1860, at the instance of Mr. Buchanan, and with 
 the concurrence of Mr. (Jefferson) Davis, to ask what you were 
 willing to do to avert the war. (a) I come now on my own ac 
 count, to ask on what terms you are willing to grant us peace." 
 To this Mr. Lincoln said : " If the South want peace, all they 
 have to do is to lay down their arms and acknowledge the 
 authority of the Government of the United States. I cannot 
 recall my Emancipation Proclamations, but I am perfectly will 
 ing that the Supreme Court shall decide them to have been 
 unconstitutional, null, and void. If the South do not wish to 
 give up their slaves, let them call their Legislatures together, 
 and vote down the Thirteenth Amendment." The result of 
 this interview between my father and Mr. Lincoln, followed 
 up by another, in which Judge Campbell participated, was 
 that General Weitzel was authorized to call the Virginia 
 Legislature together, for the twofold purpose first, of repeal 
 ing the Act of Secession and recognizing the authority of 
 the General Government ; and, secondly, of voting down the 
 Thirteenth Amendment. On Mr. Lincoln s return to Wash 
 ington, a pressure was brought to bear on him, that forced 
 him very reluctantly to. cancel the authority given to Gen 
 eral Weitzel to convene the Legislature. It is well known to 
 many that Mr. Lincoln was with great difficulty induced to 
 sign the Emancipation Proclamations. Perhaps no disputed 
 fact in history is susceptible of clearer proof. But few know 
 the historical fact that he was avowedly willing, and secretly 
 desired, that the Thirteenth Amendment should be defeated. 
 
 (a) See account of General Duff Green s visit to Mr. Lincoln, in the New York 
 Herald, of 8th January, 1861. 
 
Xlll 
 
 Much has been already, and ably, written on the causes 
 that led to the late civil war. The ablest, who have written 
 on the subject, are probably the Hon. Alexander H. Stephens, 
 and Judge Nicholas, of Kentucky, whose views were con 
 densed in a correspondence between them, published in the 
 National Intelligencer, in the summer of 1868. Mr. Stephens 
 said : 
 
 " Slavery so called, or that legal subordination of the black 
 race to the white, which existed in all but one of the States 
 when the Union was formed, and in fifteen of them when the 
 war began, was unquestionably the occasion of the war, the 
 main exciting proximate cause on both sides. But it was not 
 the real cause, the causa causans, of it. 
 
 " The war grew out of different and directly opposite views 
 as to the nature of the Government of the United States, and 
 where, under our system, ultimate sovereign power, or para 
 mount authority, properly resides." 
 
 " The truth is well established that the seceding States 
 did not desire war. Very few of the public men in these 
 States even expected war." 
 
 The gist of Judge Nicholas s rejoinder was that the ques 
 tion of the right of secession was the real cause of the war ; 
 that even a distinct recognition of rights in the Constitution 
 could never be used for any available purpose ; because, if at 
 any time attempted to be exercised by a weaker portion of 
 the country, the only. result would be giving the Government 
 the trouble of declaring war against and conquering it ; that, 
 as a remedy, the right of secession proved unavailable, and 
 had to be abandoned ; and that, therefore, expediency and 
 policy required that the South should, by a total abnegation, 
 deny that there was ever any legitimacy in their assertion of 
 that right. 
 
 Mr. Stephens is, and Judge Nicholas was, a man of great 
 force and ability. The former writes always in the spirit of 
 a great constitutional lawyer and statesman. The argument 
 
xiv TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. 
 
 of the latter on this occasion amounts simply to an assertion 
 of the utter worthlessness of all constitutional guarantees ; 
 that might makes right; and that the* weaker party, to avoid 
 worse punishment, should always submit to whatever condi 
 tions the stronger thought proper to impose. On this occa 
 sion he sank far below himself; for on others he was unques 
 tionably able. But with all deference to such authority, it 
 must be said that neither have gone far enough back to dis 
 cover the real causes of the war. Both agree that secession 
 was adopted as a peaceful remedy as a bloodless solution 
 of pre-existing questions, involving the alternatives of civil 
 war on the one hand, or submission to, what the weaker 
 party believed to be, intolerable wrong on the other. How 
 then can that be said to have been the real cause of the war, 
 which was only resorted to as a peaceful remedy to prevent 
 war? 
 
 We do not understand Mr. Stephens to mean that so many 
 valuable lives were sacrificed, such heavy burdens imposed 
 on both sections, merely to decide an abstract question of 
 constitutional law ; but only that the war would not have 
 taken place when it did, if the North, under the lead of Mas 
 sachusetts, had acquiesced then in the doctrine of State rights, 
 including the right of secession, which Massachusetts asserted 
 in the war of 1812, and on the acquisition of Louisiana. 
 
 The real causes of the war existed long before the right of 
 secession was thought of in the South ; long before it was 
 asserted by Massachusetts ; long before the Constitution or 
 the Union was formed ; long before New England began to 
 grow rich by the importation and sale of negro slaves ; and 
 they still exist in full force, now that slavery has been abol 
 ished and the right of secession suppressed. They were 
 1 ist. The irrepressible conflict between monarchy and de 
 mocracy. 
 * 2d. The irrepressible desire of capital to cheapen labor. 
 
 From the beginning, the New England mind inclined to 
 
TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. XV 
 
 monarchy, with established orders of nobility. Shortly be 
 fore the adoption of the Constitution, John Adams, their 
 greatest and favorite leader, with as much ability, with more 
 zeal, and with less disguise than M. Guizot, published a de 
 fence of the New England ideas of government, from which 
 the following are extracts : 
 
 " The people in all nations are naturally divided into two 
 sorts, the gentlemen and the simple men, a word which is 
 here chosen to signify the common people. By the common 
 people we mean laborers, mechanics, husbandmen, and mer 
 chants in general, who pursue their occupations and industry 
 without any knowledge in liberal arts and sciences, or in any 
 thing but their own trades and pursuits." (See John Adams s 
 Defence of the Constitution, vol. iii., p. 458.) 
 
 "The distinctions of poor and rich are as necessary in 
 states of considerable extent (such as the United States) as 
 labor and good government : the poor are destined to labor, 
 and the rich, by the advantages of education, independence, 
 and leisure, are qualified for superior stations." (Ibid., p. 360.) 
 
 " A nobility must and will exist. . . . Descent from certain 
 parents and inheritance of certain houses, lands, and other 
 visible objects (titles) will eternally have such an influence 
 over the affections and imaginations of the people, as no arts 
 and institutions will control. Time will come, if it is not now, 
 that these circumstances will have more influence over great 
 numbers of minds than any considerations of virtue and tal 
 ents." (Vol. iii., p. 377.) 
 
 " The whole history of Rome shows that corruption began 
 with the people sooner than the Senate." (Vol. iii., p. 327.) 
 
 " Powerful and crafty underminers have nowhere such rare 
 sport as in a simple democracy, or single popular assembly. 
 Nowhere, not in the completest despotism, does human na 
 ture show itself so completely depraved, so nearly approach 
 ing an equal mixture of brutality and devilishism, as in the 
 
XVi TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. 
 
 last stages of such a democracy, and in the beginning of des 
 potism, which always succeeds it." (Ibjd., vol. ii., p. 329.) 
 
 " It is the true policy of the common people to place the 
 whole executive power in the hands of one man." (Vol. iii., 
 p. 460.) 
 
 " By kings and kingly power is meant the executive power 
 in a single person." (Vol. iii., p. 461.) 
 
 44 There is not in the whole Roman history so happy a 
 period as this under their kings ; ... in short, Rome was 
 never so well governed or so happy." (Vol. iii., p. 305.) 
 
 " I only contend that the English Constitution is, in theory, 
 the most stupendous fabric of human invention. ... In future 
 ages, if the present States become a great nation, their own 
 feelings and good sense will dictate to them what to do ; they 
 may make transitions to a nearer resemblance of the British 
 Constitution." (Vol. i., pp. 70, 71.) 
 
 " It (the aristocracy) is a body of men which contains the 
 greatest collection of virtue and character in a free govern 
 ment; is the brightest onnament and glory of the nation, and 
 may always be made the greatest blessing of society, if it be 
 judiciously managed in the Constitution." (Vol. iii., p. Il6.) 
 
 " Mankind have universally discovered that chance was 
 preferable to a corrupt choice, and have trusted Providence 
 rather than themselves. First magistrates and senators had 
 better be made hereditary at once, than that the people should 
 be universally debauched and bribed." (Vol. iii., p. 283. ) 
 
 Such were the ideas to which the reflection and imagina 
 tion of the leading men of New England inclined them at the 
 time of the adoption of that democratic form of government, 
 the denunciation of which as " a league with death and cove 
 nant with hell," has been in vogue in New England down to 
 the time when that transition period, anticipated by their great 
 leader, commenced by amending the Constitution. 
 
 That these ideas have not lost ground in New England, 
 but have been spreading to the Middle and Western States, 
 
TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. XV11 
 
 appears by the following extract from the Monthly Gossip of 
 Lippincott s Magazine for February, 1868: 
 
 " The Revile de Quinzaine, of October last, has a paper on 
 Harvard University and Yale College, which shows a con 
 siderable knowledge of the subject. The writer says, that 
 while the system and the division of studies are, in the main, 
 the same as those of the English universities, yet important 
 improvements have been introduced from time to time ; and 
 he truly remarks that, while Harvard has a certain aristo 
 cratic tone, in Yale the forms and the prevailing ideas are 
 democratic, (a) 
 
 " The proposition recently made in Congress to tax the use 
 of armorial bearings on carriages and household furniture is 
 an eminently proper one, though it may perhaps cause some 
 amusement at our expense in monarchical countries. If 
 enacted into a law, the impost ought to yield a handsome 
 return from New England, if one may judge from the fact 
 that the Heraldic Journal, published by Wiggin & Lunt, Bos 
 ton, has completed its third volume. A similar periodical in 
 England, the Herald and Genealogist, edited by John Gough 
 Nicholls, has also just completed its third volume, in the 
 course of which there are five articles on Anglo- American 
 genealogy and coat-armor. The New England Historical and 
 Genealogical Register has just issued its twenty-first volume, 
 having started in 1847; and it is a curious fact that the New 
 England Historic-Genealogical Society is the first one, par 
 ticularly devoted to the pedigrees of families, ever formed. 
 The interest which Americans take in this subject is also 
 evinced by the increasing number of family histories which 
 are issuing from the press. Heretofore these works were 
 
 (a) The truth of this statement, as to Harvard, is unquestionable ; but if it be 
 true that any democratic ideas prevail at Yale, the explanation of that phenome 
 non is to be found in the fact that, until recently, Yale has been mainly supported 
 by students from the South and West, while Harvard was altogether sustained 
 by New England. 
 
Xviii TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. 
 
 mainly confined to New England and New York, which were 
 settled before Pennsylvania and the Western States ; but they 
 are now appearing in other parts of the Union. Histories of 
 the Sharpless, Darlington, Levering, Du Bois, Cope, Mont 
 gomery, Shippen, Wolfe, Coleman, and Hill families have 
 been printed in this State, and those of the Buchanan and 
 Sill families in Ohio. We hear that the pedigree of the Went- 
 worth family is about to be published in Chicago ; and that 
 Mr. D. Williams Patterson, of Pittston, Pennsylvaniarhas in 
 preparation the genealogy of the Grant family, which will 
 include the pedigree of General Ulysses S. Grant. It appears 
 that his ancestor was Matthew Grant, whose name first occurs 
 on the town records of Dorchester, Massachusetts, April 3, 
 1633. Noah, the grandfather of the General, born in Con 
 necticut, June 20, 1748, and the sixth generation in descent 
 from the Dorchester emigrant, came from Coventry, Connec 
 ticut, to Pennsylvania, after the Revolutionary War, and- set 
 tled here. The Rev. Mr. Headley s statement, that the ances 
 tor of Grant settled in Pennsylvania on his arrival in this 
 country, is therefore erroneous. Although very frequently 
 indeed these pedigrees are fit subjects of ridicule, some link 
 in a chain being assumed without proof, or some sign of van 
 ity being exhibited by the degenerate offspring of worthy 
 sires ; yet at the bottom of all this there is, on the whole, 
 a healthy family-pride, which benefits society, and to which 
 no one, who comes of virtuous and honorable parentage, is 
 insensible." 
 
 Speaking of an elective chief-magistrate, Mr. Adams said, 
 This hazardous experiment the Americans have tried, and 
 if elections are soberly made, it may answer very well ; but 
 if parties, factions, drunkenness, bribes, armies, and delirium 
 come in, as they have always done, sooner or later, to embroil 
 and decide everything, the people must again have recourse 
 to conventions, and find a remedy for this hazardous experi 
 ment. Neither philosophy nor policy has yet discovered any 
 
TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. XIX 
 
 other cure than by prolonging the duration of the first magis 
 trate and senators. The evil may be lessened and postponed 
 by elections for longer periods of years, until they become 
 for life ; and if this is not found an adequate remedy, there 
 will remain no other but to make them hereditary." (Vol. 
 iii., p. 296.) 
 
 Observe that Mr. Adams also said, " The time will come, if 
 it is not now ; " and among the signs of the time he enumer 
 ated " bribes, armies, and delirium." In this connection, the 
 organization of the " Grand Army of the Republic," and the 
 establishment of the Imperialist newspaper in New York, 
 just after the war, to test whether the time had come for the 
 realization of these views, by making General Grant emperor, 
 are signs of the time not to be overlooked. The " Grand 
 Army of the Republic," with all its commarfderies and com 
 manders, has so far only served to strengthen the Democratic 
 vote, by a reaction from the delirium of the war; and the 
 Imperialist newspaper expired with the death of General Raw- 
 lings, Grant s Secretary of War. (a) This, however, does not 
 prove that the monarchical and aristocratic spirit of New Eng 
 land is dead, but only that the time has not yet come. 
 
 But there were in New England then, as now, some 
 
 (a) Of all the converts to the logic of Adams and Guizot, General Rawlings 
 was perhaps the most sincere, the purest, the least influenced by selfish considera 
 tions. He had come to believe that Rome was never so well governed or so 
 happy as under her kings, and that the good government and happiness of this 
 vast country required that it should be centralized into a nation and governed by 
 an empevor. There is reason to believe that his death was hastened by chagrin at 
 finding out that General Grant, whom he had selected as the instrument for that 
 transition, was not the right man. Bribes and armies are potent for the subver 
 sion of democratic government and the establishment of empires ; but the former 
 must be given, not received, by the aspirant for imperial sway. Plutarch relates 
 of Sylla that, while praetor, he happened to be provoked at (Sextus Julius) Caesar, 
 and said to him, angrily, " I will use my authority against you." Caesar answered, 
 laughing, " You do well to call it yours, for you bought it." Whether true or 
 false, it soon came to be believed of General Grant that he was more ready to 
 sell than to buy his authority. 
 
XX TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. 
 
 earnest and able advocates of free government, as, for in 
 stance, Samuel Adams. The sentiment against monarchy 
 was so strong in other portions of the Union, and espe 
 cially in the slaveholding States of the South, that after the 
 adoption of the Constitution, the monarchical party deemed 
 it prudent to assume the name of Federalists, as being less 
 unpopular than one more indicative of their peculiar ideas 
 and theories of government. In the Boston Monthly An 
 thology, for March, 1807, the curious reader will find some 
 verses (a) denunciatory of the Republican party, in which 
 this policy of assuming a name for political purposes is thus 
 referred to : 
 
 "And if we cannot alter things, 
 
 By G , we 11 change their names, sir ! 
 
 True, Tom and Joel now no more 
 
 Can overturn a nation : > 
 
 And work by butchery and blood, 
 
 A great regeneration, 
 Yet, still we can turn inside out 
 
 Old nature s constitution, 
 And bring a Babel back of names, 
 
 Huzza! for REVOLUTION." 
 
 The advocates of the Constitution as adopted were, and 
 called themselves, Republicans ; but their opponents in New 
 England called them Democrats in derision. In course of 
 time they accepted this name, as indicative of their theory 
 that legitimate sovereignty resides in the whole body of the 
 people, and not in a king and nobility ; and, as soon as they 
 dropped the name of Republicans for that of Democrats, their 
 opponents, the monarchists, took it up, and assumed it as their 
 own party appellation. 
 
 During the session of Congress of 1807-8, Mr. John Q. 
 
 (a) The authorship of these verses was attributed, and no doubt correctly, to 
 John Quincy Adams. By Tom and Joel, Tom Paine and Joel Barlow, anti- 
 monarchists, were referred to. 
 
TRANSLATOR, S PREFACE. XXI 
 
 Adams surprised his former political opponents as well as 
 his own party friends, by what Governor Giles, of Virginia, 
 in an address to the public, dated February 28, 1828, calls " a 
 complete political somerset from the Federal (or monarchical) 
 to the Republican (or democratic) party." In explanation of 
 his course, Mr. Adams told Governor Giles and Mr. Jefferson 
 that the object of the Federal (or monarchical) party in New 
 England " had been for several years the dissolution of the 
 Union and the establishment of a separate confederacy ; 
 that he knew this from unequivocal evidence, although not 
 provable in a court of justice ; and that, in case of a civil 
 war, the aid of Great Britain to effect that purpose would be 
 as surely resorted to as it would be indispensably necessary 
 to the design." (a) 
 
 The following is an extract from a letter from Mr. Jefferson 
 to Governor Giles, dated Monticello, December 26, 1825 : 
 
 " You ask my opinion of the propriety of giving publicity 
 to what is stated in your letter, as having passed between 
 John Q. Adams and yourself. Of this no one can judge but 
 yourself. It is one of those questions which belong to the 
 forum of feeling. This alone can decide on the degree of 
 confidence implied in the disclosure : whether, under no cir 
 cumstances, it was to be communicable to others. It does 
 not seem to be of that character, or at all to meet that aspect. 
 They are historical facts, which belong to the present as well 
 as future time. I doubt whether a single fact, known to the 
 world, will carry as clear a conviction to it, of the correctness 
 of our knowledge of the treasonable views of the Federal 
 party of that day, as that disclosed by this most nefarious 
 and daring attempt to dissever the Union, of which the Hart 
 ford Convention was a subsequent chapter; and both of these 
 having failed, consolidation becomes the first book of their 
 history. But this opens with a vast accession of strength, 
 
 (a) See Mr. Adams s own statement in National Intelligencer, October 21, 
 1828. 
 
xxii TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. 
 
 from their younger recruits, who, having nothing in them of 
 the feelings or principles of 76, now* look to a single and 
 splendid government of an aristocracy, founded on banking 
 institutions and moneyed incorporations, under the guise and 
 cloak of their favored branches of manufactures, commerce, 
 and navigation, riding and ruling over the plundered plough 
 man and beggared yeomanry. This will be to them a next 
 best blessing to the monarchy of their first aim, and perhaps 
 the surest stepping-stone to it." 
 
 When it was made known that Mr. John Quincy Adams, 
 in explaining to Governor Giles and Mr. Jefferson his reasons 
 for joining the Republican or Democratic party, had charged 
 these treasonable views upon the Federal party of New Eng 
 land, some of his late political associates, who claimed to be 
 patriots, while conscientiously believing the monarchical form 
 of government the best, retorted on him, by charging that 
 he was still a monarchist at heart, and that his conversion 
 to democracy was only pretended. They asserted that " in 
 1807, at the table of an illustrious citizen now no more, he 
 (Mr. Adams) lamented tint fearful progress of the Democratic 
 party and of its principles, and declared that he had long 
 meditated the subject, and had become convinced that the only 
 method, by which the Democratic party could be destroyed, was 
 by joining ivitJi it, and urging it on ivith the utmost energy to the 
 completion of its views : whereby the result zvould prove so ridi 
 culous, and so ruinous to the country, that the people would be led 
 to despise the principles and to condemn the effects of Democratic 
 policy ; and THEN, said he, f WE MAY HAVE A FORM OF GOVERN 
 MENT BETTER SUITED TO THE GENIUS AND DISPOSITION OF OUR 
 COUNTRY THAN OUR PRESENT CONSTITUTION." (a) 
 
 This charge made against Mr. John Quincy Adams by his 
 then late associates was denied ; and the attempt was made 
 to prove it by the affidavits of Messrs. Townsend and Derby, 
 of the monarchical party, both men of high standing in Mas- 
 
 (a) See Boston Statesman, November, 1824. 
 
TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. XX1H 
 
 sachusetts. The case made by these affidavits against Mr. 
 Adams was strong, but not conclusive, although they after 
 ward acquired much additional force from Mr. Adams s subse 
 quent reaffiliation with the party whom his father, John Adams, 
 in one of his letters to Cunningham, styles the "Absolute Oli 
 garchy" and by the bitterness of his hatred of Democracy, 
 and of its stronghold, the Southern slaveholding States. 
 
 But whether the charge was true or false whether this 
 idea originated with John Quincy Adams, or with the mon 
 archical party, who brought the charge of having originated 
 it against him, certain it is that they have since then pushed 
 it vigorously and successfully. For what can be more or 
 better calculated to " lead the people to despise the principles 
 and to condemn the effects of Democratic policy," than to see a 
 parcel of ignorant negroes, recently slaves, with no knowledge 
 of history or jurisprudence, controlling the destinies of States 
 like Virginia and South Carolina, in the place of such men 
 as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Madison, Sumter, 
 Marion, and Calhoun ? 
 
 New England was not only monarchical. She was also a 
 negro-slave trader ; and it was not until it was discovered 
 that the effect of negro slavery, was to strengthen the dem 
 ocratic principle of equality among the whites, that negro 
 slavery became odious to New England. In course of time, 
 it was seen that the ownership of negro slaves carried with it 
 the necessity of making color and good conduct (not wealth 
 and poverty) the only basis for distinction. In the presence 
 of their black slaves and of the poor white men, whom they 
 employed as overseers, and whose authority it was necessary 
 to maintain, the slave-owners found themselves compelled to 
 treat the poor white man as an equal, because he was white, 
 and the negro slave as an inferior, because he was black. In 
 no other way could they teach the negroes lessons of obedi 
 ence to their poor white overseers, or keep up the personal 
 pride, self-respect, and character of the overseers, which was 
 
XXIV TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. 
 
 indispensable, that they might more easily control the slaves. 
 When, at a later period, the Souther slaveholders learned 
 that Old England was seeking to abolish slavery in the United 
 States, as a means of securing for her own East-India pos 
 sessions a monopoly of the production of cotton and sugar, 
 and that the monarchists and aristocrats of New England had 
 united with Old England against them, they found it more 
 than ever necessary to strengthen themselves by inculcating 
 upon their children and neighbors that color and good con 
 duct were the only proper foundation for castes. 
 * It was this necessity of the slave-owners the necessity of 
 employing poor white men as overseers, and of treating them 
 with respect in the presence of the negro slaves, so as to secure 
 respect and obedience to them from the slaves which, perhaps 
 more than all else, led to the marked contrast between the 
 social relations and distinctions in the non-slaveholding and 
 in the slaveholding States. In the former, if a laboring man 
 had occasion to call at the house of a rich man, he was kept 
 standing at the front door, or at best in the passage-way, 
 until his business was accomplished. In the latter, he was 
 invited to be seated in the parlor ; was offered a glass of wine, 
 or whisky and water; was asked to dinner, if that hour was 
 nigh ; his family and business affairs, the weather, the crops 
 and politics were discussed, as between equals and friends. 
 M. Guizot, in his History of Civilization, comments on, and 
 attaches great importance to, an analogous effect of the Cru 
 sades on the social relations of Europe. He says : 
 
 "During the Crusades, small proprietors found it necessary 
 to place themselves in the train of some rich and powerful 
 chief, from whom they received assistance and support. They 
 lived with him, shared his fortune, and passed through the 
 same adventures that he did. When the Crusaders returned 
 home, this social spirit, this habit of living in intercourse with 
 superiors, continued to subsist, and had its influence on the 
 manners of the age. . . . 
 
TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. XXV 
 
 "Such, in my opinion, are the real effects of the Crusades: 
 on the one hand, the extension of ideas and the emancipation 
 of thought; on the other, a general enlargement of the social 
 sphere, and an opening of a wider field for every sort of 
 activity ; they produced, at the same time, more individual 
 freedom and more political unity." 
 
 Such was the effect of negro slavery in the South on the 
 social relations of the rich and poor whites. 
 
 I remember, when a boy, hearing the striking contrast 
 between the social relations of the rich and poor whites at the 
 South and at the North, commented upon by my father. It 
 was before the days of railroads, when travelling was by stage 
 coach, and before the Abolition agitation had begun to attract 
 attention. He had always lived in the South, and was accus 
 tomed to the social equality among the whites there prevail 
 ing. In a tour through the Northern States, he rode gener- 
 ally with the stage-driver, to see the country. At the first 
 meal- stand in Pennsylvania, he was struck with the fact, that 
 the whi. stage-driver was not permitted to take his seat at 
 the same table with the passengers ; and, as he progressed 
 northward, he found the rule universal that, in the non-slave- 
 holding States, the driver was required to eat at a separate 
 and interior table. He was long enough in the Northern and 
 Eastern States to become somewhat familiarized with this dis 
 tinction there made between the rich^ passengers and the poor 
 drivers ; and as he passed through Maryland on his returnee 
 did not notice whether the driver was permitted to eat at the 
 passengers table or not. From Washington City he started 
 on a similar tour through the Southern States. The first day 
 out in Virginia, he reached the meal-stand with a traveller s 
 appetite, and, seeing dinner ready, he was about to take his 
 seat ; but was stopped and told by the waiter that the pas 
 sengers must wait until the driver a white man who was 
 washing his hands, was ready to take his seat with them. 
 This little circumstance caused him to be more observant of 
 3 
 
xxvi TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. 
 
 the absence of the New-England social distinction between 
 the poor and the rich, and of this scteiai_e_quality among the 
 \vhje, which he found everywhere a prominent character 
 istic of the slaveholding States? 
 
 From having heard my father speak of this, now nearly 
 thirty years ago, and often since, my own attention was called 
 to it, and in a very extensive observation in all the slave- 
 holding States, I have found it universal, and more strongly 
 developed as the Abolition agitation progressed. Shortly 
 before the war, I was visiting one of the largest slavehold 
 ers, (a) a truly representative man of his class, who had a poor 
 white neighbor employed digging a well. When the first 
 bell rang for the ladies to dress for dinner, this well-digger 
 came out of his hole in the ground, washed and dressed him 
 self, took his seat at the table with the family and guests, and 
 seemed as much at his ease as if he had been governor of the 
 State. 
 
 This privilege of color could be forfeited by bad conduct, 
 and by bad conduct only ; and when so lost, the negro slaves 
 despised the losers, and spoke of them contemptuously as 
 " mean white trash ; " sometimes as "poor white trash ; " not 
 because they were poor, but because, being white, they had 
 forfeited by misconduct the respect due to them by virtue of 
 their white skins. 
 
 This tendency: of_ngrp slavery, as it existed in the South, 
 to break down " the distinctions jof rich and poor " whites, 
 which the monarchical - aristocratic party of New England 
 held to be " as necessary in states of considerable extent 
 (such as the United States) as labor and good government," 
 gave a great impulse to the agitation against negro slavery, 
 which had been originally set on foot by paid agents of Old 
 England, with a view of securing a monopoly of the pro- 
 
 (a) The planter here alluded to was the late Colonel Andrew P. Calhoun, eldest 
 son of John C. Calhoun ; and the well-digger s name was, I think, Boggs, of 
 Pickens District, South Carolina. 
 
TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. XXV11 
 
 duction of cotton and sugar for the British East-India pos 
 sessions. 
 
 But there was another remarkable tendency of negro slave- s 
 ry, which made it still more odious to those who desired a 
 transition to a nearer resemblance of the " British Constitu 
 tion," and therefore " lamented the fearful progress of the 
 Democratic party and of its principles." This was its polit 
 ical effect on the character of the poor whites, or " common 
 people," of the South. Their social elevation, the more respect 
 ful treatment secured to them by the necessity of the slave 
 owners, as above explained, increased their self-respect, and 
 caused them to value more highly their political franchises, 
 which, at the same time, made them the superiors of the 
 negroes, and the political, as well as social, equals of their 
 rich white neighbors. For this reason bribery at elections 
 was a thing almost unknown at the South. Even the most 
 abject of those, whom the very negro slaves despised as 
 " poor white trash," recoiled from that lower depth of degra 
 dation selling his vote. This was strikingly illustrated 
 by the testimony elicited by the Covode Investigating Com 
 mittee, 1st Session, 36th Congress, vol. v., p. 490. It there 
 appears that bribery at elections had grown to be a custom 
 ary thing with all parties in the free States. The witness, 
 a Northern man, being asked, " Have all your contributions 
 been in Northern States ? " replied, " Yes, sir ; I do not remem 
 ber spending a dollar politically in Southern States. I have 
 tendered contributions there, but they allowed they did not 
 use money as we use it in the Northern States." 
 
 In course of time, another remarkable result of negro 
 slavery was developed and came to be understood by the 
 master minds of W. H. Seward, Salmon P. Chase, and a few 
 others, although the great majority of the free and intelligent 
 artificers of the work, which they designed, did not perceive 
 or comprehend it, while executing the particular tasks as 
 signed to them, and even now comprehend it very incom- 
 
XXV111 TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. 
 
 pletely. Mr. Seward misled the productive classes of the 
 free States by the specious dogma of " an irrepressible conflict 
 between free labor and slave labor," when in fact there was 
 no such conflict ; the interests of all labor, whether free or 
 slave, being identical, viz., to keep up wages and keep down 
 the cost of living. The real conflict was not between free 
 and slave labor but it was between the capital that hired 
 free labor, and the capital that owned slave labor. The 
 interests of the former required a system of legislation that 
 would put down wages and put up the cost of living. The 
 interests of the latter required a diametrically opposite system. 
 Wages went into, and the cost of living came out of, the 
 pockets of the capital that owned slave labor. Wages came 
 out of, and the cost of living went into, the pockets of the 
 capital, that hired free labor. Mr. Seward and Mr. Chase 
 were not long in discovering that herein consisted the phi 
 losophy of Mr. Jefferson s celebrated aphorism, " The De 
 mocracy of the North are the natural allies of the Repub 
 licans of the South." They were not slow to see that, while 
 the interests and inclination of the capital that hired free labor 
 called for a system of taxation imposing heavy burdens on 
 the laboring classes, the interests and inclination of the 
 capital that owned slave labor required a system of light 
 taxes, high wages, fair prices for the products of labor, and 
 cheap living. While many of their less discerning " work 
 men " were surprised to see the Southern slaveholders voting 
 and exerting their influence to shape the legislation of the 
 country to this end, and were astonished that those whom 
 they were taught to consider as the " slave aristocracy," 
 should thus act against the interests of those whom they 
 were taught to consider the true aristocracy, and for the in 
 terests of the " common people," (the laboring and produc 
 tive classes of the North,) Mr. Seward s astute mind solved 
 the mystery. He saw that one peculiar result of negro 
 slavery was to identify the interests of the Southern slave- 
 
TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. XXIX 
 
 holders and of the northern working-men ; that it gave to 
 Northern labor in its conflict with Northern capital to the 
 " laborers, mechanics, husbandmen, and merchants in gen 
 eral " of the North in their conflict with the aristocracy a 
 potent ally in the slaveholders of the South ; that it joined 
 them together, as the priest joins man and wife, and that to 
 abolish slavery would be to divorce Southern capital from 
 Northern labor. 
 
 [Since the foregoing was written, Mr. Attorney-General 
 Akerman has been to Washington City, and was initiated 
 into the counsels of those, in whose minds the designs of the 
 Government machine are centred. Returning to Georgia, 
 he made a speech in Representatives Hall, Atlanta, ist Sep 
 tember, 1870, by which it clearly appears that, among other 
 things learned by him in the Cabinet councils, was this fact : 
 that one of the main objects and results of the war was to 
 divorce Southern capital from Northern labor. His speech, 
 whether prepared by him or for him, evinces much adroitness 
 in view of the objects to be accomplished by it. They were, 
 first, to call the attention of Southern capital to the fact, that 
 it is no longer interested in opposing high taxes, low wages 
 and prodigal Government expenditures ; that it has no longer 
 any interests in common with the laboring classes, the "com 
 mon people," of the North ; secondly, to prepare the way for 
 an election bill, by which the ignorant negroes of Georgia, 
 voting early and often, on several different days and in several 
 different counties, could be used to neutralize the votes of 
 intelligent white Democratic workmen in Ohio or Pennsyl 
 vania. He said : 
 
 " My friends, I am touching now a serious topic. ... In the 
 United States, looking at the white population alone, the cry 
 of a conflict between capital and labor has generally been 
 the cry of the demagogue, for the reason that capital has 
 seldom been organized against labor, and labor has seldom, 
 
XXX TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. 
 
 except in the small way of trades unions, been organized 
 against capital. . . . 
 
 " How is the problem affected by the elevation of colored men 
 to freedom ? Labor and capital were in the same hands here in 
 the South. They have now become DIVORCED by emancipation ^ 
 
 In a speech, at Boston, shortly before the inauguration 
 of President Lincoln, Mr. Seward avowed that, in his theo 
 ries of government, he was a disciple of John Adams. The 
 quotations we have given from Mr. Adams s book show 
 what those theories were. Mr. Seward, then, believed that 
 "a nobility must and will exist;" that "the aristocracy is the 
 brightest ornament and glory of the nation ; " that " first- 
 magistrates and senators had better be made hereditary at 
 once, than that the people should be universally debauched 
 and bribed ; " that " the distinctions of poor and rich are as 
 necessary in states of considerable extent (such as the United 
 States) as labor and good government ; " and that these 
 States, having become a great nation, should " make transi 
 tions to a nearer resemblance of the British Constitution." (a) 
 But a thorough, statesman-like, philosophic investigation of 
 the social and political effects of negro slavery in the South 
 also disclosed to him the fact, that its tendencies were all 
 anti-monarchical and anti-aristocratic ; that the slaveholder 
 was surrounded by necessities, which, in his social treatment 
 of his poor white neighbor, forced him to become what John 
 Adams would call a "vulgar democrat," (b) and in his political 
 action forced him to vote with the "common people," and 
 against the monarchical aristocracy of the North, for light 
 taxes, high wages, and cheap living ; and, seeing this, he 
 declared that " these States must become all free ; " that negro 
 slavery must be abolished, and capital divorced from labor. 
 
 M. Guizot says : 
 
 "The struggle of classes constitutes the very fact of 
 
 (a) Query : Russian ? 
 
 () See John Adams s Letters to Cunningham. 
 
TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. xxxi 
 
 modern history, of which it is full. Modern Europe, in 
 deed, is born of this struggle between the different classes 
 of society." (a) 
 
 The same is true of the United States. "We see this strug 
 gle of classes in Mr. Adams s book ; we see it in the dogma 
 of the political party that elected Mr. Lincoln and made war 
 on the South to abolish slavery, that free labor might be 
 made cheaper than slave labor; 1 we see it in Chief-Justice 
 Chase s son-in-law s declaration at the Memphis Commercial 
 Convention that labor must be cheapened ; (b) we see it in 
 the substitution of negro for white printers in the Govern 
 ment printing-office at Washington City; we see it in the 
 attempt to cheapen the labor of shoemakers in Massachusetts 
 and negroes in the South by the substitution and competition 
 of the " heathen Chinese ; " we see it in the trades unions 
 of the North, and in the National Labor Union of the United 
 States. 
 
 It has long been held by a certain class of statesmen that 
 the United States could never take that rank among nations, 
 to which their vast territory and great resources entitle them, 
 without manufactures ; and that they cannot compete with 
 Europe in manufactures without reducing the wages of labor 
 in the United States to the standard of wages in Europe. 
 Among the living advocates of cheap labor, we again find 
 Mr. Seward .and Chief-Justice Chase the ablest. The only 
 difference between them, in this respect, is that Mr. Seward, 
 residing in the East, was a high-tariff man, seeking to cheapen 
 labor, by taxing labor for the benefit of the capital that em 
 ployed labor, as well as by abolishing slavery; while Mr. 
 Chase, though born and educated in New England, moved in 
 early life to the West, where the protection theories were 
 
 (a) See Guizot s History- of Civilization, D. Appleton & Co., New York. 
 1837, p. 184. 
 (6) See Senator Sprague s speech at the Memphis Convention. 
 
XXxii TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. 
 
 unpopular, and therefore relied mainly on abolition to cheapen 
 
 labor. 
 
 
 
 In searching for the origin of the dogma that " free labor 
 may be made cheaper than slave labor," I find it in M. de 
 Cassagnac s book. He proves, demonstratively, that all 
 voluntary emancipations on a large scale have been made 
 for the benefit of the master, to get rid of the care and ex 
 pense of supporting the slaves ; and that the invariable result 
 of all emancipations has been to produce four classes, viz., 
 hirelings, beggars, prostitutes, and thieves. The corollary is 
 that pauperism increases competition in the struggle for the 
 means of existence, and increased competition tends to a 
 further reduction of wages, below the cost of feeding and 
 clothing a slave, and taking care of him in infancy, sickness, 
 and old age. 
 
 About the same time, viz., in 1837, Mr. Calhoun, in his 
 speech on the reception of Abolition petitions, threw out, with 
 less elaboration, similar ideas : that the tendency of negro 
 slavery in the South was to strengthen the principle of re 
 publican equality among the whites, and that no laboring 
 class in any part of the world were so well treated and cared 
 for, or received so large a share of the products of their labor, 
 as the negro slaves of the South. He said: 
 
 " I appeal to facts. Never before has the black race of 
 Central Africa, from the dawn of history to the present day, 
 attained a position so civilized and so improved, not only 
 physically, but morally and intellectually. It came among 
 us in a low, degraded, and savage condition ; and, in the 
 course of a few generations, it has grown up under the fos 
 tering care of our institutions, as reviled as they have been, 
 to its present comparative civilized condition. This, with the 
 rapid increase of numbers, is conclusive proof of the general 
 happiness of the race, in spite of all the exaggerated tales to 
 the contrary. 
 
 " In the mean time, the white or European race has not 
 
TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. xxxiii 
 
 degenerated. It has kept pace with its brethren in other sec 
 tions of the Union, where slavery does not exist. It is odious 
 to make comparisons ; but I appeal to all sides whether the 
 South is not equal in virtue, intelligence, patriotism, courage, 
 disinterestedness, and all the high qualities, which adorn our 
 nature. I ask whether we have not contributed our full share 
 of talents and political wisdom in forming and sustaining this 
 political fabric ? and whether we have not constantly inclined 
 most strongly to the side of liberty, and been the first to see, and 
 first to resist the encroachments of power. In one thing only 
 are we inferior the arts of gain: we acknowledge that we 
 are less wealthy than the Northern section of this Union ; but 
 I trace this mainly to the fiscal action of this Government, 
 which has extracted much from and spent little among us. 
 Had it been the reverse if the exaction had been from the 
 other section, and the expenditure with us this point of 
 superiority would not be against us now, as it was not at the 
 formation of this Government. 
 
 " But I take higher ground. I hold that, in the present state 
 of civilization, where two races of different origin, and distin 
 guished by color and other physical differences, as well as 
 intellectual, are brought together, the relation now existing 
 in the slave-holding States between the two is, instead of an 
 evil, a good a positive good. I feel myself called upon to 
 speak freely upon the subject, where the honor and interests 
 of those I represent are involved. I hold, then, that there 
 never has yet existed a wealthy and civilized society in which 
 one portion of the community did not, in point of fact, live 
 on the labor of the other. Broad and general as is this as 
 sertion, it is fully borne out by history. This is not the pro 
 per occasion ; but if it were, it would not be difficult to trace 
 the various devices, by which the wealth of all civilized com 
 munities has been so unequally divided, and to show by what 
 means so small a share has been allotted to those, by whose 
 labor it was produced, and so large a share given to the non- 
 
t 
 xxxiv TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. 
 
 producing class. The devices are almost innumerable, from 
 the brute force and gross superstition of ancient times to the 
 subtle and artful fiscal contrivances of modern. I might well 
 challenge a comparison between them and the more direct, 
 simple, and patriarchal mode, by which the labor of the Afri 
 can race is among us commanded by the European. I may 
 say, with truth, that in few countries so much is left to the 
 share of the laborer, and so little exacted from him, or where 
 there is more kind attention to him in sickness or infirmities 
 of age. Compare his condition with the tenants of the poor- 
 houses in the most civilized portions of Europe. Look at the 
 sick, and the old and infirm slave, on the one hand, in the 
 midst of his family and friends, under the kind superintend 
 ing care of his master and mistress, and compare it with the 
 forlorn and wretched condition of the pauper in the poor- 
 house. But I will not dwell on this aspect of the question. 
 I turn to the political ; and here I fearlessly assert, that the 
 existing relation between the two races in the South, against 
 which those blind fanatics are waging war, forms the most 
 solid and durable foundation on which to rear free and stable 
 political institutions. It is useless to disguise the fact. There 
 is and always has been, in an advanced stage of wealth and 
 civilization, a conflict between labor and capital. The condi 
 tion of society in the South exempts us from the disorders 
 and dangers resulting from this conflict; and this explains 
 why it is that the political condition of the slaveholding 
 States has been so much more stable and quiet than the 
 North. The advantages of the former in this respect will 
 become more and more manifest, if left undisturbed by inter 
 ference from without, as the country advances in wealth and 
 numbers. We have, in fact, but just entered that condition of 
 society where the strength and durability of our political in 
 stitutions are to be tested ; and I venture nothing in predict 
 ing that the experience of the next generation will fully test 
 how vastly more favorable our condition of society is to that 
 
TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. XXXV 
 
 of other sections for free and stable institutions, provided we 
 are not disturbed by the interference of others, or shall have 
 sufficient intelligence and spirit to resist promptly and suc 
 cessfully such interferences. It rests with ourselves to meet 
 and repel them. 
 
 " Be assured that emancipation itself would not satisfy these 
 fanatics ; that gained, the next step would be to raise the 
 negroes to a social and political equality with the whites ; 
 and that being effected, we would soon find the present con 
 dition of the two races reversed. They and their Northern 
 allies wouloMje the masters, and we the slaves ; the condition 
 of the white race in the British West Indies, as bad as it is, 
 would be happiness to ours. There the mother country is 
 interested in sustaining the supremacy of the European race. 
 It is true that the authority of the former master is destroyed, 
 but the African will there be a slave, not to individuals, but 
 to the community; forced to labor, not by the authority of 
 the overseer, but by the bayonet of the soldiery and the rod 
 of the civil magistrate." 
 
 Mr. Calhoun was an ardent, a passionate devotee of the 
 Union under the Constitution ; and it is questionable whether 
 Governor Joseph E. Brown, of Georgia, could have succeeded 
 in hurrying the Southern States into secession in 1861, if 
 Mr. Calhoun had then been living. Entering public life in 
 1811, he was one of the ablest and most zealous supporters 
 of the war of 1812 with Great Britain, in defence of the rights 
 and interests of the seamen of New England ; and his earnest 
 nature was soon shocked by discovering that the object of 
 the so-called Federal party in New England "had been, for 
 several years, the dissolution of the Union and the establish 
 ment of a separate confederacy," by the co-operation of Great 
 Britain. (a) The study of his life, therefore, was to find in the 
 Constitution some balance-wheel, or regulator, which would 
 
 (a] See statement of John Quincy Adams in the National Intelligencer, October 
 21, 1828. 
 
XXXVI TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. 
 
 guard against the danger of secession on the one hand, or 
 centralization and despotism on the ather. Hence his modi 
 fication of Mr. Jefferson s doctrine of nullification, as an anti 
 dote to the New England doctrine of the right of secession, (#) 
 
 (a] The doctrine of nullification, as laid down in the Virginia and Kentucky 
 Resolutions, and as maintained by Jefferson, Madison, and others, made each 
 State, for itself and separately , the judge of any alleged infraction of the Constitu 
 tion, and of the " mode and measure of redress" 
 
 Mr. Calhoun s modification of that doctrine proposed to make " all the States 
 in convention assembled" the judge ; and meanwhile, until such a convention of 
 all the States could he called together for the decision of the question, to give to 
 each State the right to nullify, or suspend the execution of an obnoxious and 
 unconstitutional law temporarily within her borders. By this State right of tem 
 porary suspension, analogous to the Presidential veto, Calhoun sought to protect 
 the weaker States from hasty and unjust legislation ; while he relied on the calm 
 deliberations of a convention of all the States to effectually suppress the spirit 
 of secession. 
 
 Mr. Thomas Ritchie, of the Richmond Enquirer, Mr. Francis P. Blair, of 
 the Washington Globe, the National Intelligencer, and others, admitting the 
 right of secession, opposed Mr. Calhoun s modification of the doctrine of the 
 Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, on the ground that its effect would be to 
 place a State in the Union and out of the Union at the same time. See Calhoun s 
 address to the people of South Carolina. (Jenkins s Life of Calhoun, pp. 172- 
 173.) He said: 
 
 " How the States are to exercise this high power of interposition, which con 
 stitutes so essential a portion of their reserved rights that it cannot be delegated 
 without an entire surrender of their sovereignty, and converting our system from a 
 federal into a consolidated government, is a question that the States only are 
 competent to determine. The arguments, which prove that they possess the 
 power, equally prove that they are, in the language of Jefferson, the rightful 
 judges of the mode and measure of redress? But the spirit of forbearance, as well 
 as the nature of the right itself, forbids a recourse to it, except in cases of dan 
 gerous infractions of the Constitution ; and then only in the last resort, when all 
 reasonable hope of relief from the ordinary action of the Government has failed ; 
 when, if the right to interpose did not exist, the alternative would be submission 
 and oppression on one side, or resistance by force on the other. That our system 
 should afford, in such extreme cases, an intermediate point between these dire 
 alternatives, by which the Government may be brought to a pause, and thereby 
 an interval obtained to compromise differences, or, if impracticable, be compelled 
 to submit the question to a constitutional adjustment, through an appeal to the 
 States themselves, is an evidence of its high wisdom ; an element, not, as is sup 
 posed by some, of weakness, but of strength : not of anarchy or revolution, but 
 
TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. XXXV11 
 
 and to the New England spirit of centralization and monarchy. 
 His last words in the Senate of the United States, when the 
 hand of death was upon him; when the ambition of this 
 world was over; were a plea for the Union under the Con 
 stitution. His speech of 1837, from which we have just 
 quoted, was an earnest and able appeal to the justice, good 
 sense, and self-interests of the laboring and productive classes 
 of the North, for the Union under the Constitution, against 
 the Abolitionists, then few in number and generally regarded 
 
 of peace and safety. Its general recognition would, in a great measure, if not 
 altogether, supersede the necessity of its exercise, by impressing on the movements of 
 the Government that moderation and justice so essential to harmony and peace, in 
 a country of such vast extent and diversity of interests as ours ; and would, if con 
 troversy should come, turn the resentment of the aggrieved from the system to 
 those who had abused its powers, (a point all-important,) and cause them to seek 
 redress, not in revolution or overthrow, bttt in reformation. It is, in fact, properly 
 understood, a substitute, where the alternative would be force, tending to prevent, 
 and, if that fails, to correct peaceably the aberrations, to which all systems arc lia 
 ble, and which, if permitted to accumulate, without correction, must finally end in 
 a general catastrophe. 1 
 
 See also Calhoun s letter to Governor Hamilton, of 28th August, 1832, in which 
 he said : 
 
 " If the views presented be correct, it follows that on the interposition of a 
 State in favor of the reserved rights, it would be the duty of the General Govern 
 ment to abandon the contested power, or to apply to the States themselves, the 
 source of all political authority, for the power, in one of the two modes prescribed 
 by the Constitution. If the case be a simple one, embracing a single power, and 
 that in its nature easily adjusted, the more ready and appropriate mode would be 
 an amendment in the ordinary form, on a proposition of two-thirds of both houses 
 of Congress, to be ratified by three-fourths of the States : but, on the contrary, 
 should the derangement of the system be great, embracing many points difficult 
 to adjust, the States ought to be convened in a general convention, the most 
 august of all assemblies, representing the united sovereignty of the confederated 
 States, and having power and authority to correct every error, and to repair every 
 dilapidation or injury, whether caused by time or accident, or the conflicting 
 movements of the bodies, which compose the system. 
 
 " With institutions every way so fortunate, possessed of means so well calcu 
 lated to prevent disorders, and so admirable to correct them, when they cannot 
 be prevented, he, who would prescribe for our political disease, disunion on the 
 one side, or coercion of a State in the assertion of its rights on the other, would 
 deserve and will receive the execrations of this and all future generations" 
 
xxxviii TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. 
 
 with contempt, as being either paid agents of Great Britain 
 or crazy fanatics. 
 
 But here we have an illustration of the truth of M. 
 Guizot s remark that some portions of history are without 
 the control of human judgment and will. Mr. Calhoun 
 intended to arrest the Abolition agitation by appealing to the 
 justice and reason of that portion, who were actuated by an 
 honest zealotry, hoping thereby to withdraw them from the 
 support of the paid emissaries of the British East-India cotton 
 and sugar monopoly. His speech, however, had a directly 
 contrary effect. By it he drew attention to the republicaniz- 
 ing, levelling, democratizing influences of negro slavery, in 
 its social and political effects upon the whites. By it he 
 called attention to the peculiar influence of negro slavery in 
 its bearing on the irrepressible conflict between capital and 
 labor. By it, and by the cotemporary publication of M. de 
 Cassagnac s book, Mr. Seward and Mr. Chase were brought 
 to understand why the influence of the South was always 
 exerted, in the legislation of the General Government, to 
 keep up wages, and keep down the cost of living in favor of 
 light taxes, high wages, , cheap living, and an economical 
 administration of the Government. From Mr. Calhoun s 
 speech and De Cassagnac s book the advocates of low 
 wages learned that Abolition would produce pauperism ; that 
 pauperism would increase competition in the struggle for 
 bread ; that increased competition would reduce wages, with 
 cheaper food and coarser clothing and fewer of the neces 
 saries of life to the laborers. The result was, not to detach 
 the zealots from the British agents, but to bring the mon 
 archists, the aristocrats, the capitalists, and the advocates of 
 low wages into an alliance with the British agents and the 
 zealots ; fusing them all, together with some other elements, 
 into the great party, that elected Mr. Lincoln, made war upon 
 and subjugated the South, and abolished slavery, that " free 
 labor might be made cheaper than slave labor;" which 
 
TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. XXXIX 
 
 simply means a reduction of the wages of free labor below 
 the cost of feeding and clothing a negro and -taking care of 
 him in sickness and the infirmities of age. 
 
 We have referred to other elements in the fusion, that pro 
 duced the party that elected Mr. Lincoln. The two^ major 
 causes that led to that fusion and the consequent war, were 
 unquestionably the conflict between despotic andHree gov 
 ernment ; between the spirit of aristocracy and the spirit of 
 democracy : and between capital and labor ; the desire to 
 make transitions to a monarchical and aristocratic govern 
 ment, and the desire to reduce wages. But there w^re_itliex_ 
 miqor causes that deserve a passing notice. 
 
 And, first in importance, should be mentioned foreign 
 intrigue to foster division between the North and the South, 
 as shown in President Madison s message to Congress, with 
 the accompanying correspondence of John Henry, the British 
 emissary at Boston, to which the reader is referred. 
 
 In a letter from Boston, 2Oth March, 1809, to Sir James 
 Craig, Governor-General of British America, John Henry said : 
 
 " It should, therefore, be the peculiar care of Great Britain 
 to foster division between the North and the South ; and by suc 
 ceeding in this, she may carry into effect her own projects in 
 Europe, with a total disregard of the resentments of the 
 democrats on this continent." 
 
 Unfortunately too many of the politicians of the United 
 States have aided to make this British policy effective, " thus 
 advancing (to use Mr. Guizot s language) in the execution 
 of a plan, which they had not conceived, and of which they 
 were not even aware." 
 
 One great statesman, unquestionably the ablest of his party 
 now living, Mr. Seward, conceived the idea of governing 
 this country by sectional animosities, as a permanent system. 
 In a speech to the Maryland Legislature at Annapolis, shortly 
 after the war, he suggested that, the sectional conflict between 
 the North and South having been terminated, the time had 
 
xl TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. 
 
 arrived for a reorganization of parties, on the basis of a com 
 bination of the Eastern and Southern* Atlantic States against 
 the West. 
 
 ^C Another of the minor causes of the war was the personal 
 pique of disappointed aspirants for public office or patronage. 
 Among these the most notable were John Quincy Adams, 
 Martin Van Buren, and Francis P. Blair. 
 
 Mr. Adams left the Federal party and joined the Demo 
 cratic party, assigning, as his reason for so doing, that the 
 former were traitors and disunionists ; but when the Demo 
 cratic party rejected him as a candidate for the Presidency, 
 he renewed his affiliation with his old party, and thereby gave 
 color to the charge, made by some of the old Federalists, that 
 his conversion to Democracy was pretended. The bitterness 
 of his subsequent hostility to the Democracy and to the South, 
 their stronghold, leaves no room to doubt that his views were 
 colored by the jaundice of disappointed ambition. 
 
 Mr. Van Buren, having been deserted by the Southern 
 Democracy in his second race for the Presidency, took his 
 revenge by the Free-soil Buffalo platform, and thereby gave 
 an impulse to the fusion, which finally resulted in the election 
 of Mr. Lincoln and the war. 
 
 Francis P. Blair had grown rich at Washington, as the edi 
 tor of the Democratic newspaper, and by the public printing. 
 Mr. Thomas Ritchie had grown old as a Democratic editor at 
 Richmond, and was still poor. On the election of Mr. Polk, 
 the Virginia delegation in Congress, wishing to provide for 
 Mr. Ritchie, urged that Mr. Blair had enjoyed the public 
 patronage long enough, and ought to make room for Mr. 
 Ritchie. Mr. Polk admitted the force of the demand, and 
 required Mr. Blair to sell out the Globe to Mr. Ritchie and 
 General Armstrong of Nashville, who changed its name to 
 the Union. Mr. Blair yielded to superior force ; but held the 
 South responsible for it. He took his revenge by joining in 
 the fusion that elected Mr. Lincoln and brought on the war ; 
 
TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. xli 
 
 aided greatly to break down the Democratic party ; and only 
 forgave and returned to his first love, when his revenge was 
 full by the surrender to superior force at Appomattox Court 
 House.(#) 
 
 ^C Another of the minor causes that led to the war was the 
 Pacific Railroad. That portion of the Democracy, who sup 
 ported Breckinridge, were opposed to giving to a few indi 
 viduals the enormous grants sought to be obtained from Con 
 gress in aid of that road, and had defeated the bill known as 
 the Curtis Bill. Mr. Douglas himself, probably certainly, 
 Governor Herschel V. Johnson and very many of those, 
 who voted for them, were not aware of the plan, the execu 
 tion of which was to be advanced by their nomination ; but 
 it was brought about by a ring of those, who expected to be 
 the beneficiaries of some such Pacific Railroad Bill as that of 
 Mr. Curtis ; to defeat Breckinridge, who would oppose it, 
 and elect either Douglas or Lincoln, both of whom were 
 pledged to its support. But, as it is my purpose to give a full 
 history of the Pacific Railroad in another publication, I refer 
 now to Duff Green s Facts and Suggestions, chap, xxvi., p. 215, 
 for further information on this point. 
 
 In this connection, however, there was another remote, but 
 very potent, cause of the war, that ought not to be passed 
 unmentioned : fthe cession by the State of Virginia tot the 
 United States of her great territory northwest of the Ohio 
 River. Mr. Calhoun doubtless had it in mind, when claim 
 ing for the South, among the other high qualities that adorn 
 our nature, disinterestedness. Mr. Webster, in his speech in 
 the Senate, March 7, 1850, said of it : 
 
 " And a most magnificent act it was. I never reflect upon 
 it without a disposition to do honor and justice ; and justice 
 would be the highest honor ; to Virginia, for the cession of her 
 Northwestern territory. I will say, sir, it is one of her fairest 
 claims to the respect and gratitude of the United States, and 
 
 (a) See note (a) to page xliii. 
 
xlii TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. 
 
 that, perhaps, it is only second to that other claim that 
 attaches to her ; that, from her counsels, and from the intel 
 ligence and patriotism of her leading statesmen, proceeded 
 the first idea put into practice of the formation of a general 
 Constitution for the United States. ... I have said that I honoi 
 Virginia for her cession of this territory. There have been 
 received into the Treasury of the United States eighty mil 
 lions of dollars, the proceeds of the sales of the public lands 
 ceded by her. If the residue should be sold at the same 
 rate, the whole aggregate will exceed two hundred millions 
 of dollars." 
 
 In the light of more recent events, the historian may lose 
 sight of the disinterestedness and magnificence, in the prodi 
 gality, of the gift ; for those, to whom she gave it, turned 
 upon and rent her in twain. Nay, more ; while they heaped 
 honors on those, whose boast was that they desolated the 
 fair fields of Virginia, until a crow flying over them had to 
 44 carry his rations with him," they sought to realize Mr. Cal- 
 houn s prophecy by putting the negro slaves, as political mas 
 ters, over the sons of those, whose intelligence and patriotism 
 called forth these expressions of respect and gratitude from 
 Mr. Webster. 
 
 I remember to have seen, shortly after the war, the idea 
 advanced in a New York paper (I think the Journal of Com 
 merce) that the South must thank her own statesmen and 
 leaders for her defeat ; because it was wholly due to that sen 
 timent of love for the Union, which Southern statesmen had 
 striven so hard to arouse, and which Northern leaders had 
 striven with as much earnestness to suppress. 
 
 The proofs of this truth are multitudinous, but space admits 
 only the following extracts from the resolutions adopted at a 
 convention of the (so-called) Republican party of Massachu 
 setts, at Worcester, not long previous to the war : 
 
 " Resolved, That the necessity for disunion is written in the 
 whole existing character and conditions of the two sections 
 of the country in their social organization, education, habits, 
 
TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. xliii 
 
 and laws in the dangers of our white citizens in Kansas, 
 and of our colored ones in Boston in the wounds of Charles 
 Sumner and the laurels of his assailant and no Govern 
 ment on earth was ever strong enough to hold together such 
 opposing forces. 
 
 " Resolved, That this movement does not seek merely dis 
 union, but the more perfect union of the free States by the ex 
 pulsion of the slave States from the Confederation, in which 
 they have ever been an element of discord, danger, and disgrace. 
 
 " Resolved, That henceforward, instead of regarding it as 
 an objection to any system of policy, that it will lead to the 
 separation of the States, we will proclaim that to be the 
 highest of all recommendations and the grateful proof of 
 statesmanship ; and will support, politically or otherwise, such 
 men and measures as appear to tend most to this result. 
 
 " Resolved, That the sooner the separation takes place the 
 more peaceful it will be ; but that peace or war is a secondary 
 consideration in view of our present perils. Slavery must be 
 conquered, peaceably if we can, forcibly if we must. " (a) 
 
 (a] For twenty years, from the time that Mr. Polk required him to give place to 
 Messrs. Ritchie and Armstrong, in 1845, until Columbia was burned and Rich 
 mond evacuated, in 1865, Mr. Francis P. Blair more or less openly co-operated 
 politically with the men, who passed these resolutions. In a letter addressed, in 
 1855? to Daniel R. Goodloe and Lewis Clephane, Corresponding Committee of 
 the Republican Association of Washington City, he assigned the reasons of his 
 hostility to the Democratic party and to the South, as follows : 
 
 " The cause, which your organization is intended to promote, may well draw 
 to its support men of all parties. Differences on questions of policy, on constitu 
 tional construction, of modes of administration, may well be merged to unite men, 
 who believe that nothing but concert of action on the part of those, who would ar 
 rest the spread of slavery, can resist the power of the combination now embodied 
 to make it embrace the continent from ocean to ocean." 
 
 It is impossible for any one, who knows Mr. Blair, to believe that he believed 
 what he here assigns as the reason of his combination with the men, who passed 
 these resolutions. He was too well informed, knew too much of geography, 
 understood too well the climatic influences, which necessarily confined negro 
 slavery to the Southern States, where alone it could be made profitable, to believe 
 any such thing. But as the close of a lady s letter is said to open the window 
 of her heart, so the close of Mr. Blair s letter opens the window of his. He said : 
 
 " Incumbents and expectants of office and dignities claim a sort of patent-right 
 
xliv TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. 
 
 Here we have disunion avowed in Massachusetts, for the 
 purpose of getting rid of the social* and political influences 
 of negro slavery. I have already shown that its social in 
 fluence was to make the well-behaved poor white man the 
 equal of his rich neighbor, and its political influence was ex 
 erted to secure light taxes, fair wages, and cheap living. 
 Some of the party, like Mr. Greeley, were willing to " let the 
 Union slide," if thereby they could be left free in the North 
 and East to enjoy the distinctions between poor and rich, re 
 duce wages, and tax labor and its products for the benefit of 
 an aristocracy. But when the Union sentiment, created by 
 Southern statesmen, showed itself, then the men, who passed 
 these resolutions, were the loudest in crying " rebel," and 
 in denouncing those, who took them at their word and pro 
 posed to separate peaceably. Then the monarchists, aristo 
 crats, and advocates of low wages, previously avowed dis- 
 unionists, endeavored to make, and did make, the " simple- 
 hearted citizens," who loved the Union, believe that the 
 South had begun the war. This was not true : for the first act 
 of war was the military movement of Captain, now General, 
 Robert Anderson, in taking possession of Fort Sumter ; unless, 
 perhaps, it would be more correct to say, that the first act of 
 war was done by the men, who passed at Worcester the reso 
 lutions above quoted, when they sent John Brown and his band 
 to Harper s Ferry, to incite a servile insurrection in Virginia. 
 
 The dominant party of Massachusetts demanded disunion, 
 " peacefully if they could, forcibly if they must." The 
 South, in answer to this demand, offered to withdraw peace- 
 
 in the machine of Government, to create a Democracy adapted to their purposes. 
 Their innovations in the machinery are contrivances to renew their privileges for 
 new terms." 
 
 Mr. Blair had long been the incumbent of the very lucrative office of public 
 printer, and was forced to give way for Mr. Ritchie and General Armstrong, at 
 the instance of the Virginia delegation. His long " incumbency " made him feel 
 that he had " a sort of patent-right " in the profits of that office, and that his re- 
 moval was an "innovation" in the machinery contrived by the Democratic party 
 and the South. 
 
PREFACE. Xlv 
 
 fully; tendered the olive-branch; sent commissioners to 
 Washington to arrange the terms of peaceful separation. 
 vSecession was resorted to as a peaceful measure, to satisfy the 
 dominant party at the North, who had demanded the " ex 
 pulsion" of the South from the confederation. Some, as I 
 have said, cared only to get rid of negro slavery ; so that the 
 North, relieved from its democratic tendencies, might more 
 readily make transitions to a monarchical and aristocratic 
 form of government, with high taxes, low wages, and large 
 Government expenditures. ^Another class saw, in the larger 
 expenditures of a war, the chance of making fortunes by con 
 tracting for army supplies ; and their purpose to provoke a 
 war was disclosed by the remark about " blood-letting," made 
 by Senator Chandler, whose display of gorgeous liveries and 
 other insignia of pretensions to nobility, on his tour through 
 Europe sjnce the war, in some measure compensated news 
 paper men for the dearth of excitements when the war was 
 over. But there was^another class of men at the North, 
 those, whom M. Guizot calls the " simple-hearted citizens," 
 whom Southern statesmen had taught to love the Union, and 
 who, full of courage and virtue, though little mindful of po 
 litical affairs till something startling happens to arrest their 
 attention, rose up to declare that the Union should be pre 
 served. The South was willing anxious to remain in, 
 and even after secession to return to, the Union, if permitted 
 to do so with their rights inviolate under the Constitution. 
 In December, 1860, President Buchanan despatched to Mr. 
 Lincoln a gentleman, (a) a connection by marriage of the latter, 
 to invite him to come to Washington at once; with assurances 
 that he would be received as a guest at the White House, 
 with all the honors due to him as President elect ; and that 
 
 (a] This was my father, General Duff Green. Mr. Buchanan selected him to be 
 the bearer of his invitation to Mr. Lincoln, supposing that through the marriage 
 connection he would have more influence with Mr. Lincoln than almost any 
 other messenger, who could have been selected. Ninian Edwards, of Springfield, 
 Illinois, was my mother s nephew, and he and Mr. Lincoln had married sisters. 
 
xlvi TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. 
 
 by uniting their influence, they could yet satisfy the South 
 that they could remain in, or return to the union, with safety 
 to their rights, and honor to their character ; that thus the 
 farther progress of secession could be arrested, and the States, 
 that had already acted, be brought back. Mr. Lincoln declined 
 to accept Mr. Buchanan s invitation without the approval of Mr. 
 Ben Wade, of Ohio, and some others, who would not consent 
 to it ; and the result was that the blood-letting and contract 
 ing portion of the aristocratic party carried their point, and 
 succeeded in provoking the war. 
 
 y A great effort was subsequently made to produce the im- 
 pression at the North that the war was " the slaveholders 
 rebellion." Nothing could be farther from the truth. *The 
 slaveholders, with rare exceptions, were averse to war, and 
 opposed to secession, lest it might lead to war. Only a few, 
 very few, slaveholders, (who were misled into believing the 
 Worcester declaration that the sooner the separation took 
 place, the more peaceful it would be,) favored the movement. 
 Let the candid reader bear in mind that property-holders are 
 proverbially timid and averse to all political movements cal 
 culated to endanger property ; and that the slaveholders had 
 multiplied reasons for caution, in the peculiar nature of their 
 property, which had legs and a will of its own to take itself 
 off. 
 
 It is generally, but erroneously, believed at the North that 
 Yancey, Rhett, Toombs, Benjamin, and some others, were the 
 chief agents in bringing about secession. Their influence, 
 however, was small, compared to that of Governor Joseph E. 
 Brown, of Georgia; and for the reason that their arguments; 
 (such, for instance, as the offer to " drink all the blood that 
 was spilled," attributed, truly or falsely, to Mr. Toombs;) were 
 intended to prove that secession would be peaceable, and were 
 addressed to the slaveholders, who were in a minority of one 
 to fifteen ; while Governor Brown addressed himself to the 
 non-slaveholders, who were a vast majority, as the census of 
 
TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. 
 
 xlvii 
 
 1860 will show, (a) Governor Brown was born in South Car 
 olina, a self-made man, sprung from the non-slaveholding 
 class of poor whites ; and his influence with that class, who 
 were proud of his talents and success, was not much less in 
 South Carolina than in Georgia. 
 
 While Governor of Georgia before the war, he issued sev 
 eral papers addressed to the non-slaveholders, advocating 
 secession with great adroitness and ability. His argument 
 was in substance as follows : 
 
 That the (so-called) Republican party was coming into 
 power, pledged and determined to abolish slavery, and to 
 make the negro the equal of the poor white man. 
 
 That, inasmuch as slaves were property, and private pro 
 perty could not be taken without just compensation, the first 
 result would be to tax the non-slaveholding mechanics, small 
 farmers, croppers, and others of their class, to pay for the 
 slaves. 
 
 That another result would be to reduce wages by the com 
 petition of the freed negro, who would make up by petty lar 
 ceny for lower wages ; that this would fall upon the laboring 
 whites ; because the slave-owners also owned the lands and 
 the bank and railroad stocks, and could still provide for their 
 
 (a) The vast preponderance of the non-slaveholders appears by the following 
 tabular statement, taken from the census of 1860. (See volume of Population, 
 pp. 592 and 593, and volume of Agriculture, pp. 223 to 245.) 
 
 
 Slaveholders. 
 
 White popula 
 tion. 
 
 Ratio of slave 
 holders to white 
 population. 
 
 
 3-2,7-10 
 
 C26 271 
 
 in 15 
 
 
 11,481 
 
 324,14.3 
 
 " 28 
 
 Florida 
 
 C i C.2 
 
 77 747 
 
 TC 
 
 Georgia 
 
 41 084. 
 
 CQI C CQ 
 
 14 
 
 Louisiana 
 
 22,O33 
 
 3C.7 4C6 
 
 16 
 
 Mississippi 
 
 3,0,043 
 
 3 c -j ,800 
 
 1 1 
 
 North Carolina . . 
 
 3.4. 6t;8 
 
 62Q Q42 
 
 18 
 
 South Carolina 
 
 26 701 
 
 291 ^OO 
 
 ii 
 
 Tennessee 
 
 3,6,84.4. 
 
 826 722 
 
 22 
 
 Texas 
 
 21 878 
 
 4o 891 
 
 2O 
 
 Virginia 
 
 C? 128 
 
 I O47 24Q 
 
 10 
 
 
 
 
 
xlviii TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. 
 
 children without labor ; while the non-slaveholders would be 
 further impoverished by taxation to "pay for the slaves ; and 
 that it would be they the non-slaveholders and their chil 
 drenwho alone would have to compete with the negroes 
 for employment. 
 
 That another result would be to degrade their social posi 
 tion ; because the freed negroes would not attempt to intrude 
 into the well-furnished drawing-rooms of their late masters, 
 but would force their way to the humble firesides of the poor 
 mechanic and laborer, and insult them by demanding their 
 daughters in marriage, (a) 
 
 By such arguments as these Governor Brown " fired the 
 hearts" of the vast non-slaveholding majority, and by their 
 votes swept the reluctant slaveholders into secession. When 
 at a later period it was proposed by General Lee and others 
 to put negroes into the army, it was the non-slaveholders, 
 who most bitterly opposed it; because they shrank from a 
 contact, which they feared would bring them down to a level 
 with the negroes. 
 
 The war was not a slaveholders rebellion. Notwithstand 
 ing the declaration passed by Congress, at the instance of the 
 late President Johnson, that the only object of the war was 
 to preserve the Union though very few on either side con 
 ceived, or were even aware of, the plan, the execution of which 
 they were advancing it was fought on the one side by 
 those, who controlled the Government, and in whose minds 
 the design of the vast machine was centred, in the interest 
 of monarchism and of the capital, that employs free labor; to 
 destroy negro slavery; because its tendencies were anti-mon- 
 
 (a) It is due to Governor Brown to add that, as Chief Justice of the Supreme 
 Court of Georgia, since the war, he has sought to shield the poor whites of that 
 State from one degradation, by the fear of which he sought to " fire their hearts," 
 when advocating secession, by deciding that the intermarriage of whites and ne 
 groes is prohibited. (See his opinion in the case of Charlotte Scott, plaintiff, vs. 
 The State of Georgia, which those, who have not access to the Georgia Reports, 
 will find in McPherson s Handbook of Politics for 1870, p. 474.) 
 
TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. xlix 
 
 archical, and its influence exerted in legislation to maintain 
 the price of labor and cheapen the cost of living. On the 
 other side, it was fought by the Southern non-slaveholders to 
 avert pauperization by taxation, reduction of wages, and social 
 debasement. 
 
 The great majority of the brave men, who did the hard 
 fighting of the war, fought and bled and died, to keep the 
 Southern States in the Union ; yet their "judgment and will" 
 were subordinated to the control of the men, who, in the 
 Worcester resolutions, declared their purpose to be " the ex 
 pulsion of the Southern States from the confederation." 
 
 Many conscientious men thought they were fighting to 
 secure justice and liberty for the negroes; yet their "judg 
 ment and will" were subordinated to the control of men, who 
 seized the first moment of power to oppress the negroes, by 
 an unjust and unconstitutional tax upon the product of negro 
 labor, cotton, while seeking to use the negroes as voting- 
 machines, to oppress free white labor at the North by similar 
 unjust and pauperizing taxation. 
 
 Mr. Attorney-General Akerman, in his speech in Repre 
 sentatives Hall, Atlanta, Georgia, 1st September, 1870, sought 
 to impress upon Southern capital the fact, that emancipation 
 was a decree of divorce of its interests from those of labor. 
 
 He, or whoever prepared his speech for him, was aware, 
 however, that this was a " serious topic." He therefore en 
 deavored in that speech to ride on both sides of the " serious 
 topic," by adding that, " looking at the white population alone, 
 the cry of a conflict between labor and capital has generally 
 been the cry of the demagogue, for the reason that capital 
 has seldom been organized against labor ; and labor has sel 
 dom, except in the small way of trades unions, been organ 
 ized against capital." 
 
 But what are the historical facts ? 
 
 The following is an extract from a late report of the Mas 
 sachusetts Bureau of Labor Statistics : 
 
TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. 
 " BOSTON AND THE WORKING- WOMEN A PITIABLE PICTURE. 
 
 Extract from the last Report of the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor Statistics. 
 
 "In Boston, a large proportion are workers in shops. We 
 will take one trade, that of tailoresses and cloakmakers : they 
 go to their work at seven, almost always without any warm 
 breakfast ; they work till ten, and then perhaps have a few 
 minutes rest, when the little teapot is set on the range and a 
 lunch of dry food eaten; but in most of the establishments 
 the girls do not stop work till twelve, when, in all, they are 
 allowed from thirty to sixty minutes for dinner. Work ends 
 at five P. M., and many of the girls take work home with 
 them, work not ceasing till midnight. Room-rent costs not 
 less than two dollars to three dollars each, with often two or 
 more double beds in a room. In good shops and with brisk 
 work they can earn a dollar a day. Some machine girls re 
 ceive more, but the work is very wearing, and induces spinal 
 disease. One of our largest as well as kindest custom-work 
 merchant tailors testified to a committee of inquiry, that few 
 machine girls could work over two years before becoming 
 so broken down that they were ever after unfit for labor. In 
 slopwork shops, girls can seldom earn more than their room- 
 rent except by overwork. In slack times their suffering is 
 extreme, girls having been known to work weeks with only 
 water and bread or crackers for food, and fortunate if able to 
 procure an ounce of tea. In dull times many have lived for 
 weeks on five cents worth each of stale bread per week while 
 seeking work. The lodging-house keepers charge working- 
 women higher rates than men, and many refuse to have them 
 in their houses at any price. Hence they are often obliged 
 to live and sleep in localities, where they would be ashamed 
 to let any one know they ever went. Yet few ever break 
 down morally or become untidy in dress. Those women, who 
 take work home from the slopshops, provident, aid, and other 
 charitable societies, receive as follows : Shirts, 4 cents to 7 
 
TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. li 
 
 cents; fine-bosomed shirts, 10 cents to 25 cents; satin vests, 
 20 cents; pants, 15 cents, 20 cents, and 37 cents; coats, 50 
 cents ; French calico suits, lined sacks, faced skirt, 20 cents ; 
 long white night-dresses, 50 cents. Of the 30,000 women in 
 and about Boston, who live by sewing, very few earn over 
 $12 a week ; the average wages do not exceed $2.75. Many 
 poor women take this slop and charity work in quantities, 
 and give it to others to do, still further lessening the receipts 
 of the actual workers, who are usually women with small 
 families dependent upon their labor for support. Paper-box 
 makers average about $3 per week. 
 
 " Factory life is much harder on women than it was 
 twenty-five years ago. Instead of tending two looms, as 
 then, she is required to tend six ; while a week s work now 
 will not procure as much comfort as when she only tended 
 one loom. Very few working-women of any class ever have 
 a good bed, with sufficient bed-covering. Their wages will 
 not allow them to purchase warm flannel undergarments or 
 serviceable shoes, water-proofs, etc. Few are ever exempt 
 from diseases caused by scanty clothing, insufficient and in- 
 nutritious food, and long-continued labor in deleterious con 
 ditions. The constant pressure of anxiety breaks down many 
 girls physically, and too often morally, before they reach the 
 prime of life. All avenues of employment are overcrowded." 
 
 The New York Times, under Mr. Raymond s management, 
 was, and still is, one of the ablest exponents of the doctrine 
 that " free labor is cheaper than slave labor." On the I4th 
 July, 1868, it said editorially: 
 
 "The New Orleans Commercial Bulletin says that the 
 Southern planters, profiting by free labor, have now discov 
 ered that more money can be made out of a freedman s labor 
 than from that of a slave. We are glad to hear it. In the 
 old days of slavery, we always told the Southern people that 
 this was the case." 
 
Hi TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. 
 
 On the 2 1st July, 1869, the New York Times spoke edito 
 rially of the great Asiatic slave-trader ef the nineteenth cen 
 tury, Koopmanschap, as follows 
 
 " It was only a few weeks ago that the name of Koopman 
 schap was unknown to fame. Suddenly it has emerged from 
 the obscurity, with which the appellations of ordinary mortals 
 are surrounded, and occupies a lofty niche within the nation s 
 fame. Everybody is asking Who is Koopmanschap? 
 Fortunately he has arrived in the city just in time to answer 
 for himself this question, as propounded to him by our re 
 porter yesterday." 
 
 Now why does this advocate of cheap labor and dear living 
 give such a lofty niche in the nation s fame to this trader in 
 human bones and flesh and rnuscle? Is there, can there be, 
 any other reason than because this new organization of the 
 labor system of the United States proposes to furnish capital 
 with cheaper labor, giving to capital all the advantages of the 
 slave system, and at the same time relieving capital from the 
 expense and burden of taking care of labor in sickness and 
 the infirmities of age ? Oh, admirable, money-making phil 
 anthropy! 
 
 But let the New York Times speak for itself. It says : 
 " It is the importation of these coolies in the past, and the 
 proposed transportation immediately of hundreds of thou 
 sands more, to supply the demand for labor everywhere, and 
 in every industrial department, and especially to cultivate the 
 neglected plantations of the South, that have made the name 
 of Koopmanschap famous in the land. 
 
 "... The woollen factory of Lazar freres, in San Fran 
 cisco, employs 300 Chinamen, who make splendid hands, al 
 though they were entirely ignorant of the business when first 
 employed by that firm. This was two years ago, when the 
 Irish hands refused to work more than eight hours a day. 
 The firm immediately discharged them, and employed the 
 coolies, paying the latter for ten hours labor a day only $i 
 
TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. liii 
 
 per diem on an average, while to the Irish laborers they had 
 paid on an average $3 per diem, or from $60 to $100 per 
 month. . . . 
 
 " Mr. Koopmanschap says that he does not bring over 
 Chinese women. They are sure to follow wherever the men 
 go. The Chinamen will import them for themselves." 
 
 The Cincinnati Commercial is another noted advocate of 
 these politico-economical ideas. It also sings paeans to 
 Koopmanschap, and revels in the thought of a coming mil 
 lennium of cheap labor. It says : 
 
 " Weavers of cotton and silk can be had in China for two 
 or three dollars a month, and skilled artisans receive from 
 five to eight dollars for that period of time. . . . 
 
 " Women are found in abundance in China to do the labor 
 of households for their mere bread and clothing. Laborers 
 can be got in the tea districts of China for six or seven cents 
 a day. . . . 
 
 " The American laborer consumes enough meat, tea, and 
 coffee, two or three times a day, to keep a Chinaman for a 
 week. The price of meat, as is well known, is about four or 
 five times that of bread. . . . 
 
 "The subsistence of the great mass of the Chinese is 
 extremely simple. The great staple, of which it consists, is 
 rice, and this, mixed with a little bread, a few vegetables, a 
 little fruit, and a little meat, (more frequently fish,) constitutes 
 the whole diet of millions. Indeed, the small consumption 
 of animal food in China is one of the wonders of the country 
 to a stranger. The flesh of beef or mutton is scarcely ever 
 tasted except by the rich, and no Chinese ever use either 
 milk, butter, or cheese." 
 
 Such is the Barmecide feast to which the so-called Repub 
 licanism of 1871 invites the laboring and productive classes 
 of America. 
 
 On the other hand, the question of cheap labor and cheap 
 production, which are the great problems of the age, has 
 
liv TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. 
 
 been so well treated by Ex-Governor Horatio Seymour, in a 
 recent address to a mass meeting of working-men in Utica, 
 New York, that I here insert it entire. 
 
 SPEECH OF EX-GOVERNOR SEYMOUR. 
 
 At a mass meeting of working-men in Utica, New York, 
 Ex-Governor Seymour spoke as follows : 
 
 "At the last six annual elections in this State the Repub 
 lican leaders have asked that they should be kept in power, 
 because they claimed they had saved the country, and we are 
 left to the conclusion that they saved it for their own special 
 benefit. We do not see the grounds for this claim, so far as 
 the war is concerned, as we sent our full share of men to the 
 field. The city of New York, the stronghold of the De 
 mocracy, did more than its share in filling the ranks of our 
 armies. If we look at the action of the party in power, the 
 question comes up, what kind of salvation have they given 
 us ? Our whole people are grievously burdened by taxation. 
 Military power still tramples upon the judiciary in many 
 parts of the South, and even threatens the sanctity of the 
 ballot-box at the North. Great armies are kept up upon the 
 pretext that they are needed to save the negroes at the South, 
 and to kill the Indians at the West. The country is harassed 
 by Indian and African problems. It is now also perplexed 
 with the Asiatic question. It comes up like a black cloud 
 upon our Western borders, taking unusual forms and propor 
 tions. To all, who have studied it, it causes great anxiety. 
 Its shadows fall upon us, and we cannot get rid of its dangers 
 by shutting our eyes to its evil forebodings. It enters into 
 this election, for we are about to choose our lawmakers, who 
 must deal with it. Some months ago I wrote a short letter in 
 answer to an invitation from a body of working-men to speak 
 to them upon this subject. I took ground not only against 
 the way, in which the Chinamen come to our country, but to 
 
TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. Iv 
 
 their coming here at all. That letter was sharply censured, 
 but it was not written without thought or study. As the sub 
 ject is fairly up in this canvass, I will speak of it to-night. 
 Heretofore, except at the time when the people of New York 
 and New England were bringing negroes from Africa to sell 
 to the people of the South, immigration has always brought 
 us people kindred to ourselves in manners, customs, and 
 religion. Even their languages had much in common. The 
 literature of Europe, translated into different tongues, was 
 more or less known to them all. They had the same habits 
 of thought, and were used to the same form of civilization. 
 Their coming gave no shock to our institutions, laws, or 
 habits. They rapidly became part of ourselves, and added 
 to the general wealth and prosperity. Europe was not so 
 overcrowded with people that they were sent to us in great 
 numbers, or more rapidly than they could be assimilated. 
 We therefore welcomed them to our shores. The Chinese 
 immigration is a different thing. It comes from a land 
 crowded with people beyond what our civilization could tol 
 erate. They outnumber us ten to one. It brings to us a 
 people who are in conflict with all our methods of thought, 
 with all our ideas of morals, and with all our conceptions of 
 government. While we find much to commend in their 
 industry, there is more to condemn, in their cunning, their 
 cruelty, and in that stolidity of character, which makes them 
 unimpressible by any influences we can bring to bear upon 
 them. They will always be an undigested, hurtful thing in 
 our political system. The idea prevails that they are a docile, 
 harmless race ; and so they are while they remain a few indi 
 viduals scattered through the community. But study their 
 characters at home, and you will find thieving, corruption, 
 and falsehood in the interior of the state, piracy upon its 
 coasts, and robbery upon its inland borders. 
 
 " They are hated by all other Asiatics. While some urge that 
 we should welcome them here, they are debating the ques- 
 
Ivi TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. 
 
 tion if they shall go on with the massacre of Americans and 
 Europeans, which they began with the awful slaughter of the 
 men and women, who are engaged among them, as mission 
 aries, in works of charity and religion. Unfortunately for our 
 country, our difficulties in dealing with this question are in 
 creased by the late amendments to the National Constitution, 
 which have stripped the States of rights needed for their good 
 government. Otherwise this question could have been left 
 to the Pacific States, who would have dealt with it in the 
 light of their own experience. But the Fifteenth Amend 
 ment binds California and Oregon hand and foot, and lays 
 them prostrate before the Chinaman, who strides over them, 
 and we are forced to confront him here. It is urged by some 
 that Chinese immigration will lower the wages of our labor, 
 cheapen production, and add to the national wealth. This is 
 not true. Cheap labor does not add to a nation s wealth, 
 neither does it cheapen production, as I will show. Look 
 over the map of the world, and you will find universal pov 
 erty where labor is most poorly paid. In Africa, you can buy 
 a man s labor for life for a string of beads, but they are too 
 poor to get the string of beads. In Asia, the laborer gets a 
 little better pay; but how little is its wealth, and how small is 
 its commerce, compared with its countless millions of people! 
 Men, who wear scanty cotton clothing, cannot uphold arts or 
 industry. They cannot give life and prosperity to the work 
 shop, to the counting-house, or to fleets of vessels upon the 
 ocean. If you compare Asia and Africa with Europe, you 
 will find that, while the laborers of England, of Germany, of 
 France, and other countries are much better paid, the national 
 wealth is greater, and that they are sending their products to 
 the very regions where the pay of labor is at the lowest ebb. 
 The labor of Europe, whose wages are so much higher than 
 those of the other continents I have named, can still produce 
 all the products of art for a much less price, and can and does 
 sell them to those countries, where labor starves for want of 
 
TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. lvi| 
 
 pay. But we must turn to our own country to learn how true 
 it fs that labor must be well paid to give wealth and pros 
 perity to a land. If the laborers and mechanics of the United 
 States were put upon the same pay given to the Chinamen, 
 we should have universal bankruptcy throughout the bounds 
 of our country. Three-quarters of the stores of this city 
 would be closed. Why is it that a town with 10,000 people 
 here does more business than a city of 100,000 in Asia ? It 
 is due to the fact that our mechanics are able to build houses ; 
 to furnish them with the comforts of life ; to clothe them 
 selves and their families, not only in a way which protects 
 their persons, but also gratifies their tastes ; which enables 
 them to support the arts and industry in all its forms. Why 
 are the people of these United States able to pay a percent 
 age of taxation, which would crush any other nation ? It is 
 simply because the wages of labor here enable men to con 
 sume all those varied articles, which pay a duty to Govern 
 ment. Go where you will, the world over, and you will find 
 the greatest general wealth, the greatest prosperity, and the 
 greatest happiness, where you find the greatest wages for 
 labor. Men confound cheap labor with cheap production. 
 These are not only different, but at times they are opposite 
 things. Sometimes cheap labor is an element in cheap pro 
 duction, but that is not the rule. We see the fact to be that, 
 where labor is the highest, production is the cheapest, and 
 sends its works of art and of skill all over the world. The 
 reason of this is, cheap production is the result of intellect as 
 well as labor ; of mind as well as of toil. It is wrought out 
 by those, who are in that condition of comfort and respect 
 ability, that their minds are educated and alert. Starving 
 labor never yet invented machinery to till the ground and 
 gather in its crops ; it never yet worked out those wonders in 
 mechanics, which have borne our country on to its greatness. 
 Men can cheapen their productions and add to their earnings 
 when they can call to their aid science and learning, but 
 5 
 
Iviii TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. 
 
 these two cannot live where labor is pinched down to J:he 
 point of starvation. If man invents a "machine, which enables 
 him to make more, he can yet sell for less and grow rich. 
 But force him to sell for less by the competition of the China 
 man, which does not increase his power of production, and 
 he starves. And when the laborer sinks, the whole structure 
 of society, of which he is the basis, sinks with him. This 
 may be laid down as a law that cheap production and gen 
 eral prosperity are the results of high civilization and general 
 intelligence ; that these can only exist among a people, where 
 the great mass of the working men are well paid and placed 
 in the condition of respectability, where their minds are fed as 
 well as their bodies. But it is said there is no danger that 
 the Chinamen will come to this country in such numbers as 
 will harm our working-men. Is this true ? We find that the 
 character and condition of the Chinese is such that they can 
 be sent for as readily as so many boxes of tea. We learn 
 every day of orders that are sent out for thousands of them 
 for special purposes. Orders are now under way for bands 
 of them to make boots and shoes. It does not take a large 
 number, thrown into this branch of business, to overstock the 
 demand for this labor, and to unsettle the wages of those, who 
 are skilled in this business. Already the artisans engaged in 
 this trade are uneasy. They do not know how soon that skill, 
 which they have gained in it, may be made valueless to sup 
 port their families in the condition they have heretofore lived. 
 The men who make clothes or hats, or other classes of our 
 mechanics, may be treated in the same way. Those, who 
 work in our factories, are liable to be driven out by orders, 
 which are even now on their way to Asia. Navigation on 
 the Pacific, as its name implies, has always been less costly 
 and dangerous than that of the stormy Atlantic. There are 
 now about one hundred and fifty thousand Chinamen in our 
 country. An equal number, brought here by selfish and de 
 signing men, may be so placed as to force down the wages of 
 
TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. lix 
 
 working- men. The mere fact, that this can be done, destroys 
 the independence and clouds the hopes of the body of our 
 mechanics. There is a growing belief in men s minds that 
 the mission of Mr. Burlingame was contrived by a class of 
 manufacturers to effect this very object, at the moment they 
 were appealing to Congress for special legislation in their 
 own behalf. Short-sightedness is always incident to selfish 
 ness and greed. Let these men bear in mind that, when they 
 have broken down the body of the laborers of this country, 
 they will have destroyed their ability to be the consumers of 
 manufactured products. The evils of underpaid labor will 
 not fall upon the working-men alone. All classes must suffer 
 when they are made poor. The owners of real estate, the 
 merchant, the manufacturer, will find that the laws of trade 
 and the rules of value are universal and unvarying. They 
 will operate in Europe or America, as they do in Asia or 
 Africa. True statesmanship and generous wisdom ever look 
 to building up the interests of labor. Where the homes of 
 toil are happy, and where prosperity waits upon the hand of 
 industry, there is national greatness, wealth, and glory. But 
 we are asked, What can we do to avert these evils ? How 
 can we hinder the landing upon our shores of swarms of 
 Asiatics, without overturning the established maxim as to im 
 migration ? We need no change of our policy in this respect. 
 We put the Asiatic and the European upon the same footing. 
 Our laws have never allowed any nation to sench here a hurt 
 ful or a dangerous class of men. When in some instances 
 they have shipped paupers to our shores, we have sent them 
 back. We forbid the violators of laws, men who endanger 
 the public health or order, to land here. The statutes of the 
 different States and of the nation are full of such regulations. 
 We welcome the great body of European immigrants, because 
 it is for our advantage to have them here. The Chinaman 
 has no better rights than the German, the Irishman, the Eng 
 lishman, or the Frenchman. If his coming here is hurtful to 
 
Ix TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. 
 
 the good order of society, to the great interests of industry, 
 we have a right to keep him away, ff there is danger that 
 they will pour into the Pacific States in such numbers as to 
 shape their customs and habits by Asiatic rules, then they 
 endanger our Union, for the end of this must be their utter 
 severance from the rest of our country. The Mormons 
 are not so much in conflict with our ideas of morals and 
 civilization as are the Chinese. Yet no one would tolerate 
 the idea that the Mormons should gain control of the Pacific 
 coast. This Government is even now adopting sharp meas 
 ures to hold them in check, at their colony in the midst of 
 the great deserts of the West. A simple law, such as has 
 been adopted with regard to foreign immigration, will settle 
 this whole question. Let Congress declare that no more 
 than ten Chinamen shall be landed from one vessel, and they 
 will close to a safe degree those floodgates, which are now 
 wide open, and through which we are threatened with an in 
 vasion from Asia as hurtful as that, which once desolated 
 Europe under Genghis Khan. I have spoken thus plainly 
 upon this subject, because I believe it more deeply concerns 
 the welfare of the American people than any topic involved 
 in this election. I have no censures for those who may differ 
 from the views I hold. I have no prejudices, which will hin 
 der me from changing those views, if I find that I am wrong. 
 What I have said is the result of much thought and careful 
 study. I wish that those, who are charged with the conduct 
 of national affairs, or that their supporters, who are active in 
 this canvass, had in a plain and open way stated their views 
 with regard to this great Asiatic problem. I think that, by 
 so doing, they would stand in a better light before the country 
 and the world, than by efforts to keep alive sectional hate 
 and partisan malice." 
 
 To the editorial comments of the New York Times on the 
 fact noticed by the New Orleans Commercial Bulletin, it is 
 
TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. Ixi 
 
 only necessary to add one single example, out of millions, to 
 illustrate that the effect of emancipation has already been to 
 reduce wages, and to diminish the share of the products 
 of labor, allotted to those, by whose labor they were pro 
 duced. A negro woman, who was an excellent cook, was, by 
 the casualties of the war, separated from her owners in 1 864. 
 In January, 1870, she was most happy to get back to them. 
 She told them she had been doing her best to support herself, 
 but had not been able to get more than her food and forty 
 dollars a year, out of which she had to clothe herself, and 
 pay for medicine and medical attendance. Before the war 
 she could be hired readily for $125 to $150 per annum, with 
 food, clothing, medicines, and medical attendance in addition. 
 
 Yet the Republican cry is still for cheaper labor ! and 
 Senator Sprague attended the Memphis Commercial Con 
 vention for the sole purpose of impressing on the mind of 
 Southern capital that, having been divorced by emancipation 
 from labor, it should now unite with Northern capital in 
 measures to cheapen labor, (a) 
 
 In this divorce case, labor is the feebler party; the poor 
 deserted wife, left without alimony, and with a brood of 
 hungry children crying for bread, and dependent on her for 
 support ! 
 
 Emancipation has taken from her that " natural ally," which 
 a community of interests secured to her in the old days of 
 negro slavery, as expressed in Mr. Jefferson s aphorism, 
 above quoted. Wages no longer, at the South, go into, but 
 they come out of, the pockets of capital. The cost of living, 
 at the South, no longer conies out of, but goes into, the 
 pockets of capital. 
 
 And now we have the authoritative declaration of the 
 Attorney-General, the first law-officer of the Government, that 
 Mrs. White Labor and Mrs. Black Labor are two lonely 
 grass widows. 
 
 (tz) See Senator Sprague s speech at the Memphis Commercial Convention. 
 
Ixii TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. 
 
 The question arises, Where can they, in their lonesome 
 grass - widowhood, turn for aid and comfort, food, and 
 shelter ? 
 
 Shall they "go to Chicago"? Alas, they are already 
 divorced by emancipation ! They would be glad to make an 
 honest living, as hirelings, if they could get wages to keep 
 soul and body together. But they shrink from living by 
 beggary, prostitution, or theft. Then there is no use in their 
 "going to Chicago." 
 
 Shall they appeal to what is called Republicanism in 1871 ? 
 Alas ! with the old rakes of that set, who misled, deceived, and 
 betrayed them, the heyday of the blood is over ; their hearts 
 are withered and callous ! Besides, they brought about the 
 divorce, of malice prepense, with set purpose to ruin these two 
 poor women ; that they might thereby be forced into one of 
 De Cassagnac s four classes of the proletariat, viz., hirelings 
 at cheap wages, or else beggars, prostitutes, or thieves ! 
 
 Shall they appeal to the younger bloods of the set any 
 of the " smaller fry," who call themselves Republicans ? 
 Alas ! they never had either hearts or brains ; or, if they 
 had, there was not phosphorus enough in their composition 
 to light up the one, or warm the other ! Besides, they be 
 long, body and soul, to capital, and believe that, in the pro 
 gress of civilization, the great need of the hour \s cheap labor! 
 
 Can they find relief in what the Attorney-General calls 
 " the small way of trades unions " ? Alas, alas, alas ! our 
 author shows that all history proves that to be a poor and 
 vain reliance ! Egotism, selfishness, appear there, as else 
 where. I attended the National Labor Convention in Balti 
 more in 1866, as a spectator, from curiosity, to see what it 
 was composed of, and what were its objects. I was at the 
 National Labor Convention in Chicago in 1867, as a delegate 
 from the Pattern-makers Union of Baltimore. I had not much 
 to say at either Convention, but was a close observer at both. 
 Of all the men, whom I saw at Baltimore or Chicago, only 
 
TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. Ixiii 
 
 two impressed on me the idea that their purpose was to 
 relieve the distress of the two poor divorced widows, Mrs. 
 White Labor and Mrs. Black Labor. All the rest impressed 
 me with the idea that their "judgment and will " were under 
 the control of the few, in whose minds the designs of the ma 
 chine were centred; or that egotism, selfishness, was their 
 only motive ; that their purpose was " to grind their own 
 axes," and to get some control over the two poor lonesome 
 grass widows, on which they could trade, for their own profit, 
 with the advocates of cheap labor. 
 
 Can wan, pallid Mrs. White Labor find an asylum in the 
 cabin of her dusky rival, Mrs. Black Labor, now the favored 
 mistress of that wild enfant perdu, Imperialism, who is trav 
 elling, incog., through the United States, under .the assumed 
 name of Republicanism ? 
 
 Pshaw ! Let Pharisees, who trade upon, and grow rich by, 
 negrophilism, falsely prate about the equality or superiority 
 of the negro over the white race, in all intellectual, moral, 
 physical, social, and political aptitudes. Let charlatans in 
 statesmanship vainly delude themselves with the belief, 
 that, by such legislation as the Akerman Election Bill of 
 Georgia, they can vote negroes, without challenge, as often 
 as their party necessities require. Let would-be emperors 
 fondly imagine that, because the "colored troops fouglit nobly" 
 the colored vote can be used to make them small Neros or 
 Caligulas. All this is vanity and vexation of spirit. It is 
 historically certain at least I firmly believe that thirty 
 millions of the Caucasian race will not long consent to leave 
 their destinies under the control of four millions of ignorant 
 negroes, misled by bad white men, of very little more intel 
 lect than the negro, and with hearts blacker than the negro s 
 skin. 
 
 Oh, that these poor divorced women could turn to some 
 one of the noble and gallant men, whom they called "rebels," 
 when in fact they were risking life and fortune, and lost every- 
 
Ixiv TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. 
 
 thing but honor, for their sakes and in their cause ! I could 
 speak to them of men, whose names ae synonyms for all that 
 is great in intellect, noble in conduct, pure in morals, knightly 
 in courtesy. I could point to one in Georgia, a native Geor 
 gian ; brave as Marshal Ney, eagle-eyed and skilful as the 
 first Napoleon, devout and sincere as Havelock or Robert E. 
 Lee, the great Christian soldier, Major-General John B. Gor 
 don, who was on the battle-field and in the Episcopal Church, 
 what Stonewall Jackson was on the battle-field and in the 
 Presbyterian Church. Near to him, in South Carolina, I 
 could point to General William S. Walker, a Pennsylvanian 
 by birth, but, like Gordon, " sans peur et sans reproche ; " 
 one who never deceived man or misled woman. I might 
 name others-. But, alas ! all these men were Southern rebels. 
 They fought bravely and conscientiously in a cause they 
 believed to be right ; yet, they were conquered subjugated. 
 Now they are prostrate. The dusky mistress of Imperialism 
 has her pearl-embroidered slipper (a) on their necks. 
 
 Is there, then, no hope for the widows is there no help 
 for the widows sons and daughters ? 
 
 Yes. In the Democracy of the Great West, there yet 
 remain traces of the pure republicanism of Jefferson and 
 Madison, of Calhoun and Webster. There labor can find 
 statesmen, who have never bowed the knee to Baal or to 
 Mammon, nor accepted the idea that, in the progress of civil 
 ization, the great objects of social and political science are to 
 cheapen labor, and to regulate the diet of American working 
 men and women by the smallest quantities of rice and fish, 
 on which an Asiatic can exist. 
 
 The first great need of labor is an honest and economical 
 administration of Government. Prodigal expenditures require 
 oppressive taxation, which, however disguised by the subtle 
 and artful contrivances of modern legislation, labor and the 
 products of labor in the end have to pay. (b) 
 
 (a) See chap. xvii. 
 
 (b) See chap, xiv., on the Fall of the Ancient Trades Unions. 
 
TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. Ixv 
 
 But what, more than all else, oppresses labor, and all, who 
 employ labor in the pursuits of productive industry, is the 
 subtle and artful fiscal contrivance, by which the control of 
 the money of the country is centred in a few hands, enabling 
 them by combination and concert of action to raise or lower 
 the prices of the products of labor at pleasure, by making 
 money scarce when they wish to buy, and abundant when 
 they wish to sell. " Never," said Mr. Calhoun in the Senate, 
 October 3, 1837 "Never was an engine invented better 
 calculated to place the destiny of the many in the hands of 
 the few, or less favorable to that equality and independence, 
 which lie at the bottom of our free institutions." 
 
 I wish here to repeat, what I have said in my dedication, 
 that under the designation of " The Laboring and Burgher 
 Classes of America," I include all of the learned professions 
 all, who labor with the brain or with the hand all, who 
 wish to live and grow rich by the fruits of their own honest 
 industry all, who do not seek to live by plundering the 
 Federal or State treasuries, nor by Congressional or State 
 class legislation. 
 
 What they all require is an abundant and cheap measure 
 of prices, of uniform and stable value. 
 
 But a further discussion of this subject would make this 
 preface too long, and I propose to treat of it in another book. 
 
 If I have succeeded in dispelling some few of the many 
 errors, under which the Northern and Western mind have 
 been befogged, in reference to the causes and results of the 
 late Civil War in America, my present purpose will have 
 been accomplished. 
 
 BEN. E. GREEN. 
 
 HOPEWELL, near Dalton, 
 Whitfield County, Georgia, 
 February, 1871. 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 TO 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY. 
 
 PART FIRST. 
 
 NOTE. Part Second, by the same author and translator, will contain the 
 History of the Noble Classes. 
 
 Ixvii 
 
ectication. 
 
 TO M. GUIZOT. 
 
 I DEDICATE THIS BOOK TO YOU, AS THE PRINCE OF THE HISTORIANS OF 
 OUR AGE. YOU WILL RECOGNIZE IN IT THE TRACE OF YOUR PRIN 
 CIPLES AND THE FRUIT OF YOUR COUNSELS, IF I HAVE BEEN 
 ABLE TO COMPREHEND THE FORMER AND PROFIT BY 
 THE LATTER. BE PLEASED TO BELIEVE THAT 
 I WOULD HAVE DESIRED TO ADDRESS IT 
 TO YOU, AS THE MAN, WHOM I MOST 
 RESPECT, IF I HAD NOT OFFERED 
 IT TO YOU, AS THE HISTO 
 RIAN, WHOM I MOST 
 
 ADMIRE. 
 
 A. GRANIER DE CASSAGNAC. 
 
 Ixix 
 
AUTHOR S PREFACE. 
 
 THIS is not a political work. It is a book of history. I do 
 not propose, nor attack, nor defend, any social theory. I 
 relate and discuss facts. 
 
 I hasten to express myself thus ; because, in spite of the great 
 liberty of thought that this age enjoys, we live in a time when polit 
 ical parties, like the ancient doctors of the Sorbonne, assume an 
 absolute jurisdiction over every idea, whatever it may be, in litera 
 ture or in art. They pretend that every poet who sings, every dra 
 matist who writes, every painter who designs, every sculptor who 
 chisels, every wise man who calculates or analyzes, should direct 
 their verses, their scenic combinations, their paintings, their sta 
 tues, their theorems, to certain results of constitutional progress 
 and representative amelioration, as the theologians of former days 
 required poets and philosophers, jurisconsults and astronomers, 
 Vanini and Ramus, Servetus and Galileo, to conform to the letter 
 of the decretals and the canons. 
 
 Small as I am among the young laborers, who work on^the ethics 
 of this age, I, for my part, protest against the tyranny of parties. 
 Poets, artists, and learned men, when God gave them the knowledge 
 of the elevated things of this world, became invested with a su 
 premacy too noble and too kingly, to descend, without abasement, 
 to become the servants of political cabals, or to be required, in 
 searching for the object and conditions of their works, to satisfy any 
 other exigencies than those of poetry, science, and art. 
 
 I know that for some years there has been a desire to accustom 
 the public to other principles. I know that the desire has been to 
 have it believed that what constituted great writers and great artists 
 was to give their time, their heads, and their hands, to the study 
 
 Ixxi 
 
Ixxii AUTHOR S PREFACE. 
 
 and satisfaction of what is called the wants of the age ; but I know 
 also that those, who put forward these ideas and use this jargon, 
 never did, and beyond doubt never could, write a book, or execute 
 a work of art, and that they have their reasons for wishing to steal 
 by fraud into the family of the learned, and to taste the joy of tri 
 umph, without having passed through the anguish of the strife. 
 
 I have already said, my ideas are different ; and 1 have put them 
 at the beginning of this book; that those, who may be tempted 
 to open it, may not be surprised by finding it a stranger to all the 
 pretensions, to all the cliques, to all the grudges of the moment. 
 
 Nevertheless, little as I revere the parties, who oppress France ; 
 little as I respect their bright lights \ little confidence as I have in 
 their duration, I would not have it thought that I am indifferent to 
 the destiny of my country, and that I consider the different theories 
 now contesting for mastery as equally unworthy the attention of a 
 man of study. During the seven years, which I have devoted to 
 collecting the materials for this book, I have been witness to many 
 outrages and many crimes ; and at each hurrah, that the dishevelled 
 rioters gave in the streets ; at each grimacing bravado, that assas 
 sination threw up from the planks of the scaffold, I have found it 
 necessary to plunge deeper into the solitude of old books, to find 
 in this necropolis of the illustrious dead of Greece and Italy silence 
 enough to guard me from the noise, that distracts, and calmness 
 enough to guard me from the emotion, that excites. 
 
 No, indeed ; I have not abstained from politics, because I dis 
 dained it, but because I feared it. 
 
 For more than fifty years, the greater part of the men, who have 
 written, or who now write, on politics, seem to me to have mis 
 understood its nature and its temper. It has always seemed to me 
 that every science had its proper place and its special necessities. 
 For example, geometry lives by the logical deduction of abstract 
 ideas, and chemistry by the exact analysis of material objects. By 
 analogy, I have been pressed to believe, and I believe firmly, that 
 politics, to become a science, must take history for its base ; and 
 that, its object being to rule and govern men, who are neither blind 
 matter nor abstractions, and who consequently are beyond the cus 
 tomary methods of the exact sciences, it becomes necessary to 
 observe in history the laws peculiar to man and to peoples, to lay 
 
AUTHOR S PREFACE. Ixxiii 
 
 aside generalities, theorems, syllogisms, all the apparatus of ideolo 
 gists and dreamers, and search in the jurists, the philosophers, the 
 poets, among all those, who have written concerning man and 
 nations, about his heart and mind, his feelings and his ideas, the 
 secret tendency of individuals, of families, and of society. 
 
 Outside of this path, politics appear to me barren and worthless. 
 For thirty centuries it was obstinately tried to study chemistry by 
 reasoning; and they did not succeed in the decomposition of a peb 
 ble-stone. Since forty years it has been studied by observation, 
 and already the half of the secrets of nature have been discovered. 
 Now, politics are, in the order of moral things, what chemistry is 
 in the order of material things, a science of observation and analy 
 sis ; only much more difficult ; because man, whom it has to observe 
 and know, is much more complex than matter. Let us not, then, 
 be surprised at the vanity of our long domestic strifes. Politics are 
 like a gun : when we pull the trigger, it only emits what has been 
 put into it. For forty years we have loaded it with crude phrases, 
 and it throws out crude phrases. Load it with well-observed facts, 
 and it will give you solid institutions. 
 
 The science of politics, then, needs to be preceded by another 
 science, which is history. Without this guide, it is not a science, 
 but poor nonsense, unworthy the leisure hours of a man of sense. 
 Now, if I have abstained from politics, it is because, in my opinion, 
 history has not yet been written, and I had no wish to set on the 
 pillory a book of generalities, the use of which is sterile, and the 
 abuse fatal. 
 
 Now, as I think history has never yet been written, I will explain 
 what I mean, for the benefit of those good and patient readers, who 
 never get angry with their books ; who find how never to open one 
 without learning something, and who can believe, that when the pend 
 ing works of the day are brought to an end, we should leave the old 
 chronicles to rest in peace, and declare to the present, that it should, 
 hereafter, hold itself to be sufficiently instructed in all the secrets 
 of past times. 
 
 Certainly, if any age has reason to be dissatisfied with its historic 
 
 labors, ours has not. Men of the greatest learning, others of the 
 
 greatest merit, have, for twenty years, treated many difficulties of 
 
 ancient and modern history. Each one of them has cleared away 
 
 6 
 
Ixxiv AUTHOR S PREFACE. 
 
 some part of the immense mass of the rubbish of past ages, and has 
 reconstructed in some one of its essential parts the monument of 
 their lives, which the people of former days have erected : a monu 
 ment, which is called politics, when it is^standing; and history, 
 when it has been overthrown. 
 
 Thus I delight to recognize, first of all, that few epochs have 
 done in history more or better than ours. And first, hi this mat 
 ter, we should mention M. Guizot. His monographs on different 
 questions of Roman history and of the middle ages, have marked 
 the path we must all follow, if we wish to give to history the ele 
 ments of strict demonstration and a positive basis. Moreover, by 
 his lessons and his general ideas on modern civilization, M. Guizot 
 has produced in France, a true, pure, and correct historic sentiment, 
 which will be the cause, and the precursor of rapid progress and 
 lasting conquests. It is not impossible, that his later works, which 
 in the mind of the author were only a sketch, may perhaps some 
 day be surpassed by a finer and more delicate analysis of facts, and 
 a more elevated and complete synthesis of ideas. For, as Buffon 
 justly observes, it is the fate of inventors to be despoiled by those, 
 who come after them ; but it is none the less certain, even on this 
 hypothesis, that whatever may be done hereafter in history, correct 
 and great, M. Guizot will have rendered it possible. 
 
 Thus the Spirit of the Laws is now a book half dethroned no 
 one, however, will wish to take away from Montesquieu the glory of 
 having produced in his time, as M. Guizot has in ours, a certain sen 
 timent of elevated, calm, and profound criticism. This sentiment 
 may be said to be the soul of good books a soul, which lives 
 always, even when the books are no more. After this, who will so 
 far forget his condition as to promise himself all the future? When 
 one really labors at intellectual work, which the human mind pur 
 sues incessantly, it matters little when he is buried. God always 
 finds him. 
 
 After, and alongside of, M. Guizot, other men, younger and of 
 less elevated ideas, have, nevertheless, undertaken and accomplished 
 works, which all, more or less, enter into this new historic spirit, of 
 which we speak ; works, which are more seed than fruit, but of which 
 any epoch might be proud, and of which ours boasts, with good 
 reason. 
 
AUTHOR S PREFACE. Ixxv 
 
 M. Augustin Thierry, in whom, perhaps, we do not find that great 
 elevation of view necessary to measure the vast historic horizon, 
 nor that complete and abundant learning required for the explana 
 tion of far separated epochs, is, nevertheless, a wonderful work 
 man, in restoring, by his very confused episodes, the personal and 
 dramatic aspect of the middle ages. His ideas, generally, only 
 touch, or penetrate very little below, the surface of things ; but the 
 patient carving of his embellishments is always that of a work at 
 once vast and severe, capricious and exact. 
 
 M. Michelet is a very noble and great historian. His ideas always 
 step along with head erect and high, and the poet might have said 
 of him, that he sought the royal road to heaven, viamque affectat 
 Olympo. Nevertheless it is in my opinion questionable whether 
 the time has yet come to undertake what he has undertaken. In 
 my eyes, M. Michelet is a sculptor, who has mistaken the hour and 
 has arrived at the foot of the monument before the masons had 
 left it. Certainly it is a very legitimate curiosity, worthy of the 
 brightest minds, to wish to learn the most elevated, the most ideal, 
 the most accurate signification of the history of nations. But is it 
 not necessary to wait for that, until all the preparatory work shall 
 have been, if not finished, at least commenced ? In every edifice, 
 must not the foundations first be laid ? M. Michelet may then be 
 said to have occupied himself prematurely with the abstract and 
 supreme meaning of history. The last word in the life of nations 
 is composed of many letters. How many of them have yet been 
 written legibly ? 
 
 Along with these didactic historians, who directly, and we may 
 say professionally, teach and study history, we must name a writer, 
 who has illuminated one whole immense and obscure side of the 
 middle ages that of arts, of public manners, and of the feudal 
 family. This was M. Victor Hugo. Those, who maybe astonished 
 to hear us speak of M. Victor Hugo as one of the most eminent 
 historians of the age, have not observed that great poets seize upon 
 certain aspects of the life of peoples more readily than the learned 
 and the chronologists. Besides, it is not to be doubted that there 
 is more of Greek history in Homer than in Pausanias, and more 
 of Latin history in Virgil than in Sallust. 
 
 I have said and freely repeat, then, that our epoch is rich in 
 
Ixxvi AUTHOR S PREFACE. 
 
 remarkable historians, and especially opulent in historic intelligence 
 and aptitude. But what great and definitive results has it obtained? 
 We scarcely dare to count them. The historians have not under 
 stood each other, either in their plan of work, or in their critical 
 ideas. Hence the works of one have not abided to the works of 
 another ; their efforts have not aided each other, are not complete, 
 do not make parts of a whole ; in the collection of their works 
 there is neither logical sequence nor design. With profound learn 
 ing, great intelligence, and indefatigable research, history has not 
 been written and settled, except in some very limited matters, like 
 the map of those unknown countries, on which only a few harbors 
 and rivers are marked with certainty. 
 
 General history, significant history, conclusive history, has not 
 yet been written, as we have said. More than that, it is not yet 
 possible. The traditions of the ancient and modern world are in 
 fact like that geographical chart just mentioned. We have only the 
 position of a very few points exactly and geometrically indicated. 
 The position of all the others is vague, uncertain, speculative, very 
 questionable and very much disputed, without counting the numer 
 ous and immense blanks, which serve to indicate deserts and unex 
 plored regions. 
 
 These gaps, still left in general history, terrify by their numbers 
 and extent, and we dare not ask when at last we can know the exact 
 and real configuration of humanity. 
 
 For example, who has thought of writing the history of the 
 family ; that is to say, the history of all the variations, which the 
 relations of husband and wife, father and son, father and daughter, 
 master and servant, mother and children, have passed through, since 
 the commencement of nations, and among all people, both as to 
 moral authority and in respect to property ? 
 
 Who has thought of writing the history of law ; that is to say, to 
 determine, by the laws, every kind of association, that men have 
 been led to form with each other, and to discover the general tend 
 ency of human associability in the special character of all its local 
 and temporary conjunctions ? 
 
 Who has written the history of language and literature ; the 
 history of religion ; the history of administrative institutions ; the 
 history of judicial institutions ; the history of the military art ; the 
 
PREFACE. Ixxvii 
 
 history of commerce ; the history of agriculture ; the history of 
 architecture; the history of heraldry; the history of furniture, 
 dress, and domestic life ? 
 
 Here we have so many series of facts, running through and 
 through the history of all peoples, and of which it is impossible for 
 any one to say anything precise and clear, without danger of fatal 
 or ridiculous errors. All that the writers of general history can do 
 is to make more or less mistakes on all these unknown matters, and 
 to fall back upon dates, battles, lists of emperors, the passages of 
 rivers, and the captures of cities. But, in good conscience, is this 
 the history of the peoples? No. 
 
 What is to be done, then, in this situation of studies ? In my 
 opinion, the position is difficult, but simple. Each one must take 
 his particular task, and accept the consequences of the want of 
 accord and consecutiveness, which has heretofore prevailed in the 
 works of historians. It becomes necessary to renounce general 
 history, which is impossible, and grapple resolutely with mono 
 graphs, dissertations, and special treatises. We must become 
 learned ; (I return to the comparison, because it is clear and exact,) 
 we must write history as they make geographical charts, measuring 
 with precision each portion of land, and not passing to the second, 
 until the first has been indicated with all possible exactness. When 
 we shall have thus solved, one after another, all the special difficul 
 ties of tradition, we need not trouble ourselves to know who will 
 write general history. It will be written. 
 
 So I have thought and acted. This book is the first-fruits of my 
 conviction. 
 
 Nevertheless, my conviction once formed, I was not at the end 
 of my doubts. When I had decided to attempt special dissertations 
 and treatises, I found myself stopped by another grave difficulty, 
 which is this : I asked myself if all these monographs were inde 
 pendent of each other ; if I could commence with this or that one 
 indifferently ; if there was any connection between them by any 
 certain logical order or fixed dependence, so that it was necessary 
 to begin with that, which was the key of all the others, under penalty 
 of plunging into labors, not only long but useless. Such a question 
 could only be solved by experiment. So I attempted the study of 
 the first specialty, which presented itself, the history of law. 
 
Ixxviii AUTHOR S PREFACE. 
 
 Scarce entered upon the history of law, I discovered that all laws 
 were fundamentally divided into two groups feudal laws and civil 
 laws ; and that these were based on two classes of men, historically 
 distinct and separated the nobles and the common people. It 
 was thus clearly demonstrated for me, from the first steps, that this 
 history of law should be preceded by another, which is the history 
 of the noble and of the freed races. 
 
 Once convinced that the history of law was not the point of de 
 parture, nor the key of the system, I undertook another specialty, 
 the history of the family. Here the first facts observed showed me 
 the existence of two species of families : one, in which the paternal 
 authority was more or less absolute, and property entailed ; another, 
 in which the paternal authority was scarcely perceptible and pro 
 perty was movable and alienable. The first of these two species 
 of families belonged to the nobles, the second to the common 
 people. Thus the history of the family, like the history of law, 
 brought me back to the noble and freed races. 
 
 I made the same experiments on the greater part of the historic 
 specialties of some elevation and extent, and I was always brought 
 back to this result : that the primitive part of history, that which is 
 nearest the root, that, on which all others depend, that, from the 
 foot of which all others start, as streams of water from their head 
 springs, is the fact of the noble races and the slave races. 
 
 This result once reached, the great primordial fact of the noble 
 races and the slave races became for me the object of constant and 
 continued study. I searched into its origin, its development, its 
 character, and I remained entirely convinced that it was like a high 
 mountain with two water -sheds, from the top of which all the 
 secondary chain^ of history started out, to flow down and be lost in 
 the infinite. 
 
 In my view, the noble and the slave races are the two moieties 
 of human history, which make it up faithfully and entirely, whether 
 we consider them in their highest generality or most local specialty. 
 By taking this fact as a base and following it up through all its radi 
 ations, we arrive at the rapid, comprehensive, and complete intelli 
 gence of all the details of the life of peoples ; laws, family, poli 
 tics, art ; we see the birth, the growth, the development of all. 
 
 What, then, is this fact of the noble and slave races ? This is the 
 
AUTHOR S PREFACE. Ixxix 
 
 secret of this book. However, the volume now published contains 
 only half of the subject. It contains the history of the slave races, 
 taken from their point of departure, and followed through all the 
 phases of their social fortune. I will soon give to the public the 
 history of the noble races, and until then, I ought to add that many 
 of my thoughts will naturally appear obscure and incomplete, be 
 cause the members are only thoroughly explained by a study of the 
 whole body. 
 
 The historic method, which I have just explained and which I 
 have followed, and especially the point of view, which has given me 
 the idea of this book, have thrown me entirely out of the ordinary- 
 paths of science. I do not conceal, then, the strangeness of the 
 principles, which I have sought to establish, and the many repug 
 nances, which I run the risk of exciting. I accept with confidence 
 the hazards of the public judgment, for truth can always defend it 
 self. If, perchance, I may have been mistaken in one or other of 
 my convictions, I may give them up for others that are better. 
 
 The only thing, that could be painful and sad to me, would be 
 that any one should doubt the perfect sincerity of my ideas, from 
 any paradoxical taint, that might at first glance be seen. I have 
 not labored for seven successive years, without a day s intermission, 
 to mystify the public or deceive myself. 
 
 However, I have not wished to be believed on my word in a 
 matter so novel, and therefore so open to discussion. It will be seen 
 that I have quoted literally all the essential evidences, which have 
 served to form my opinion and support my doctrine. It was neces 
 sary, first, to justify the entirely new historic path, which I have 
 ventured upon, and secondly, because, as many of my ideas were 
 based on my own interpretation of certain ancient texts, it was im 
 portant to show what I had done in this critical part of my work. 
 
 I have already given the reasons for my belief that this is at this 
 day the best, the only good, manner of writing history. If God 
 permits me to follow the bent of my studies and tastes, I will thus 
 take up, in succession, the historic specialties, which seem to me in 
 dicated by the logic, which connects facts with each other, and will 
 work patiently to quarry out some stones, which some future archi 
 tect will one day cement into a general monument, erected to 
 human traditions. 
 
Ixxx AUTHOR S PREFACE. 
 
 Moreover, it is a profound conviction of my soul that politics 
 will only cease to be a dangerous empiricism, and become a calm 
 and serene science, when it takes history for its point of departure. 
 For half a century it has felt the want of a base, and has sought one 
 in abstract theories about the rights of mafl and other metaphysical 
 entities, which have no reality except in the belief of those, who 
 accept them, and which all the world can deny. These theories are 
 to-day worn out and abandoned, without results ; we can rely on 
 that. Now that experience has brought reflection, it may well be 
 said that man is neither a triangle nor an idea, but a complex being, 
 having a history, which must be studied and known, to appreciate 
 his social nature, his character, and his wants. The first condition 
 required for finding out the laws of the future, is to know those of 
 the past. 
 
 ADOLPHE GRANIER DE CASSAGNAC. 
 
 PARIS, 10/7* December, 1837. 
 
HISTORY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES, 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 GENERAL IDEA OF THE PROLETARIAT. 
 
 THE working classes constitute one of the elements of European 
 society in particular, and of all civilized societies in general. 
 We add this qualification, because there are societies, in which the 
 laboring classes do not exist. For example, they are a fact almost 
 entirely unknown among the Arabs of Africa, and they have but 
 little development, and, if we may so speak, little spread in Russia 
 and Greece, in Turkey, and in all the East. 
 
 Few among those, who have undertaken to speak of the working 
 classes, have remarked in them this strange characteristic, of existing 
 among certain people, and not existing among others; of not repro 
 ducing themselves at all epochs, but of waiting certain moments 
 and in some sort certain historic seasons to germinate and flourish. 
 On the whole, there are in the newspapers, in books, and in the 
 public mind, few clear and fixed ideas as to working-men. No one 
 has ever thought, for example, of asking whether or not they con 
 stitute a race apart among the peoples, where they are found, or 
 what cause produces them at certain times and in certain countries 
 more than in others; what cause scatters them thinly in one coun 
 try, thick and swarming in another. In a word, no one has yet 
 seriously concerned himself about their history ; more than that, 
 
 Si 
 
82 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 and what is worthy of note, no one has been curious to know 
 whether the working-men had a history, a separate history of their 
 own, a history actually unknown, but which, if written, would bring 
 the minds of economists and statesmen on the track of possible, 
 easy, and immediate ameliorations. 
 
 The publicists of the present time, who have treated of the work 
 ing classes, have done so without any clear, proper, and special 
 idea. They have taken them in their present condition, without 
 even asking if they were always what they are to-day. They have 
 no key, which opens their historic nature and their social significa 
 tion, and they move around without being able to seize them with 
 the slippery tweezers of their ideology. They know not, therefore, 
 whence they came ; and hence they know not whither they go. 
 
 Yes, indeed, the working classes have a separate history, or rather 
 they have in the general life of nations a peculiar and distinct 
 destiny, the recital of which constitutes a separate history, and 
 shows under what conditions and at what epochs the working-men 
 appeared, united, worked, lived, were perpetuated. This history 
 has not yet been composed and written for two reasons : First, be 
 cause Europe has only to-day reached that period of the social rev 
 olution, when the working classes have acquired sufficient develop 
 ment and importance for governments to trouble themselves and 
 for publicists to occupy themselves with them. Second, because his 
 tory is now only emerging from the condition of the epics and 
 chronicles, in which the ancients placed and our fathers left it, to 
 that of criticism, to be studied, known, completed, to find out the 
 reason of its poesy and the reflection of its action. Thus, on the one 
 side, governments begin to note that there is in their mechanism a 
 grit, which stops its movements, and which has been accumulated 
 grain by grain ; on the other, historians begin to observe that we have 
 upon our hands an immense social fact, which they have forgotten 
 to notice in the books, which they call history, and which are filled 
 almost exclusively with the names of battles, emperors, and cap 
 tains ; so that the working classes are now rapping at the doors of 
 the learned and of kings, and say to the first, " We want a history ; 
 and to the latter, " We want bread." 
 
 The principal reason why the publicists of our time have only 
 half succeeded, when they have treated of what relates to the work- 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 83 
 
 ing classes, is, as we have said, because they have not approached 
 them from the side of history. The men, who are now at the*head 
 of affairs, and those, who have filled the last twenty years with their 
 ideas or with their reputation, all belong by education to the philo 
 sophic school of the eighteenth century. This is the school whose 
 theories are found most clearly and eloquently summed up and re 
 lated in the Social Contract, and in the Discourse on the Lie quality 
 of Conditions, and from its time critical history has not been at 
 tempted except by Vico, whom France did not recognize ; which 
 has led all the publicists, since the Revolution of 1789, to enter upon 
 the question of the working-men and the poor of the people, in 
 short from the side of abstractions, of those rights of men in gen 
 eral, which the eighteenth century made the fundamental axiom of 
 political science. 
 
 Nevertheless, there were two great inconveniences in this mode 
 of proceeding. To draw to and absorb in the great abstraction 
 contained in the word man, the working-men and the poor, that is 
 to say, the people, and to assume as a principle the absolute unity 
 and identity of therights and duties of all, was to prejudge the ques 
 tion, whether there are in the history of mankind different races suited 
 to different political functions, of different social destinies, and who, 
 having thus different duties, should therefore have different rights. 
 We don t say positively that these races exist, which would upset 
 the axiom of the rights of man, but when the eighteenth century 
 asserted that they did not exist, it manifestly begged the question, 
 that is to say, it answered the question by the question. 
 
 Then to make of the working-men and the poor ciphers contained 
 and added up in the grand total man, is to launch out upon a series 
 of operations perfectly strict in themselves, but entirely barren of 
 results. In effect, if a working-man is only an abstract citizen, a 
 human unity equal to every other human unity, we make of him a 
 quotient of the sovereignty, which is the grand social dividend. 
 Now this method only ends in giving to the citizen-quotient a share 
 in the ballot. If the citizen has the wherewith to live, he may dis 
 charge his arithmetical function as a pastime ; but if he is poor, if 
 this abstraction of a citizen covers some reality like the working 
 class, which has neither bread for the table nor clothing for the 
 body, the ballot will certainly not give him either the one or the. 
 
84 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 other, and all imaginable contrivances of abstract citizens, attempted 
 after *the manner of the ideologists, only lead to a complete mysti 
 fication in politics and in industry. 
 
 For fifty years this abstract idea of the man and the citizen has 
 been discussed over and over, without arriving at any but a logical 
 though barren solution; and the question remains still and will 
 always remain where Rousseau placed it, and at the point to which 
 he brought it, without .being able, whatever one may do, either to 
 advance or recede ; which shows that it was inexpediently carried 
 into ideology, which is the domain of pure ideas, instead of being 
 carried into history, which is the place for the positive and complex 
 facts of politics. 
 
 Now, then, to be wise, we must profit by the faults of the ideol 
 ogists, not obstinately to take men for triangles, not imprudently 
 to mix politics and geometry ; to distinguish the mathematical from 
 the social question, which for our part we will take care to do. Thus, 
 instead of saying that a working-man is a citizen, a member of the 
 sovereignty, which is obvious and proper, but leads to nothing use 
 ful, we will search in history for what the working-man really is, what 
 is his origin, what causes produce him here, exclude him there, and 
 multiply him elsewhere, in order that, his social nature being known, 
 his propensities studied, it may become possible and easy to draw from 
 the knowledge of his past and present the formula of his future. 
 
 The working classes, however general and widespread this ele 
 ment of society may be, proceed nevertheless from another social 
 element much more widespread and general still. This great his 
 toric fact, simple, primordial, which precedes the working classes, 
 and of which they are a branch, a subdivision, and a fragment, is 
 the proletariat. 
 
 The proletariat is thus, according to our ideas, a primitive and gen 
 eral element of society, in which the working classes take their origin. 
 
 In a work so difficult and delicate as this, we need, first, that the 
 reader shall accord to us his good-will ; second, that he shall have 
 patience with our reasoning, and wait, sometimes for a page, some 
 times for two, the slow and tardy proofs, which often perhaps it 
 may be difficult to produce, to test, to classify and put in line; third, 
 that he will permit us to advance certain general assertions, which 
 we will afterward establish, but which it will be more convenient 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 8$ 
 
 for us first to throw out without demonstration ; fourth and lastly, 
 that he will not dispute everything with us step by step, but give us 
 a little free scope and let us tell all, that he may judge of what we 
 have done. 
 
 We do not concern ourselves with the meaning, which the word 
 proletary derives from its Latin etymology. Proletarius designated 
 a thing peculiar to the constitution of Rome ; the word, proletary, 
 denotes, according to our ideas, a thing common to all societies. 
 
 Thus, for example, there is among the peoples of modern Europe, 
 and there has been among the peoples of ancient Europe, a mass, 
 more or less considerable, of families and individuals, forming the 
 lowest position, the lowest stratum of society. Ordinarily these fam 
 ilies and individuals live by the painful and daily labor of their hands ; 
 the wages of th day before is all they have for the morrow, and 
 landed property, when they succeed in obtaining it, is for them much 
 less the rule than the exception. These men, who are not landed 
 proprietors, who never have been, and whom one cannot venture to 
 promise that they ever will be ; these poor men, obscure, without 
 fortune accumulated and transmitted from father to son, and for 
 whom all the domestic traditions are reduced to the necessity of 
 gaining their daily bread ; these men are the PROLETARIES the con 
 dition to which they belong is the PROLETARIAT. 
 
 This being established, see what the proletariat embraces : ist, 
 working-men; 2d, mendicants; 3d, thieves; 4th, women of the town. 
 
 A working-man is a proletary who works and gains wages for a 
 living. 
 
 A mendicant is a proletary who will not or cannot work, and who 
 begs for a living. 
 
 A thief is a proletary who will neither work nor beg, and who 
 steals for a living. 
 
 A woman of the town is a proletary, who will neither work, nor 
 beg, nor steal, and who prostitutes herself for a living. 
 
 The absence of all acquired property, of all accumulated fortune, 
 is then, as we have said, what constitutes the proletariat ; and the 
 necessity, when one has nothing but his or her body, either to work, 
 to beg, to steal, or to prostitute for a living, naturally divides the 
 proletaries into four great categories, which we have mentioned ; 
 categories in which they range themselves according to their educa- 
 
86 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 tion, their character, their physical and moral force, the particular 
 condition of the family to which they belong, or the general con 
 ditions of the society which surrounds them sometimes by their 
 own faults, sometimes from the faults of others, often by accident. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 ORIGIN OF THE PROLETARIAT. 
 
 WE have already shown that the question of the working classes 
 cannot be logically and effectually treated, without treating 
 at the same time of beggars, of thieves, and of prostitutes ; and we 
 have also explained how these four great social facts, which encum 
 ber all civilized nations, viz., working-men, the poor, malefactors, 
 and prostitutes, are the four branches of one and the same trunk, 
 which is the proletariat. It is then, necessarily, with the proletariat 
 that we should commence, to arrive afterward at the history of the 
 working classes ; and by so doing we have the advantage of explain 
 ing the end by the beginning, and effects by their causes. 
 
 Nevertheless, many, who will read this, will perhaps ask why we 
 do not come at once to our ideas of the organization of the working 
 classes, and why, being master of our conclusions, as we ought to 
 be, we laboriously search for our premises two or three thousand 
 years back, among the Greeks and Romans, instead of at once lay 
 ing hold of, classifying, and arranging the facts which we have before 
 our eyes ; for after all, it is about her own working-men, mendicants, 
 thieves, and prostitutes, and not those of Rome, of Athens, or of 
 Argos, that France is troubled. The history of the proletariat may 
 therefore appear to some a digression on this occasion, and the 
 appearances will be to some extent with those, who would wish to 
 dispense with the history of the working classes, and to enter at once 
 upon the data, which lead to their organization. 
 
 These are the reasons, which decide us. It is not enough to wish 
 to organize the working classes ; it is also necessary that the work- 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 8? 
 
 ing classes themselves should wish to be organized. Above all, it 
 is necessary that they should recognize that the* condition of the 
 working-man is a natural and normal condition, and consequently, 
 one to be maintained, ameliorated, cherished, and not destroyed ; 
 that, if there be rich and poor, the rich have not amassed their for 
 tunes at the expense of the poor,(#) and that those, who have an in- 
 
 (#) Our author starts out with the declaration that his book is one of history, and 
 not of politics. Yet it is very evident that he writes with a very strong political 
 bias in favor of the old nobility, to which class the de before his patronymic in 
 dicates that he claims to belong. The inexorable logic of historical facts, forces 
 him to contradict all that he here says, when he comes to treat, in his fourteenth 
 chapter, of the Ancient Trades Unions and their Fall. There, after speaking of 
 the prodigalities of Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Heliogabalus, and others, he says : 
 
 " Alas, it was the labor unions, which had to pay the greatest part for these 
 feasts, this profusion, these follies ! It was they (the working classes) who had 
 to support the emperors, their mistresses, their eunuchs, their minions, their lack 
 eys, their lions and their panthers, their paroquets and their monkeys ; and if we 
 bear in mind that between Augustus and Constantine there were fifty-two emperors, 
 that is to say, nearly fifty-two prodigals, and that one of them alone, who died at 
 eighteen years of age, spent in a single day more than all the others together, in 
 having the court of his palace paved with all the diamonds, all the emeralds, all 
 the precious stones of Italy, we can, without difficulty, account for the exhaustion 
 of the Empire in the fourth century, and for the tyrannical laws against the labor 
 unions, (and the working classes,) for which the people and the government 
 are both to blame. This explains how these tyrants, these fools, these ambitious 
 men, who passed away so quickly, each took away some part of the wealth of the 
 people ; how the most frightful exactions were practised to obtain money, how all the 
 statues of the gods, and even the household gods (penates) of Rome, were melted 
 down by Nero ; how the ancient subsidies paid by the state to the priests and the 
 vestals were suppressed ; how, in fine, to the great scandal of the idolatrous devo 
 tees, the immense revenues of the pagan clergy were confiscated and sold through 
 out the Empire for the benefit of the public treasury, which was the burden of the 
 lamentable epistles of the Prefect Symmachus to the Emperor Valentinian the 
 Second ! " 
 
 The facts and philosophy of history were much more truthfully and clearly stated 
 byCalhoun,in 1837, before De Cassagnac s book was ready for the printer. Cal- 
 houn was the great tribune of the industrial and productive classes of labor in all 
 its forms; the inflexible opponent of monopolies and special class legislation 
 of all taxation by government that tended to reduce the wages of labor, and increase 
 the cost of living. In his speech on Abolition petitions, February, 1837, he said : 
 
 " I hold, then, that there never has yet existed a wealthy and civilized society, 
 in which one portion of the community did not, in point of fact, live on the labor 
 
88 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 come of a hundred thousand livres, have had nothing to do with the 
 misfortunes of those, who die of hunger ; that the people, consisting 
 principally of the working classes, have not been reduced to the 
 condition, in which they find themselves, by jhe cupidity of the 
 great ; and that the crimes of priests and kings, if priests and kings 
 have committed crimes, have not been to rivet the chains of any 
 one ; that there are simple, logical, visible causes for everything 
 for the evil as for the good and that the poor have never had any 
 other tyrants than the imbeciles, who have filled their hearts with 
 unjust hatred, and have thus led them astray from making the most 
 of the destiny, which God has given them ; that, if it is good, moral, 
 and right that working-men, as intelligent men capable of improve 
 ment, should have their ambition, they should take care that that 
 ambition should not err in its object, and that it does not seek to 
 retake violently or legally, by riot or by universal suffrage, the 
 wealth, consideration, and authority, which no one ever took from 
 them; that the welfare of the working classes ought to be sought in 
 the amelioration of the condition, which is proper for them, and not 
 in the barren pursuit of a condition, which is inappropriate to them ; 
 in fine, that the object of every apprentice, in commencing his career, 
 should be to become the best workman in the shop, and not the first 
 consul of a republic. 
 
 Thus, before addressing ourselves to the good sense of the work 
 ing classes, it seemed to us logical to address their prejudices and 
 passions. The most formidable evil, in fact, under which working- 
 men have labored for the last forty years, is their repugnance to 
 being only working-men, and the belief, which bad historians, bad 
 publicists, bad revolutionary orators have instilled into them, that 
 the condition of a hireling is a degrading and anomalous one, which 
 the violence and avarice of the great have for a long time imposed 
 
 of the other. Broad and general as is this assertion, it is fully borne out by his 
 tory. This is not the proper occasion, but if it were, it would not be difficult to 
 trace the various devices, by which the wealth of all civilized communities has 
 been so unequally divided, and to show by what means so small a share has been 
 allotted to those, by whose labor it was produced, and so large a share given to 
 the non-producing class. The devices are almost innumerable, from the brute 
 force and gross superstition of ancient times, to the subtle and artful fiscal contriv 
 ances of modern." 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 89 
 
 upon the people, and which, so far from there being any morality 
 in accepting or profit in regulating, they should throw off, cost what 
 it may. The example of the Constituent Assembly in abolishing 
 liveries, that of the Convention in abolishing the domestic relations, 
 and all those souvenirs of popular fraternity, which gave for the first 
 time indiscriminately the name of a citizen to the rich and the poor, 
 to the duke and to the lackey, and which, for all that, really only 
 concealed the inequality of the thing under the equality of the 
 name, have left to the working classes this movement of feverish 
 restlessness, which follows hopes deceived and ambition misled, and 
 which is complicated with a desire to be what they are not, and dis 
 gust at what they are. 
 
 We would wish therefore, if possible, to make the working classes 
 understand that they have no cause for social vengeance ; that the 
 question for them is not to break their chains, nor escape from 
 slavery, nor to punish tyrants ; that their slavery and oppression 
 have never existed except in melodramas, comic operas, and drink 
 ing songs; that history shows that the working classes were formed, 
 like all the others, freely and progressively ; that in time they have 
 had, like all other social facts, their bright and dark hours, their 
 good and bad years ; but that their condition, as that of all others, 
 has been improving from century to century ; that the working 
 classes of the middle ages were incomparably more happy than the 
 working classes of antiquity, and those of to-day are incomparably 
 more happy than those of the middle ages; in fine, that the condi 
 tion of the working-men, as we have already said, is regular, moral, 
 natural, legitimate ; a condition which has arisen of itself, spon 
 taneously, without constraint or violence ; a condition, which has 
 been developed in history according to appropriate laws, which 
 had nothing harsh, cruel, or tyrannical in them ; a condition, which 
 is shown, by its origin, its duration, by the evidences of its present 
 and the indications of its future state, to be an essential part of the 
 general system of human societies, forming a harmonious note in 
 the general concert of the wants, griefs, pleasures, and destinies 
 of all. 
 
 This was our object in wishing to write the history of the working 
 classes. The difficulty of their association is, as we think, less per 
 haps in the discovery of a logical and apposite mechanism than in 
 7 
 
9O HISTORY OF THE 
 
 the obstacles to every simple, natural, and peaceful solution of the 
 great social difficulties of our times, caused by the false political 
 ideas, the ridiculous learning, and the pseudo-Lacedemonian frater 
 nity, with which the working classes have been infected for the last 
 forty years. One will never answer satisfactorily all the objections 
 of those, who think themselves interested in making them, and 
 whatever he may say, he will with difficulty persuade a working- 
 man, who aspires to be a triumvir, to become some day a boss 
 mechanic. It is not in a few years that the political prejudices of 
 the working classes can be reformed ; but history applied to their 
 social condition seemed to us one of the surest and shortest ways to 
 its accomplishment. 
 
 The proletariat may, perhaps, be compared to a river, which 
 always has its principal and original source and its tributaries. The 
 difficulty in its history consists in separating its accidental and rela 
 tive from its general and absolute causes, or, as we may say, its 
 tributaries from its head-springs. 
 
 The first general, universal, absolute cause, the original source 
 of pauperism, is the emancipation of slaves. Pauperism and its 
 four subdivisions hirelings, (that is to say, those who work for 
 wages,) mendicants, thieves, and prostitutes cannot exist in a slave 
 country, unless emancipation has been there already begun. It is 
 not difficult to comprehend how the want of food and clothing 
 the necessity of living, in a word being the motive that impels 
 the hireling to work, the mendicant to beg, the thief to steal, and 
 girls of the town to prostitution all to do what they do with a 
 view to a necessary gain these four conditions could not exist 
 under the slave system, under which all have naturally the neces 
 saries of life ; the master because he is master, and the slave because 
 he is a slave. Thus there are neither hirelings, nor mendicants, 
 nor thieves, nor prostitutes among the Arab tribes who inhabit the 
 desert, because slavery is there almost in its primitive entirety. 
 
 We hope hereafter to say with accuracy when that emancipation 
 of slaves, which produced the first proletaries, commenced among 
 the people of the West ; but first we must notice two important facts 
 regarding this emancipation. 
 
 The first is, -that before the Christian era there was no instance 
 of a systematic emancipation, in mass, among the ancients, in the 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 9! 
 
 name of any philosophic or philanthropic system, and that all eman 
 cipations among them were accidental and individual. We may 
 even say that all the pagan philosophers, without exception, were 
 unanimous in considering slavery as a legitimate and normal con 
 dition of society, from Aristotle, who called children "the ani 
 mated instruments of their parents," to Plato, who cites in his trea 
 tise on law two verses of Homer, from the i yth book of the Odys 
 sey, in which it is said that "slaves have only the half of a human 
 soul. There is perhaps only one exception to this unanimity of the 
 ancient philosophers as to the legitimacy of slavery ; and even that 
 exception is taken from the history of the Jews, who had in the Law 
 and the Prophets the germ and rudiments of the Gospel. Flavius 
 Josephus relates in the i3th book of his ancient history of the Jews, 
 that there were in his nation three great philosophic sects outside of 
 the precise text of the Law, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the 
 Essenians ; l and he gives many details in regard to this last-men 
 tioned sect in his i8th book, where he says the Essenians recog 
 nized a community of goods, that they did their own work, and had 
 no servants, because they considered men as being equal by nature ; 2 
 but the Essenians in antiquity were only a small obscure sect, num 
 bering scarcely four thousand, toward the end of the reign of Au 
 gustus, that is to say, in the dawn of Christianity, and the doctrine 
 of equality was mixed up with other dogmas, which injured them 
 greatly in the opinion of the Jews, as, for example, the doctrine of 
 celibacy. 
 
 We state rapidly the principal opinions of the ancient philos 
 ophers in regard to slavery, (intending to recur to the subject here 
 after,) only to explain how, public opinion never having been ex 
 cited by any precept or doctrine whatever in favor of slaves, there 
 was never in antiquity any systematic emancipations in mass. In 
 fact, we do not wish to give the name of systematic emancipation to 
 the enrolment of slaves in the time of civil troubles. 
 
 The second fact, of which we have spoken, and which is a con 
 sequence of the first, is that in ancient times there was never any 
 of those trying times among the working classes such as we have 
 
 1 See Flav. Joseph., Antiq. Hsebr., lib. xiii., cap. x. 
 
 2 Ibid., lib. xviii., cap. ii. 
 
9 2 
 
 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 in our manufacturing cities, nor any such distress among the poor 
 as now in certain localities in France at the approach of winter, 
 and in Ireland at all seasons. It is easy to conceive how the indi 
 vidual cases of emancipation turning out proletaries only drop by 
 drop, so to speak, the soil of ancient society had time to absorb 
 before being overrun and wasted by them. The free working popu 
 lation before the Christian era was very small, and the thirty-five 
 labor unions enumerated in the law of Constantine of the year 337, 
 contained in the 8th book of the Code of Theodosius, had their 
 work done by slaves. 1 
 
 The number of proletaries was therefore very limited before the 
 Christian era, and even in the three following centuries, because of 
 the small number of freedmen that emancipation had cast upon 
 society. 
 
 First, as to the working-men, they were, as we have said, nearly 
 all slaves. The treasury, or, as we would say, the domain, had slaves 
 of all trades, by whom the public works were executed. Con 
 tractors even made large fortunes by the daily hire of workmen, 
 and the labor unions themselves turned the privileges they obtained 
 to the profit of a few, and had their shops filled with slave work 
 men. 
 
 As to mendicants, they were very rare ; so rare that there is not one 
 example in all antiquity of a city, which founded a hospital to feed 
 the poor or to cure the needy sick. A law of the Emperor Justinian 
 of the year 530, given in the code, is on this point a very valuable 
 document, inasmuch as it enumerates all the public expenditures of 
 the municipalities, and it makes not the slightest mention of a hos 
 pital or house of refuge of any kind, either for mendicants, or for 
 the infirm, or for wounded or sick laborers. 2 We must not lose 
 sight of the fact that, in the organization of ancient society, every 
 owner of slaves had in his own house an infirmary for taking care 
 of, and a prison for punishing them. Now, as emancipation did 
 not entirely destroy all ties between the slave and the master, and 
 the latter had still a right to the inheritance of the freedman, so 
 the freedman could on occasion have recourse to the munificence 
 
 1 This appears from many passages relating to the Roman labor unions. See 
 Cod. Theod., lib. xiv., tit. iii., leg. 7. 
 
 2 See Cod. Justin., lib. i., tit. iv., leg. 26. 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 93 
 
 of his old master, and ask it with confidence, either in case of sick 
 ness or of destitution. All mendicants or infirm laborers, proceed 
 ing necessarily from the emancipation of slaves, returned to the care 
 of individuals, and did not necessitate the system of public provi 
 sion of modern societies, of the formation of which we will here 
 after give an account. We find that private prisons were abolished 
 in the Empire of the East by a law of Theodosius and Arcadius of 
 the year 388, (Cod. Theod., lib ix., tit. xi., lex unica,) and in the 
 Empire of the West by a law of Justinian of the year 529, (see 
 Cod. Just., lib. i., tit. iv., leg. 26,) which authorizes us to believe 
 that the private infirmaries lasted as long. 
 
 Thieves were also very rare in ancient society ; but on this point 
 it is necessary to make a distinction. Highway robbers, those who 
 lived in caves, bandits, men commanding troops more or less con 
 siderable and taking the field, were very numerous, as were cor 
 sairs and sea-rovers; but the profession of a bandit or of a corsair, 
 which requires skill, courage, and some fortune, was never considered 
 infamous by the ancients. Thucydides, lib. i., cap. 5, informs us 
 of the high estimation, in which the profession of corsair was held 
 by the ancient Greeks ; and even in his time, Polybius informs us, 
 that Teuta, Queen of Illyria, replied to the Roman ambassadors 
 that the laws made by the kings, her predecessors, never forbade 
 piracy, (Polyb. Hist., lib. ii., cap. 8,) but the contrary, although 
 it was recruited from among the runaway slaves and adventurers of 
 all parts of Europe. The thieves, who were scarce and almost 
 unknown, were those of the cities, pickpockets, sharpers, la haute 
 et la basse pegre, to use the low vocabulary of the police; the pick 
 locks, the handkerchief -stealers; in fine, all those mean scamps, 
 who hide in our cities, instead of arming themselves like the brave 
 bandits, who boldly confronted a Roman army commanded by 
 Pompey. 
 
 Prostitutes, who are the fourth and lowest degree of the prole 
 tariat, had not in ancient society the frightful development they 
 have attained in modern society. That is easily understood, when 
 we bear in mind that every slave woman could be a concubine, and 
 that the passions of the master had with them enough, wherewith to 
 be satisfied. Besides, we see in the comedies of Plautus and Terence 
 that the bad places were kept by slave-merchants, which shows how 
 
1 L*s 
 
 St +^<*L K<Uf _ 
 I i V 
 
 94 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 limited the number of free prostitutes must have been. There were 
 some, however ; but these were pretty freedwomen, such as Pom- 
 pey s Flora, the Lesbia of Catullus, the Delia of Tigranes, the 
 Corinne, Lydia, and Chloe of Horace; the Marion de 1 Ormes of 
 their time, at whose houses fashionable young idlers and poets met 
 to make love. Y- 
 
 There remains a great question, new and difficult : to ascertain 
 what is the origin of that universal slavery, which is invariably 
 found in the commencement of all nations, and how those primi 
 tive slaves, who are the ancestors of the proletaries, found them 
 selves in slavery. On that question depends this other, viz. : Is 
 slavery of violent or peaceful origin, and have the proletaries been 
 unjustly despoiled, in the persons of the primitive slaves, their fore 
 fathers, of the social advantages possessed by the rich ? 
 
 Without wishing to give in this chapter to this question all the im 
 portance and all the development, which it would perhaps demand, 
 we can say that proofs abound to solve it negatively. Thus innu 
 merable proofs concur to establish that slavery was not originally 
 instituted, established, created, voluntarily and of set purpose, as, 
 for example, the communes of the middle ages were established and 
 instituted. In fine, everything leads in the most positive manner to 
 the belief that slavery had no other commencement than the com 
 mencement of the human family, of which it constituted an inte 
 grant part ; of which it formed a natural, essential, and constitutive 
 law. That being so ; that is to say, slavery not having been estab 
 lished all at once, much less did it commence violently, by reducing 
 to slavery men originally free and the equals of other men. We are 
 not ignorant that there is an axiom at the present day generally re 
 ceived among civilized nations, which says that all men are naturally 
 equal. That may be true morally, but it is false historically ; and be 
 sides, this axiom, which is of Christian origin, proves just the contrary 
 of what is sought to be proved by it. For when St. Paul, in his Epistle 
 to the Galatians, said, (ch. iii., v.28,) " there is neither Jew nor Greek, 
 there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female, for 
 ye are all one in Christ Jesus," he evidently preached this language 
 of his Divine Master to, show how noble, liberal, and civilizing this 
 doctrine was, which called to it all human infirmities, which raised the 
 humble and exalted the low, and before which there was no longer 
 
WORKING A-ND BURGHER CLASSES. 95 
 
 what had up to that time been seen in the world, that is, societies 
 filled with contrasts: the Jews, who had the word of God, the 
 Greeks who had not; slaves, who were sold, and free men, who 
 bought them ; men, who had authority in the family, women, who 
 were crowded in harems, repined, obeyed, and were silent. 
 
 Christianity has positively no social signification or progressive 
 value, except this, that it brought to society the doctrine of equality, 
 which before had never existed anywhere, neither among the Jews, 
 nor among the Gentiles. 
 
 In studying carefully the books and primitive writings in refer 
 ence to slavery, we very soon find that it arose in the family. In 
 all the books and in all the old manuscripts the fathers of families 
 had an absolute right of life and death over their children. This 
 requires to be explained more at length. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 OF THE ORIGIN OF SLAVERY. 
 
 BY a long and laborious route, we have reached a result, which 
 may appear singular, but of which we will submit the proofs 
 to the reader. Taking history at its sources, before they have been 
 stirred and muddled by theories, we have found numerous, deep, 
 conspicuous, and unexceptionable traces of two classes of men, (we 
 do not say of two races,) who have universally in all countries 
 abounded in the commencement of all societies. One of these 
 classes were MASTERS, the other SLAVES. The first own, the second 
 are owned. This fact, we say, is universal. There were masters 
 and slaves among the Hebrews ; l among the Greeks ; 2 among the 
 Romans j 8 among the Germans ;* among the Gauls ; 5 in France in the 
 
 1 See legislation of Moses, concerning slaves, and especially Leviticus, ch. xxv., 
 v. 40, 41, 44, 47, 48. 
 
 8 See numerous passages in the Iliad and Odyssey, especially the Iliad, book 
 xii., where Achilles says to Lycaon, " I have taken and sold many living ; " and 
 in the Odyssey, book xxii., where Euriclea, governess of the slaves of Ulysses, 
 says to him, " You have in your house fifty slave women, whom I have taught 
 to work, to spin, and to endure servitude." 
 
 3 See, among a thousand other proofs, tit. v., lib. I, of the Institutes of Justin 
 ian, de Libertinis. 
 
 4 Tacitus, de Moribus Germanorum. 5 See Ccesar s Commentaries. 
 
g6 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 twelfth century ; ] in Prussia in 1750 ; 2 they exist still in the United 
 States of America ; in all Mohammedan countries, and in all the 
 kingdoms and empires of India. 
 
 We will not longer insist on this great historic fact, the proofs of 
 which are everywhere, in all books, in the poets, historians, in the 
 codes, before our eyes. We proceed to the examination of their 
 character. 
 
 First, it is clear from all the concurring testimony, that this fact 
 is very ancient ; so ancient that we can nowhere find its commence 
 ment. When the institutions of all peoples began, slavery was 
 already established. Moses founded the institutions of the Hebrews, 
 and slavery is found in the books of Moses. Homer was many 
 centuries anterior to the historic times of Greece, and slavery is 
 found in the books of Homer. The Twelve Tables were the basis 
 of Roman institutions, and Romulus, long anterior to the Twelve 
 Tables, opened at Rome an asylum for the fugitive slaves at Latium. 8 
 The Salic law, the law of the Saxons, of the Thuringians, of the 
 Germans, and of the Angles, are the points of departure of the insti 
 tutions of all modern peoples, and slavery is found in all the codes 
 of the invasion. 4 We add another very important consideration, 
 which is, that in all the legislative, poetic, and historical monu 
 ments which we have mentioned, slavery is not instituted for the 
 first time, but is mentioned as a fact, existing, known, accepted, 
 fixed. Neither Moses, nor Homer, nor the Twelve Tables, nor the 
 laws of the invasion founded slavery. They mention and regulate 
 it. It was, before they existed. 
 
 Next and what we are about to say is, as it were, the conse 
 quence of what we have said it nowhere appears by the study of 
 all traditions that slavery was ever instituted, founded, created, or 
 that it was enacted by statute, to use the expression of the jurists. 
 The statute law took hold of the fact of slavery, as it did of all 
 other social facts, when it regulated society ; it has taken it, in its 
 turn, under its control ; it has shaped and defined it, and so entirely 
 taken it under its power, that when the institutions of nations began, 
 
 1 See the Assises de Jerusalem, Court of Burghers, art. 32, copied from the 
 manuscript of Venise, in the Royal Library. 
 
 2 See General Code of the Prussian States, published in 1794, vol. ii., part 2, 
 tit. v., art. 196-197. 
 
 1 Plutarch, Romulus. * See the salic, riparian, and other laws, passim. 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. $/ 
 
 slavery had become a part of the statute law ; but it had a proper, 
 and, so to speak, personal existence, before falling under the action 
 of the civil and political law ; and it is this primitive existence, of 
 which we say that it does not appear to have been the handiwork 
 of man. More than that : Returning hereafter to the Hebrew, 
 Greek, Roman, and barbarian legislation, which mention slavery 
 and evidently do not create it, we believe we can say that we have 
 in reserve irresistible mathematical considerations, which will be 
 produced in their place, and which will establish in a manner that 
 admits of no doubt, not only tbiat slavery, in Leviticus, in the Iliad, 
 in the laws of the Twelve Tables, and in the codes of the invasion, 
 was not a thing actually or even newly created ; but that it was an 
 old thing, a decrepit thing, a wornout thing, a decaying thing, 
 already past the half of its time, halfway to a great social metamor 
 phosis and to its own annihilation ; so that, far from owing its 
 existence to human institutions, slavery was already greatly shaken, 
 and declining, when the most ancient institutions saw the light. 
 
 If the language of the politics of these latter years had not given 
 a reactionary and ridiculous signification to the words divine right, 
 we would readily say that slavery is of divine right; but we fear to 
 be misunderstood. We prefer to use other words, and to say that, 
 from all traditional appearances and all historic realities, slavery 
 universally presents itself, in the primitive times of all nations, as a 
 fact, spontaneous, natural, autochthon ; a fact which is connate with 
 nations, without their direct assent or deliberate concurrence ; a 
 principle mixed by God himself with the thousand principles of 
 human society ; a kind of absolute evil, wounding the logic of civil 
 ization, destined to be a relative good, and to satisfy the primordial 
 instincts of incipient society ; a thing, in fine, which has the appear 
 ance of a monstrosity, but which finds its natural explanation and 
 legitimate place in given places and times of history. This is the 
 sense, in which we would have said, that slavery was of divine right ; 
 only to make it understood that it was anterior to human institu 
 tions that it came from higher and farther back. 
 
 Nevertheless, though the proofs, which we have already deduced, 
 must necessarily have some value in the eyes of every man of intel 
 ligence and good faith, it is not our intention to rest only upon 
 them, in what we have said of the spontaneous, and in some sort 
 
98 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 providential nature of slavery. This opinion, which as yet we have 
 only suggested, will hereafter be justified ; at least, we shall attempt 
 it. Our arguments hitherto offered are of that class called negative 
 in the exact sciences ; that is to say, that we, proposing to establish 
 a certain general conviction, produced in us* by a comparison of a 
 great number of facts, viz., that slavery is a spontaneous and primi 
 tive element of society, have set ourselves first to show that man did 
 not establish it of deliberate purpose, and that it was not the result 
 of human institutions. It remains for us to give the positive and 
 direct arguments ; that is to say, to show by what natural, simple, 
 logical, successive process, slavery was found already established at 
 the same time that all peoples were formed. 
 
 Perhaps it may be thought at first sight that we take hold of our 
 subject very far back. We take it at its root, at its first rudiment, 
 at its embryo, at the mathematical point whence all its lines start. 
 We have already forewarned the reader of the historic novelties, 
 upon which we venture. This is one of them, an important one, 
 which perhaps will furnish a key to many problems hitherto obscure, 
 and which merits at least the good-will, which every just man accords 
 to every earnest man. See then what, as we believe, was the origin 
 of slavery. 
 
 We cannot enter directly upon the history of slavery, because 
 slavery is the negation of liberty and of property, and a negation 
 cannot exist of itself. It becomes necessary, then, to turn to liberty 
 and property, the absence of which constitutes slavery, just as the 
 absence of light constitutes darkness ; but the strength of our theory 
 will lose nothing, because we will know certainly the slaves by know 
 ing the masters. Whence, then, came the masters ? 
 
 After much thought, and especially much reading, undertaken in 
 view of the problem we attempt to solve, it seems to us that primi 
 tively, and going back to the first glimmerings of historic times, the 
 idea of master and the idea of father are entirely confounded. In 
 general, at the commencement of the formation of all peoples, the 
 lather is master, absolute master. We should say, what is very im 
 portant, that it was not sufficient to be father according to the flesh ; 
 certain conditions of tradition, duration, family, and ancestors were 
 also required. In Homer, the fathers, who are masters, are all sons 
 of the gods. They are called divine, sons of the gods, nurselings of 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 99 
 
 the gods. 1 More than that: the great families ranked according to 
 the order of the gods, their ancestors. In the twentieth book of the 
 Iliad, Apollo says to yneas that he was much above Achilles, be 
 cause Achilles was born of Thetis, and he was the son of Venus. 
 In the twenty-first, Achilles says to Asteropaeus that he was very 
 bold, being only the son of a river, to come and attack him, who 
 descended from Jupiter ; 2 and he adds that there was as much dis 
 tance between them as between their ancestors. The same thing is 
 remarked in the Latin traditions. We know that Romulus was the 
 son of Mars, and Plutarch says that the first master of the house of 
 the Fabii passed for the son of Hercules. 3 In the life of Caesar, 
 Suetonius relates that Caesar, pronouncing the funeral eulogy of his 
 aunt Julia, recalls the origin of his family, which descended from 
 Jupiter by Venus, the mother of ^Eneas. 4 Behold why he was called 
 divine, like Achilles, that is to say, son of Jupiter, which is the true 
 meaning of divus and of dios* Before flattery interposed to trouble 
 the hierarchy, only the members of the Julian family at Rome were 
 called divine. 
 
 There was still another name, by which the ancient Latin families, 
 who were descended from the gods, were designated, that of plus, 
 which has been wrongly translated pious. Virgil constantly calls 
 ^neas//kr, that is to say, son of Jupiter, a signification, which many 
 successive translators have generally ignored. 
 
 The proofs of what we say are easy and conclusive, and we take 
 some pleasure in presenting them, because it is a question of a very 
 curious historical point, and at the same time of a very piquant 
 literary point. 
 
 First, Suetonius relates that, after the victories of Tiberius in Illy- 
 ria> the senate wished to give him immediately the surname of Pius* 
 which should have a signification more honorable than that of 
 Augustus, which was his signature, and hereditary in the Claudian 
 house.* 
 
 1 Iliad, lib. i., v. 7 ; lib. ii., v. 98; lib. xxii., v. 320; lib. xxiii., v. 293. 
 
 2 Iliad, lib. xxi., v. 186-7. 
 
 3 Plutarch, Fab. Maximus. 
 
 4 Suet. Tranq., Jul. Caesar, cap. vi. 
 
 5 Caesar, divi genus. (/Eneid, lib. vi., v. 793.) 
 6 Suet. Tranq., Tiber. Nero, cap. xx. 
 T Suet. Tranq., Tiber. Nero, cap. xxx. 
 
IOO HISTORY OF THE 
 
 Next, Virgil habitually alternates the surname of Pius with many 
 others, which signify sons of gods. In the third and fifth books of 
 the ^Eneid, he calls Anchises and ^neas sons of a goddess. 1 In 
 the sixth book, Aeneas himself tells the sibyl that he is son of Jupi 
 ter; 3 in the tenth book he is spoken of as of race divine* On the 
 other hand, the word pius is found explained in the same book, 
 where Juno, after having said that it would be a grievous neces 
 sity, if Turnus .must shed his pious blood, adds, he is of our race.* 
 Finally, there are three passages, one in Tertullian, another in 
 Papinianus, and a third in the Pandects, which leave no sort of 
 doubt relative to the signification of pius. In these three passages, 
 the question is of a word derived from pius of the wordpiefas 
 which there serves to designate the parental power, that is to say, 
 the power attached to a descent from ancestors. " Piety," says Ter 
 tullian, "is sweeter than paternity. " 5 The passage of Papinianus 
 is still more explicit, but the difficulty of translating it exactly in 
 French (or English) words forces us to give it in the original in a 
 note. 6 Finally, see the passage in the Pandects, which removes all 
 doubt: "The parental power consists in PIETY." 
 
 Thus it is evident, both from the meaning that the different pas 
 sages of Virgil give to the word pius, and from the strict significa 
 tion of pi etas, that //VAT designates the relations of filiation, and in 
 the special case of its application to yEneas it means son of Jupiter, 
 as does DIVUS, of which we have shown that DIVI GENUS was the 
 paraphrase. 
 
 1 ^Eneid, lib. iii., v. 374. Ibid., lib. v., v. 383. 
 
 2 Ibid., lib. vi., v. 123. 
 
 3 Ibid., lib. x., v. 228. 
 Ibid., lib. x., v. 618. 
 
 5 Gratius nomen est pietatis quam potestatis. We have translated potestatis by 
 paternity, because that is the sense indicated, first, by the very phrase of Tertullian, 
 and, next, by the passage which follows potestatis, and which is, etiam familia. 
 magis patresquam domini vocantur. (Tertull., Apologet., cap. xxxiv.) 
 
 6 Divus Trajanus filium, quern pater male contra pietatem afficiebat, coegit eman- 
 cipare ; quo postea defuncto, pater ut manumisso bonorum possessionem sibi com- 
 petere dicebat. Sed concilio Neratii Prisci et Aristonis ei propter necessitatem 
 solvenda: pietatis denegata est. (Papinian. Quaestion., lib. xi., lex ult.) 
 
 And that nothing may be wanting as to the meaning of " solvendae pietatis," 
 we note that Cujas comments on these words as follows: Quia dissofaerat pcttriam 
 potestatem : because it would abolish the parental power. (Cujas in lib. xi., qucest., 
 Papinian. Commentar.) 
 
 7 Patria potestas in pietate consistit. (Digest., lib. xlviii., lib. ix., leg. v.) 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. IOI 
 
 We have said that the comparison of a great amount of testimony 
 leads us to think that, in the primitive times of all people, the idea 
 of authority is intimately connected with the id,ea o paternity, and 
 we have added that this did not apply to eypry -paternity, bat- only 
 to that connected with a certain series o divine -aiiGeetojrs, * What is- 
 the meaning of this word divine ? We know** riot* - Perhaps it sign*- 
 fies master, and was given to the primitive chiefs of families, pre 
 cisely because they were powerful. In the present state of histor 
 ical studies, there is something mysterious in this ; but what great 
 question has not its mysteries? It appears certain, moreover, that 
 the greater part of the facts relative to the ancient family were regu 
 lated by religious dogmas. There is an example of this in the right 
 of primogeniture, which already existed among the great families of 
 Greece from the time of Homer. Thus, in the fifteenth book of the 
 Iliad, Iris says to Neptune, " You know that the Furies are favorable 
 to the first-born. " l So, also, in the sixth book of the Odyssey, Nau- 
 sicaa says to Ulysses that "guests and the poor are under the pro 
 tection of Jupiter. 2 When we come to treat of the poor, perhaps 
 we will show that Jupiter was favorable to them, precisely for the 
 reason that he was the distant ancestor of the great families, with 
 whom travelling guests and the poor found refuge. 
 
 Moreover, there is nothing strange in that the ancient family should 
 lean upon mystic traditions and religious dogmas. The modern, 
 that is to say, the Christian family has analogous bases in another 
 order of ideas. When Jesus Christ said to the multitude which fol 
 lowed Him beyond the Jordan, that He had abolished divorces, He 
 gave no other reason except that God so willed it; 3 and when St. Paul 
 wrote to the churches of Asia Minor that the domestic relations were 
 thereafter modified, that the wife and the son were no longer sub 
 ject to the father of the family, he gave no other authority for this 
 doctrine then so strange but that of his Divine Master : " You 
 are all equal before God." * 
 
 Whatever may have been the cause hitherto unknown, and 
 
 1 Iliad, lib. xv., v. 204. 
 
 2 Odyss., lib. vi., v. 207, 208. 
 
 3 What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder. (Matt. 
 xix. 6.) 
 
 *Omnes enim vos unum estis in Christo Jesu: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. 
 (Galatians iii. 28.) 
 
IO2 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 which history will perhaps some day discover why certain ancient 
 great families were called divine, it is certain that the chiefs the 
 fathers in .those? families had absolute power, and that they pos 
 sessed that pavvex;hy ;> yktue of their character, as fathers. 
 t : The grave -question, which occupies us, now* enters upon historic 
 times, arid- we proceed, -surrounded by the most precise and clear 
 proofs. 
 
 The absolute powers of fathers of families is a universal fact of 
 primitive history, which has left its traces everywhere. The evi 
 dences are at hand, in the Bible, in the Greek tragedies, in the Ro 
 man legislation, in Asiatic traditions. We cannot doubt that in an 
 cient times this power was unlimited. The pagans, to give the high 
 est idea of the power of Jupiter, called him the Father of the Gods. 1 
 It is because the parental power is a universal and human fact that 
 the Jews and Greeks have both named God the Omnipotent Father. 
 The parental power was primitively so extended that it admitted of 
 no other, and completely absorbed the existence of wife and chil 
 dren. The effect of civilization has been to diminish it, and almost 
 to equalize the father with the other members of the family. This 
 is what all legislation shows, when studied in this point of view. 
 
 In the time of the Patriarchs, the parental power over children 
 was still absolute. The sacrifice of Abraham is a proof. It is clear 
 the God would not have commanded what was against the positive 
 law. 
 
 Moreover, different passages of Flavius Josephus establish, in the 
 most clear and positive manner, that the absolute power of fathers 
 in their families was maintained among the Jews, at least up to the 
 time of Herod the Great, which corresponds to the reign of Augustus 
 in the Roman Empire. We cite for example the trial, by Herod, of 
 his two sons, Alexander and Aristobulus. In the accusation, which 
 Herod brought against them before Augustus, he says that in this 
 he had used excessive moderation, since, having the power, as a 
 father, to kill them, he had brought them before the emperor. 2 In 
 the reply of Alexander, the first-born, to the accusation of Herod, 
 he formally recognized the right which the character of father gave 
 to take his life and that of his brother. 1 But what is more clear and 
 
 1 Virgil, /Eneid, lib. v., v. 358. 
 
 2 Flav. Joseph., Antiquit. Haibreor., lib. xvi., cap. vii. 
 1 Ibid., lib. xvi., cap. viii. 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. IO3 
 
 formal is another speech, made by Herod five years afterward, at Be- 
 ryta, before a great assembly of illustrious persons, against these same 
 children, whom he had already pardoned. This is one passage of that 
 speech : Herod said that " nature gave him full power over his chil 
 dren ; that a law of his nation was express upon the subject, which 
 commanded that when the father and mother brought an accusation 
 against their children and placed their hands upon their heads, all 
 present were obliged to stone them ; that thus he might, without any 
 other form of process, have taken the lives of his children in his own 
 country and kingdom ; but that he desired to have the advice of that 
 great assembly ; that nevertheless he had not brought his sons to 
 them because they were the judges of the case, since their crime 
 was manifest ; but only that they might enter into his just resent 
 ments." * Thus we have what formally establishes, first, that among 
 the Jews the authority of fathers over their children was absolute ; 
 next, that that authority was maintained intact, at least up to the 
 first century of the Christian era; finally, that there was a law 
 which sanctioned it and regulated its exercise. Besides, we will 
 find this jurisdiction among the Romans at a period still more 
 recent. 
 
 It is not more difficult to establish that the absolute right of fathers 
 over their children likewise existed among the Greeks, although at 
 a more remote period, because Greece was one of the countries of 
 the West, which sooner passed from the aristocratic to the popular 
 form of government. Now, we have already said that it was only the 
 aristocratic fathers, noble fathers, fathers who were sons of the gods, 
 who enjoyed this absolute authority over their children. It existed 
 fully in the time of the Trojan war, as is clearly proved by the 
 sacrifice of Iphigenia, which is a fact completely identical with the 
 sacrifice of Abraham. Nevertheless, at Sparta, a city of nobles, a 
 city of gentlemen, a city where there was no burgher class, as we 
 will show hereafter, the power of life and death over children seems 
 to have been maintained up to a late period. It was in full force at 
 the time of Lycurgus. Plutarch relates that at that time, at the birth 
 of a child, a kind of family council was held, in which it was decided 
 whether the newly born should be saved or killed. 2 Even at Athens, 
 
 1 Flav. Joseph., Antiquit. Hasbr., lib. xvi., cap. xvii. 
 
 2 Plutarch, Lycurgus, cap. xvi. 
 
IO4 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 a democratic city, where the civil law early replaced the seignorial 
 and domestic law, the absolute authority of fathers ended so recently 
 that in the time of Solon, many Athenians sold their children, which, 
 Plutarch says, no law forbade. 1 It was during the Homeric period 
 that the absolute authority of fathers of farmlies was in full vigor 
 among the people of Greece. This period corresponds exactly, in 
 the comparative history of legislation, to the epoch of the Patriarchs 
 among the Jews. 
 
 For example, at each of these two epochs, daughters were still the 
 property of their fathers, and it was necessary to pay a certain price 
 to marry and take them away. Thus Jacob served Laban seven 
 years to obtain his daughter Rachel ; 2 and Othryon engaged to serve 
 Priam during the siege of Troy to obtain his daughter Cassandra, 
 without dowry , that is to say, without other consideration than his 
 services. After using the expression, "without dowry" Homer 
 immediately adds that her lover promised to buy her by the expul 
 sion of the Greeks. 3 This will be further established below. Dowry, 
 as we understand it, belongs to a much later epoch, when the exist 
 ence of children in the family was established, and when they not 
 only no longer depended absolutely upon the father, but even had a 
 fixed part, a right, in his inheritance. It is because of their not 
 having clear ideas of the family relations that all the translators of 
 the primitive poets committed monstrous errors, and disfigure their 
 models. We stop midway in our proofs relative to the analogy of 
 the Greek and Hebrew legislation, at two epochs, of which we are 
 about to speak. We say here only what is indispensable ; the rest 
 will come in its place. 
 
 The Roman legislation is very rich in souvenirs of the ancient 
 parental authority, and their chronicles amply confirm what their 
 legislation says. In his history of Roman antiquities, Dionysius of 
 Halicarnassus recites the old law of the Papirian Code, which 
 authorized fathers to kill and sell their children ; 4 the Code of Jus 
 tinian likewise mentions it, 6 as does also the Digest. 6 Dionysius of 
 
 1 Plutarch, Solon, cap. xiii. a Genesis xxix. 18. 
 
 8 Iliad, lib. xiii , v. 367. 
 
 * Dion. Halicar. Antiq., lib. ii., cap. xxvi. 
 
 5 Cod., lib. viii., tit. xlvii., leg. x. 
 
 6 Digest, lib. xxviii., tit. h., leg. xi. 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. IO5 
 
 Halicarnassus, who had no critical understanding of the fact, which 
 he relates, says that this law was made by Romulus, and that the de 
 cemvirs transferred it to the Twelve Tables. 1 This fact of the abso 
 lute power of fathers among the Romans is surrounded by so many 
 proofs, that we give a few of the most curious. Plutarch relates that, 
 Rhea being delivered of Romulus and Remus, Amulius, her uncle, 
 ordered them to be cast away. 2 This recalls to mind that Moses was 
 similarly exposed, and that CEdipus was suspended by the feet from 
 a tree. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, in relating the well-known his 
 tory of the Horatii, says that the old Horatius, defending his son, the 
 murderer of his sister, claimed jurisdiction of the case ; because in 
 his character of father he was the natural judge of his own children* 
 Plutarch, in his life of Publicola, relates that in the conspiracy of 
 the Aquilians in favor of the Tarquins, Junius Brutus likewise claimed 
 jurisdiction of the case of his son ; and that he tried, condemned, 
 and had him executed, by virtue of his parental authority, without 
 observing the judicial formalities followed in the cases of the other 
 conspirators.* 
 
 This absolute parental power was slightly limited by the law of 
 Sylla, known to jurisconsults by the name of Cornelia dc Sicariis ; 
 but we find, even under the emperors, examples of domestic juris 
 diction, which prove that the sovereign parental authority extended 
 over the whole duration of the civil law. Seneca relates the trial, 
 by a great personage named Titus Arrius of his son, of his own 
 authority in his domestic tribunal, at which Augustus assisted, simply 
 as a spectator. The statement of Seneca is very precise and clear. 
 He says : 
 
 "Titus Arrius, wishing to try his son, invited Augustus to his 
 domestic court. The emperor came to the home of the citizen ; 
 he sat down as a simple spectator of an affair, with which he had 
 no concern. He did not say, Let the accused come to my palace ! 
 which would have been to assume to himself the cognizance of the 
 trial and to take it away from the father. The cause having been 
 heard, for the prosecution and for the defence, Titus Arrius asked 
 that each one should write out his judgment/ 5 Tacitus also relates 
 
 1 Dion. Halicar. Antiq., lib. ii., cap. xxvii. Plutarch, Romulus, cap. iii. 
 8 Dion. Halicar. Antiq., lib. iii., cap. xiii. * Plutarch, Publicola, cap. vii. 
 
 5 Seneca de Clement., lib. i., cap. xv. 
 8 
 
IC>6 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 that a senator named Plautius, under the reign of Nero, himself 
 before his whole assembled family and according to ancient usage, 
 passed judgment on Pomponia Graecina, his wife, accused of being 
 given over to superstitions; 1 and Tertullian mentions, in the intro 
 duction to his Apology, domestic trials, which had recently taken 
 place at Rome, and which, like that of Plautius, appear to have 
 been directed against the Christians. 2 Many documents authorize 
 the belief that this absolute parental authority did not disappear 
 before the end of the third century ; and the first law, which posi 
 tively forbade fathers to give, sell, or pawn their children, was that 
 of Diocletian and Maximian. 3 Nevertheless a law of Constantine 
 permits the sale of children in case of great poverty, and their 
 abandonment was legally permitted under Diocletian and under 
 Constantine.* 
 
 Now it would be very easy to collect analogous facts in the history 
 of other ancient peoples, besides the Jews, Greeks, and Romans. 
 The history of the different nations, that inhabited Asia Minor, is 
 full of testimony, which proves that the authority of fathers over 
 their children was absolute among them down to a period nearly 
 approaching the Christian era. Xenophon relates, in his Anabasis, 
 that a Thracian king, named Teutes, offered to give him his daughter 
 and to buy his, if he had one. The barbarian added, This is the 
 law of the Thracians. 5 There is in Plutarch still another fact of 
 the same kind. This chronicler relates that in the distress of the 
 proprietors of Asia Minor, after the defeat of Tygranes and the 
 arrival of Lucullus, the fathers of families, who could not pay the 
 tax to the Roman collectors, sold their young children and their 
 daughters in marriage. 6 We will recur to other analogous and con- 
 c lusive examples in the chapter, in which we treat of the origin of 
 pauperism. 
 
 We have dwelt upon the history of fathers of families and of the 
 ancient parental authority, because fathers were the first masters, 
 and the well-established history of the first masters naturally gives 
 the history of the first slaves. 
 
 J Tacit. Annal., lib. xiii., cap. xxxii. 2 Tertull. Apologet., cap. i. 
 
 3 Cod. Justin., lib. iv.; tit. xliii. ; leg. I. 
 
 4 Ibid., lib. iv.; tit. xliii.; leg. 2. 
 
 6 Xenophon, Anab., lib. vii., cap. ii. Plutarch, Lucullus, cap. xx. 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. IO/ 
 
 Thus, according to our ideas ideas which are our own, which 
 some may perhaps think bold and very strange, for which we ask 
 indulgence, and which we present in all humility, but in all sincerity 
 the first slavery, which was seen on this earth, was nothing but a 
 subjection to the ancient and primitive paternity. 
 
 In admitting this idea, which we have supported by some proofs, 
 which has been strengthened in our mind as we have pursued our 
 Studies, to which we do not know of one important fact to the con 
 trary, and which we are convinced cannot fail to be established 
 immovably by greater and more unremitting study and labor than 
 our own ; with this idea, we say, we can solve, with wonderful 
 exactness and ease, a great number of questions hitherto unanswer 
 able, relative to slavery. We explain how it was anterior to all 
 written constitutions ; how it was mentioned, not instituted, in 
 Genesis, in the Iliad, in the Papyrian law, and in the Twelve Tables ; 
 how it was, as we have said above, a natural, primordial, simple, 
 logical fact ; how it did not make masters proud ; how it did not 
 lower the slaves ; how it was not established of deliberate purpose ; 
 how there remains no souvenir in the tradition of any people of any 
 violence, which it has done suddenly to any part of the human 
 race ; how, finally, being one of the conditions of the family, it 
 did not wound the moral ideas of the ancients, which were derived 
 from the actual condition of the ancient family. 
 
 Thus we can now say that we have found out who were the first 
 slaves. They were the children. 
 
 By a singular coincidence, which shows that, when a social fact 
 is realized, it is surrounded by Providence with all the circum 
 stances necessary to its development, the epoch of history, in which 
 the parental authority was absolute, was that, in which polygamy 
 prevailed. In reflecting a little on this point we realize that the 
 one is the consequence of the other. The ancient fathers of fami 
 lies had a great number of children. The Greek traditions have 
 preserved the memory of the fifty daughters of Danaus. In 
 Homer, Priam says to Achilles that he had fifty children, nineteen 
 by the same mother, Hecuba, and the rest by different concubines. 1 
 Plutarch relates that in the early wars of the republic, in a battle 
 
 1 Iliad, lib. xxiv., v. 495-7. 
 
IOS HISTORY OF THE 
 
 with the Tuscans, three hundred Fabii were killed ; l and he men 
 tions, in the Life of Theseus, a personage named Pallas, who had 
 fifty children. 2 In the history of the Jews, families of fifty children 
 were very common. Flavius Josephus relatas that Gideon had 
 seventy sons, 8 Jair thirty, 4 Apson thirty sons and thirty daughters, 5 
 Abdon forty sons, who were all living at his death, and also thirty 
 grandsons. 6 On the other hand, the Bible is full of proofs of the 
 multitude of children born to the ancient patriarchs, even at so 
 recent a period as theirs, when concubinage, if not precisely pro 
 hibited, was already notably weakened. We thence conceive that 
 the great number of women possessed by the first fathers gave rise 
 to families much more numerous than ours ; small tribes or clans, 
 in which the children and grandchildren were servants, and the 
 father was master. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 OF THE ORGANIZATION OF SLAVERY BY POSITIVE LAW. 
 
 AS we have said, by all sorts of testimony, which we have 
 abridged, by all sorts of proofs, which we have collected, 
 slavery appears to have been born in the family. It originated 
 there, spontaneously, without reflection, without law, without writ 
 ten decree, accepted or imposed. But it came ; and facts attest that, 
 when families began to have relations with each other, when they 
 met and mingled, that is to say, when that generalization of indi 
 viduals in one body, which we call society, took place, this primitive 
 fact of slavery, growing out of the absolute power of the father in, 
 and till then confined exclusively to, the family, extended beyond 
 it ; was regulated and generalized by the first intervening law ; and 
 new sources of slavery arose. For example, it was an occasion of 
 slavery to be captured in war, to take refuge in the house of another, 
 
 1 Plutarch, Fur. Camillus, cap. xix. 3 Ibid., Theseus, cap. Hi. 
 
 * Flav. Joseph. Antiq. Haebreor., lib. v., cap. ix. 
 
 * Ibid. & Ibid. * Ibid. 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 
 
 to fail to pay one s debts, and for daughters to be married out of 
 their families or tribes. 
 
 The right of war over men, in primitive times, came from this, that, 
 by mancipation, as the Roman jurisconsults say by seisin, as ours 
 express it the conqueror was substituted to the rights of the father 
 of the vanquished. What appears to prove this clearly is that, ac 
 cording to the remark of Vico, among the ancients the vanquished 
 were considered as men without gods; 1 and that, as we have shown, 
 in the language of the primitive poets, the gods and the ancestors 
 of great families were absolutely the same thing. This explains why 
 the ancients so carefully hid their gods in their citadels, and why 
 enemies besieging a city sought above all things to seize these gods. 
 The Trojan Pallas, the Juno of Argos, and the Sacred Shield of 
 Rome are monuments of these primitive notions; and the gramma 
 rian Macrobius has preserved the very curious formula, with which 
 the ancient Romans besought the gods to leave the cities, which 
 they were about to assault. 2 The vanquished without gods were 
 what the jurisconsults express by ex lex, out of the pale of the law. 
 
 Places of refuge, or asylum, were still another source of slavery; 3 
 the man who had recourse to them became the thing of his pro 
 tector. These asylums, which are found in all the early epochs, in 
 all those moments of confusion, when there were no social guaran 
 tees, drew to them the maltreated slaves, malefactors, and that 
 always notable mass of inquiet and turbulent men, who had occasion 
 to fly and take the chances. History bears witness that all founders 
 of cities thus opened asylums. Moses determined the cities, in 
 which murderers could take refuge. 4 Theseus opened a refuge at 
 
 1 The conquered were considered as men without a god ; slaves were called in 
 Latin mancipia, as if they were inanimate things, and they were placed loco 
 rerum in jurisprudence. (Vico, Science Nouvelle, translated by Michelet, lib. 
 iv., ch. iv.) (a) 
 
 (a] Notwithstanding all we have suffered in the South from military governors, 
 carpet-baggers, and scalawags, our conquerors have treated us magnanimously ; 
 for, according to ancient law and usage, they might have treated us as men with 
 out a God as inanimate things and sold us into slavery, by right of conquest. 
 Perhaps, then, it is, after all, fortunate for us that they had accepted the doctrine 
 that "free labor is cheaper than slave labor" because it does not carry with it the 
 corresponding obligation of taking care of infancy, sickness, and old age. 
 
 2 Macrob. Saturnal., lib. iii., cap. ix. Leviticus xxv. 45, 46. 
 4 Numbers xxxv. II, 14, 15. 
 
HO HISTORY OF THE 
 
 Athens, and the recollection of it was preserved so faithfully that 
 Plutarch thinks that the language of the public criers of his time, 
 "All people, come here," were the exact words of Theseus. 1 Final 
 ly, Romulus opened another at Rome, to which all the serfs of 
 Latium withdrew. 2 The asylum of Romulus %ven remained open 
 during the whole time of the republic, for we read in Suetonius that 
 Tiberius closed it.* 
 
 There is this general remark to be made on asylums : that, prim 
 itively (and the proofs of this would not be difficult) the men, 
 who repaired to them, became the clients, the subjects of their pro 
 tector, and that, consequently, these places of refuge became the 
 opposite of places of social safeguard and franchise. This radical 
 difference is explained in a word : Asylums were the occasions of 
 slavery, when they were opened by the fathers, the masters ; and 
 that was the case of the more ancient ; they were the occasions of 
 enfranchisement, when they were opened by cities within their walls, 
 or by the priests in their temples, and this was the case of the more 
 recent. 
 
 It was in the middle ages, that is to say, at a time when the 
 general guarantees had ceased, that asylums reappeared. There 
 were certain territories, where a sojourn imposed slavery, and the 
 jurisconsults called " the advowry of free persons not noble " the 
 declaration of freedom, which every free person, entering those ter 
 ritories, prudently was required to make.* 
 
 The common law, or rather the generality of the local laws for 
 there was no common law in France in the middle ages was then 
 that masters or lords had the right to pursue their slaves or serfs, as 
 we read in many customs. 6 
 
 1 Plutarch, Theseus, ch. xxv. ^Eneid, lib. viii., v. 342. 
 
 3 Sueton. Tranquil., T. Nero Caesar, cap. xxxix. 
 
 4 This declaration is still called adveu de bourgeois. It should be made within 
 a year and a day from the settlement. (La Thomassiere, Local Customs of 
 Berry, etc., chap, xiii.) 
 
 5 See in the Coutumier General the customs of Vitry, article 145 ; the customs 
 of Chatelet, article 10; the customs of Chateauneuf, article 14; the customs of 
 Chateau-Meillan, article 29. 
 
 " What we have said," adds La Thomassiere, " that the lord has a right to follow 
 his serfs, wherever they may flee, ceases when the serfs take refuge in the places 
 of asylum and cities, in which, by privilege, there is no right of pursuit." (La 
 Thomassiere, Local Customs of Berry, chap. 5.) 
 
 Moreover, this right of pursuit over slaves and serfs is found naturally estab 
 lished among all peoples during the period of slavery. It was established 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. Ill 
 
 Nevertheless, there were many cities in France, which had the 
 right of asylum, and in which masters and lords lost all their rights 
 over slaves and serfs, who took refuge in them. Of this number 
 was, first, Toulouse, on which Chopin recalls that many Moorish 
 slaves of Spain, having taken refuge there and invoked the liberty 
 of the Christians, were admitted to the enjoyment of municipal 
 rights. 1 To Toulouse, we must add, according to Chopin and La 
 Thomassiere, Bourges, Issoudun, Duns-le-Roi, Meun, Vierzon, 
 Concorsault in Berry, St. Malo in Bretagne, and Valenciennes, in 
 Hainault. Paris was not a city of refuge, as Dumoulin observes in 
 his remarks on the first article of the customs of Berry. Also, the 
 lord of Chateau-Roux, in Berry, was permitted (Chopin does not 
 say at what epoch) to follow his fugitive slave at Paris, in spite of 
 the Abbe of St. Genevieve, in whose court he had taken refuge. 2 
 Neither had Lyons the right of asylum ; and La Thomassiere cites 
 a decree of the year 1559, in favor of Hugues de Nagu, commander 
 of Echelles, in Savoy, for the body of his fugitive slave at Lyons. 3 
 Nevertheless things changed, as to Paris at least, toward the mid 
 dle of the eighteenth century; for, by the intervention of the city 
 in the trial, the Marquis de la Tournelle was denied a right to take 
 his fugitive slave at Paris, by a decree of iyth June, 1760, and the 
 city of Paris thus obtained the right of asylum, twenty-nine years 
 before the time, when the whole of France became an asylum for 
 all the serfs and slaves of the universe.* 
 
 Debt also was another source of slavery. This is not doubtful, 
 
 throughout the whole Roman Empire since the third century, as is proved by the 
 following law of Gratian : 
 
 " Omnes omnino fugitives adscriptitios, colonos vel inquilinos, sine ullo sexus, 
 muneris, conditionisque discrimine, ad antiques penates, ubi censiti atque educati, 
 natique sunt, provinciis praesidentes redire compellant." 
 
 All rulers of provinces everywhere shall compel the return of fugitive slaves, 
 whether agricultural or domestic, to their old homes, where they were enrolled 
 and educated and born, without regard to sex, reward, or condition. (Code of 
 Justinian, lib. xi., tit. xlvii., leg. vi.) (a) 
 
 (a) This is curiously interesting to the historian as precedents for the contract 
 between the States, contained in second and third paragraphs, sec. 2, art. iv., 
 of the Constitution of the United States. 
 
 1 Renat. Chopin, de Doman. Gallic., lib. i., cap. xiii., No. xxiii. See, also, as 
 to other cities we have named, La Thomassiere, Local Customs, cap. xiii. 
 
 2 Renat. Chopin, quoted above. 3 La Thomassiere, Local Customs, cap. xiii. 
 4 Renauldon, Diet, des P"iefs, word serfs. 
 
112 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 so far as relates to Roman and Greek history. We even read in 
 Tacitus that the Germans sometimes lost at play even the liberties 
 of their persons, and in that case resigned themselves very quietly 
 to slavery. 1 Among the Jews, the legislation ^f Moses, which, it is 
 true, is comparatively recent, speaks only of the case where a Jew 
 is forced by poverty to sell himself to another; 2 but Flavius Josephus 
 relates that at a much later period, under King Joram, the son of 
 Josaphat, the widow of Obdias, steward of King Achad, went to 
 find the prophet Elias, and told him that, not having wherewith to 
 pay the money, which her husband had borrowed to feed the hun 
 dred prophets, whom he had saved from the persecutions of Jeze 
 bel, his creditors claimed to have her and her children for slaves* 
 Plutarch relates that Solon, on his accession to the government, 
 found a great number of citizens, who were slaves of their cred 
 itors. 4 Samuel Petit also mentions the ancient Athenian law, which 
 gave to lenders the liberty of the borrowers in pledge ; 5 and Aulus 
 Gellius cites the terms of the law of the third table, which estab 
 lished an analogous legislation among the Romans. The severity 
 of the law was even such that, if there were many creditors, they 
 could, at their choice, sell the debtor to strangers, or they could 
 cut his body in pieces and divide it among them. 6 We add that 
 for such facts we need authorities, such as Aulus Gellius, Tertullian, 7 
 and Quintilian. 8 
 
 As to the marriage of daughters, we have few documents, except 
 for the epoch when the fusion of the primitive families in the com 
 mon or civil life commenced to operate, and the authority of the 
 fathers began to be limited. We have, therefore, souvenirs rather 
 than proofs of the enslavement of girls by marriage. The legisla 
 tion of Moses as to daughters is much advanced, and furnishes us 
 almost nothing for our subject. All that we see in Numbers, on 
 the occasion of the immense step made in the law by the demand 
 
 1 C. Tacit, de Germania, cap. xxiv. * Leviticus xxv. 39, 40. 
 
 8 Flav. Joseph., lib. ix., cap. ii. * Plutarch, Solon, cap. xv. 
 
 5 Samuel Petit, in Leges Atticas Commentar., tit. iv. It should be remarked 
 that the right of exposing infants was considered by the jurisconsults as equiva 
 lent to the right of killing them. See Digest., lib. xxv., tit. iii., leg. iv. 
 
 Aulus Gellius, Noct. Attic. , lib. xx., cap. i. 
 
 1 Tertullian, Apologet., cap. iv. 8 Quintilian, Institut., lib. iii., cap. vi. 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 113 
 
 of the daughters of Zelophehad, is that a daughter, who marries 
 out of her tribe, breaks all the bonds of parentage. 1 
 
 This is certainly a trace of the much more complete solution of 
 continuity, which marriage worked in more ancient epochs. For 
 example, in the Iliad, which is, relative to the developments of 
 the family, much more ancient and primordial than the Bible, the 
 evidences abound as to the slavery, to which marriage reduced 
 daughters and wives. We have already cited the example of Cas 
 sandra, whom Othryon bought of Priam, as Jacob bought Leah and 
 Rachel of Laban, their father ; but there are many others that are 
 neither less clear nor less conclusive. In the ninth book, Agamem 
 non, regretting having occasioned the wrath of Achilles, to appease 
 him, offers to give him magnificent presents; first, seven Lesbian 
 slaves, with Briseis ; then, when Troy shall be taken, twenty cap 
 tives, the most beautiful after Helen ; then finally, as the capstone 
 of his generosity, one of his own three daughters, at his choice and 
 without dowry, as the translators have it, or rather without his pay 
 ing any price for her? as it ought to be translated. It is evident that 
 if the rule had been to give a dowry to daughters, Agamemnon 
 would not have boasted of offering his for nothing, as of a very 
 magnificent proceeding. Besides, it is so certain that in the mouth 
 of Agamemnon, the word ANAEDNON means " without his having 
 to purchase her" and not " without my giving her a dowry," that he 
 immediately adds : "for my part, on the contrary, I will give him 
 gifts, such as fathers do not give with their daughters ; I will give 
 him seven superb cities." 3 Besides, there is in the i6th book an 
 example, which leaves no reply. Homer says of Polydora, mother 
 of Menestheus, that her husband espoused her, buying her with many 
 riches. 4 
 
 The evidences are not more rare in Roman history as to the 
 slavery, to which marriage reduced women. Virgil, who was a 
 man of profound knowledge of ancient Italian usages, has touched 
 
 1 And if they be married to any of the sons of the other tribes of the children 
 of Israel, then shall their inheritance be taken from the inheritance of our fathers, 
 and shall be put to the inheritance of the tribe whereunto they are received; so 
 shall it be taken from the lot of our inheritance. Num., chap, xxxvi. (a) 
 
 (a) See also the reply of Moses in the verses which follow. 
 
 2 Iliad, lib. ix., v. 144-146. Ibid, ix., v. 147-149. 
 4 Ibid., lib. xvi., v. 178. 
 
114 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 this matter two or three times in his poems. In the yEneid, Juno 
 proposes to Venus to be reconciled to, and accept, Dido as the 
 spouse and slave of her son ^Eneas. 1 Servius, in his commentary on 
 Virgil, adds on this passage, "the author here refers to marriage 
 by purchase." 11 The Georgics contain another analogous fact, not 
 less curious. Virgil wishes for Caesar that Thetis should buy him 
 for a son-in-law. 8 Only, there is this peculiarity that Thetis is con 
 sidered as the father of a family marrying his children. We know, 
 moreover, to finish this subject, that there were in the ancient 
 Roman jurisprudence three kinds of marriages, one of which had 
 the name of purchase, coemptio. In the ceremony, the man gave a 
 piece of money, which was the symbol that he had succeeded to a 
 real purchase. Pierre Pithou calls to mind that by the marriage 
 coemptio, as well as by another, which was called confarreatio, the 
 woman fell under the power of the husband, or of him, to whom the 
 husband belonged. 
 
 We have, then, independently of the paternal power, four great 
 sources of slavery among the ancients. The slaves, who succes 
 sively sprang from them, had this special feature : that they were not 
 slaves of their fathers; and began the long chain of stranger slaves. 
 At first no one was master without being the father, nor did the 
 master own any but his own children. As soon as these four sources 
 were opened, one could be master without being father, and own 
 the children of another. The absolute power thus extended beyond 
 the circle of the family, to which it was primitively confined, and 
 acquired from without subjects, which blood had not given. 
 
 It is evident that, although there were many differences between 
 slavery applied to children, and slavery applied to strangers, the 
 one naturally proceeded from the other. The authority of the 
 master proceeded from the authority of the father. Long time after 
 slavery in the family had existed as a fact, laws and institutions 
 came, which fixed its theory and erected it into a right. In this 
 state we find it established in history, and it is only by the souve 
 nirs, scattered through the primitive traditions and collected by the 
 heroic poets, that we go back by induction to its original situation 
 and its nature. It was necessary that slavery should have become 
 
 id, lib. iv., v. 103. Servius, in ^Eneid. Georg., lib. i., v. 3. 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 115 
 
 a fact before becoming a right, without which the past of nations 
 would be an absurd enigma; without which we cannot explain 
 what is observed in all legislation relative to the family, namely, 
 that the farther we go back, the more the authority of the father 
 absorbs and swallows up the personality of mother and children ; 
 without which it will be impossible to account for the moral convic 
 tion, which makes slaves, who are twenty times more numerous 
 than their masters, consent to remain slaves ; without which we can 
 not comprehend how, among the hundreds of millions of men sold 
 in the Jewish, Greek, Roman, and Gallic markets, none were found, 
 who rose in their dignity and strength to buy their buyers ; without 
 which it would be monstrous, incredible, unheard of, that so many 
 great geniuses of antiquity, who were slaves, or sons of slaves that 
 ^sop, who was the preceptor of Greece ; Phaedon, the disciple of 
 Socrates ; Terence, the most elegant writer of Italy that Plautus, 
 Phaedrus, Horace, the poets, the immortal poets, who had reason 
 and poesy, the ideas and the form, who comprehended and could 
 speak never cried out once, not once, in favor of the slaves, their 
 brothers ; without which, finally, there would have remained in the 
 memory of the peoples, in legends, in songs, in poems, something 
 of that terrible, sacrilegious, and abominable time, when men had, 
 of deliberate purpose, enslaved other men, had taken from them not 
 only their liberty, but, much more than that, their families, their 
 rights, their personality, their name ; more than that still, their 
 faith in themselves, their consciousness of the nobility and sanctity 
 of their nature. 
 
 Now, admitting the theory, which we have deduced and facts jus 
 tify ; all is explained, all becomes simple, easy, and natural. The 
 different legislations and the passages of the poets, which unite to 
 bear witness to the primitive absolute authority of the fathers of fam 
 ilies, give us a knowledge of the spontaneous formation of slavery, 
 which is thus found to have been contemporary with liberty ; that is, 
 it had no beginning, and dates from the very birth of men. Once 
 accepted without hesitation in the family, we comprehend easily 
 how slavery passed beyond the family, and how a son, sold, given, 
 contracted for or lost by his father, became the servant of a stranger, 
 without any change in his condition, and without his having any 
 thing to regret or to fear ; he continued a slave, which he was 
 
Il6 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 before. Things being at this point, then came the generalization of 
 families, their reunion in the city or the state, and then the facts 
 already existing were fixed, regulated, and sanctioned ; manners be 
 came laws, customs were written, the slave remained still a slave. 
 There was nothing in all these changes to wound him, or to revolt 
 at. Society was for him only the continuation of the family; he is 
 what he was, and the laws do not add a single strand to the lash of 
 the father. 
 
 Behold an explanation, which we are the first to propose, and of 
 which we are forced to restrict the proofs. We are convinced that 
 there is no grave objection to be made to it, and we will certainly 
 find insuperable difficulties to every theory, which is not in the sense 
 of this. 
 
 In following the thread of our ideas, we explain how, in the his 
 tory of all peoples, there are always two inimical races in presence 
 of each other ; * the patricians and the plebeians, as they said at 
 Rome; the nobles and the roturiers, (common people,) as we say. 
 The nobles are the historic prolongation of the ancient fathers of 
 families; the roturiers, or burghers, are the prolongation of slaves. 
 We give our thoughts in bulk ; we will give them soon in detail ; 
 the affirmation first, the proofs afterward. 
 
 The history of the nobles and that of the slaves or burghers con 
 tain the history of humanity itself. All comes from that ; all is ex 
 plained by it. The nobles are a magnificent subject for study, full 
 of things fruitful, new, curious in the highest degree. We will treat 
 of them in another volume, because the ideas which we present as to 
 slaves will be conclusive evidence, when completed by the ideas we 
 will present as to the masters. Now we must pass on. We cut one 
 of the branches of our historic theory, to take it up again, to read 
 just it, to graft it again in its place. We will now follow the slaves 
 in all the accidents of their fortune and social changes, and show 
 by what road the sons and slaves of the heroes of primitive times have 
 become the sovereign people of the present. 
 
 1 Plato de Legibus, lib. vi. 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. II/ 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 OF THE EMANCIPATION OF SLAVES AND FORMATION OF 
 THE BURGHER CLASSES. 
 
 IT is easy to conceive how slaves multiplied from the first ages of 
 history, until they became much more than three-fourths of all 
 populations. Taking slavery in the family, we find that there was 
 but one master, the father, while he might have in his children fifty 
 slaves. Hence the limited number of men of the noble race, and 
 the infinite number of the slave race. We make use of these words, 
 free race and slave race, although the human species evidently 
 sprang from the same bed ; because once seized upon by slavery, 
 the slaves have really lived and multiplied apart, marked among 
 every nation with an indelible seal, which has resisted every habili- 
 tation. Always, everywhere, not only the freedmen, but those, who 
 have been ennobled, have been pointed out and mocked. The lan 
 guage of Horace to Menas, the opulent freedman of Pompey, is a 
 profound historic truth : Fortune does not change the race. 1 This 
 is not, however, the moment to dwell upon this. 
 
 From the earliest times, as we have said, the slaves found them 
 selves separated from the free men, and constituted a race apart. 
 They were fed and clothed in a special manner proper to them. 
 The Jews pierced their ears, 2 the Greeks and Romans marked 
 them on their faces,* whence the name stichus has remained a 
 common and general name for slaves. From the time of Homer 
 their food was regulated, and they did not eat wheat bread. In 
 the Odyssey, wheat bread is mentioned as the food of the sons 
 of Jupiter, that is to say, of the nobles ; * and there is a passage 
 where Ulysses boasts of being, after Ajax, the most remarkable of 
 
 1 Horat, Epod., lib od. iv. 2 Exodus xxi. 6. 
 
 8 In his treatise on the Revenues of Attica, Xenophon advises the city of Athens 
 to buy slaves with the public funds, and hire them to individuals, as conti actors 
 did. He adds that, to prevent their running away, the slaves should have some 
 particular mark. (Xenoph. de Vect., cap. iv.) 
 
 *Odys., lib. iii., v. 479, 480. 
 
Il8 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 the men, who ate of this bread. 1 (a) The exclusive use of wheat bread 
 by the nobles, is confirmed by a passage of Lucan, and established 
 in a general and peremptory manner by Pliny, the elder, in his 
 histories. 2 It appears, moreover, that slaves were fed in Italy and 
 Greece with pork, 3 garlic, parsley, 4 and onions. The fact of the onions 
 corresponds with what Herodotus says, in the twelfth book of his 
 history, that Cheops expended sixteen hundred talents of silver for 
 horseradish, onions, and garlic, to feed the workmen, who built the 
 great Pyramid of Egypt. 5 A verse of the Ars Poetica of Horace 
 seems to establish that the slaves and poor of Rome also lived on 
 peas and nuts. 8 We thus readily explain how the slave races, sepa 
 rated from the free races by moral ideas, by physical labor, by their 
 clothing, which was miserable, by their food, which was unwhole 
 some, in reproducing among themselves, in their lowliness and pov 
 erty, should end by degenerating, by decreasing, carried off by the 
 maladies which were peculiar to them, as Titus Livius and Pliny 
 the elder testify, and which have disappeared, to the great aston 
 ishment of medicine, in proportion as slavery has given way before 
 liberty. 7 
 
 We have no means of estimating how long in history pure slavery, 
 that is, slavery without emancipation, existed. There were already 
 freedmen in the Bible and in the Odyssey. Before reaching the 
 period when emancipations began to multiply, we must be permitted 
 some important reflections upon the state of primitive society, when 
 all were still either masters or slaves. 
 
 One thing, which throws great light upon the study of the forma- 
 
 ^dys., lib. viii., v. 221, 222. 
 
 (a) See King James s translation of the Bible, Psalm Ixxxi. 16 : " He should 
 have fed them also with the finest of the wheat ; and with honey out of the rock 
 should I have satisfied thee." 
 
 Compare with Psalter for the sixteenth day, morning prayer, Psalm Ixxxi. 17: 
 " He should have fed them also with theyfw^tf wheat flour : and with honey out 
 of the stony rock should I have satisfied thee." 
 
 5 Plin. Nat. Hist., lib. xviii., cap. xiv. ; Ibid., lib. xix. 
 
 3 Odys., lib. xiv., v. 414-416. 4 Virgil, Eclog. ii., v. 9, IO. 
 
 5 Herodot. Euterp., cap. cxxv. 6 Horat. ad Pison., v. 249. 
 
 7 Pliny mentions a malady, which first appeared in Italy, in the time of Clau 
 dius. This malady did not attack the nobility. Subsequently he mentions 
 another, which attacked the lower classes and the slaves. (Plin. Hist. Nat., lib. 
 xxvi., cap. iii.) 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. lig 
 
 lion of societies, is that, during the primitive period of pure slavery, 
 there were no beggars. In effect, one is not a beggar, as long 
 as he has wherewith to live ; and the slave is fed by his mas 
 ter. There were no beggars in our colonies during the first 
 years of their existence, and there are none still, notwithstanding 
 the emancipation of a great number of negroes, (a) 
 
 Blackstone judiciously remarks in his Commentaries on the Eng 
 lish law, 1 without at all suspecting the general and human value of 
 the local fact, which he reports, that the great number of paupers, 
 who already covered England in his time, and for the support of 
 whom the government found it necessary to provide, ever since the 
 reign of Henry IV., by alms raised with the regularity and perma 
 nence of a normal tax, came principally from the many freedmen, 
 emancipated without precaution during the middle ages, and cast 
 without prevision upon society. The monasteries, with their mag 
 nificent organization of free hostelries and infirmaries, fed and sup 
 ported them as best they could for a long time. But the Reforma 
 tion pitilessly closed the monasteries, and changed laborers into 
 paupers, and paupers into thieves. England, in her civil history, 
 
 (a] In this, our author, generally so accurate in his statement of facts, is sadly 
 in error. In 1849-50, the translator visited the West Indies, and found pauper 
 ism and mendicity frightfully abundant. It is true that they did not reach the 
 extremity of starvation, as in more Northern and inhospitable climes; because, 
 in the luxurious vegetation of the tropics, the spontaneous products of the 
 forest furnished an abundance of the wherewith to live, without other labor 
 than to gather and eat. But even this labor of gathering the fruits, which boun 
 tiful nature provides in that latitude, was too much for the " great number of freed 
 men of the colored race," and their children, who, rather than labor for a half hour 
 in gathering in the woods the fruits, which would support a family for a week, 
 took to mendicity and thieving. 
 
 It may be said, that our author s book was published at Paris, in 1838, and 
 that we did not visit the French colonies until 1849-50. But Edwards and 
 McKenzie, who visited them long before (if our memory serves us, McKenzie s 
 report was laid before Parliament, and given to the public in 1822 or 1824) 
 found the same condition of things then prevailing. McKenzie not only dwells 
 upon the pauperism and mendicity, which confronted him at every turn, but no 
 tices the fact that a very few short years of liberty had carried the negro freedmen 
 back to the worship of Obeah, and to the revolting superstitions and practices of 
 Africa. 
 
 1 Blackstone, vol. ii., chap. i. 
 
I2O HISTORY OF THE 
 
 presents this character, which is peculiar to her, that there, more 
 than anywhere else, emancipations have operated in a manner 
 prompt, immediate, at a single blow, so to speak, and without caus 
 ing the slaves to pass through the intermediary preparation of ap 
 prenticeship. In other countries, for example* in France, (and the 
 many charters entered upon the catalogue of Brequigny prove this,) 
 the emancipations of the middle ages produced fewer paupers ; be 
 cause, without any premeditation certainly, and solely through the 
 effects of a happy, and, we may say, providential inspiration, they 
 were made gradually and by means of a preparatory apprentice 
 ship. Thus it appears that in England slaves were all at once set at 
 liberty, pure and simple. 
 
 In France they were only half set free, and were placed in an 
 apprenticeship, which was the novitiate of liberty. Reserving to 
 ourselves to treat more at length hereafter of the history of the 
 emancipation of slaves in France, we propose now to state rapidly 
 what is indispensable to the proper understanding of the matters 
 touched upon in this chapter. A piece of land was given to the 
 slave to cultivate, at an annual rent. This kind of lease, made by 
 the master to the slave, which was not according to the civil law, 
 but formed one of the elements of the subsequent customary law, 
 was extended more or less according to the activity and probity of 
 the slave. They were made for ten, twenty, or thirty years, for one 
 generation, for two, sometimes for three. We do not know that 
 any of these contracts made by the masters with their slaves now 
 exist, except in the ancient archives of notaries, that fruitful mine 
 for the study of civil history, where it is not rare to find documents 
 of the thirteenth century, which no one has yet thought of search 
 ing ; but the leases made to slaves were made upon the system of 
 long leases, (emphyteotiques^ of which the first elements exist in the 
 code of Theodosius, which was followed up regularly through the 
 middle ages, arrived at its greatest development in the thirteenth 
 century, and on which there are, in ancient charters, explicit and 
 numberless documents. This kind of contracts had this advantage, 
 that when they were for a long term, as, for example, for three gen 
 erations, a century passed, during which the action of the master 
 upon the slave was restrained and weakened ; while the slave, almost 
 free in fact, acquired the manners and customs of the father of a 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 121 
 
 family, became industrious, economical, settled, prudent, accumu 
 lated small profits, and left them to his children. At the end of a 
 century, when three generations had passed away, the master was 
 much less a master, the slave much less a slave. Both had forgotten 
 whence they came, by only seeing where they stood. A singular 
 thing ! Since the thirteenth century, we can see, as it were, an im 
 mense reconciliation of men and things kept apart by Providence 
 for five thousand years. While the sons of the ancient slaves took 
 courage to approach less cringingly the sons of the ancient masters, 
 a similar phenomenon was taking place around them. Little cabins, 
 small houses, small hamlets, and small towns began to venture, little 
 by little, upon the plains, in the face of the strong castles standing 
 still on the summit of the hills, like black sentinels, which guarded 
 feudal France, and which, with feet booted and spurred with sally 
 ports, and heads armed with battlements, let their new, timid, and 
 wondering neighbors approach, as a relief, one might s ay, to their 
 solitary majesty. 
 
 It was not from the agricultural slaves, nearly all of whom be 
 came small proprietors, that the paupers, who are seen in France, 
 originally sprang, but from the slaves of the workshops, the indus 
 trial slaves, who could not from the nature of their labor be com 
 prised in the system of long leases. This is one reason why there 
 are fewer paupers in France than in England ; but in bulk and 
 generally, whether in France, or England, or elsewhere, whether in 
 modern or ancient history, everywhere and always the emancipa 
 tion of slaves is the first and universal cause of pauperism and men 
 dicity. 
 
 For many years, the economists have written on the causes of 
 pauperism, without having found out this one, which is the first of 
 all, the most general, the most real, the most permanent. It is true 
 that the science, called political economy, until now in its positive 
 part has been nothing but a great heap of facts without connection, 
 and in its theory a great crowd of ideas more or less crude. Hav 
 ing studied nothing seriously, it knows nothing positively, which 
 seems to have been one reason for calling it a science. But what is 
 required to ascertain and prove that the emancipation of slaves is 
 the general cause of mendicity ? We should remark, first, that pau 
 perism seems to be a social human fact, since it shows itself among 
 9 
 
122 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 all peoples ; that it is only slaveholding peoples, who are not infested 
 with it; that is to say, only slaveholding peoples before the period 
 of numerous emancipations ; and that, as soon as emancipations be 
 come frequent, beggars make their appearance^ Next we should 
 remark that the great irruption of beggars in Europe took place, 
 as we will hereafter show more at length, from the second to the 
 sixth century of the Christian era ; that is, when to the mass of 
 pagan freedmen the mass of Christian freedmen were added ; and 
 that this irruption manifested itself in a very striking manner in the 
 regular organization of hospitals, which were unknown to the an 
 cients, among whom there were only private infirmaries, where 
 each one took care of and fed his own slaves. History thus ob 
 served can furnish certain data to the science of the economists ; but 
 it has seemed to them a much shorter process to pass over facts than 
 to understand them. 
 
 Whenever, therefore, we find beggars mentioned in ancient books, 
 we can be certain that they belong to an epoch, when a large num 
 ber of slaves had already been emancipated ; that is to say, to a 
 secondary epoch. It is the same with books, where we find hire 
 lings mentioned ; for the ancient hireling was nothing else than a 
 slave become entirely free, and from whom one bought his labor by 
 contract. Hirelings are spoken of in Leviticus 1 and in the Odyssey.* 
 Plutarch, in his Life of Theseus, cites a verse of Hesiod, taken from 
 his poem on Labor and the Day, where mention is also made of 
 hirelings. 3 There is also another passage in the same poem, where 
 mendicants are spoken of, which brings us back precisely to the 
 same point. 4 We conclude from these evidences that the books of 
 Moses, the Odyssey, and the poems of Hesiod form a synchronism 
 in the development of the civil history of the Jews and the Greeks. 
 We have read the Iliad word for word, deeply impressed with the 
 ideas we have here advanced, and we can say that there is not a 
 line in it, where there is any mention of paupers ; which is not the 
 only reason, which we could allege, to show that it is historically 
 impossible that this poem should not be somewhat older than the 
 Odyssey. 
 
 he only means of establishing with exactness the remote epoch, 
 
 1 Leviticus xxv. 6. 2 Odys., lib. xi., v. 489. 
 
 8 Hesiod, Oper. et Dies, v. 340. * Ibid., v. 365. 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 123 
 
 when the first emancipations took place, is to find out when paupers 
 and hirelings made their appearance in history ; for, as we have 
 already said, there could not be either paupers or hirelings in 
 the epochs of pure slavery, which were the primitive epochs. It 
 does not appear that in remote times emancipations were made 
 rapidly and with profusion. Slaves were set free one by one, ac 
 cording to their merits, and when it pleased their masters. As we 
 have said, we do not find anywhere among any ancient people any 
 burdensome accumulation of paupers or hirelings, or even, what is 
 a symptom of a nature entirely identical, any association of thieves 
 in great cities. In fact, the great cities, as will be explained and 
 proved in its place, were never infested with thieves until the epoch, 
 when the system of houses in blocks insulas, as the Roman archi 
 tecture styled it succeeded to the system of isolated houses. The 
 aggregation of houses in the cities not having begun, as we will here 
 after show, until the formation of the burgher classes, to find thieves 
 organized into secret and nocturnal companies in a city, is to prove 
 that it was built under the system of houses in blocks ; consequently 
 that its population was organized by the burgher classes, and that a 
 great number of emancipations had previously taken place ; since, as 
 we will prove, it was from the freedmen that the burghers arose. Be 
 sides, it is certain that thieves were first produced from hirelings 
 without work, and the hirelings themselves were produced by eman 
 cipation ; whence it follows, as we have said, that the existence of 
 thieves proves the same fact as the existence of paupers and hire 
 lings. The first thieves met in history were, as we have already 
 explained, the pirates \ because the banks of rivers and the coasts of 
 the sea were the first frequented places : and there is a passage in 
 the sixth book of Plato s treatise on The Laws, where he says pos 
 itively that the pirates, who covered the coasts of Greece, were fugi 
 tive slaves. 1 
 
 It was then individually that emancipations were made in ancient 
 times, and this explains the tardy coming of the burghers, and the 
 advantage, which ancient peoples enjoyed, of not being encumbered 
 with beggars and thieves, two social plagues, which emancipation 
 has caused. When we approach the Christian era, we meet some 
 
 1 Plato de Legibus, lib. vi. 
 
124 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 examples of general emancipations made by party chiefs in times of 
 civil war, or by some general of an army in extremities. 
 
 Mithridates employed a corps of 15,000 slaves against the Ro 
 mans. 1 Marius, in his contest with Sylla, published, by sound of 
 trumpet, that he would give freedom to the slaves who enrolled ; 
 but only three presented themselves. 2 During the campaign of 
 Sicilius against Sextus Pompeius, Augustus set free 20,000 slaves, 
 to make sailors of them.* These are some examples of emanci 
 pation en masse, to which we might add others ; but when pagan 
 ism turned over the ancient world to Christianity, freedmen were 
 not numerous. 
 
 It was principally the spirit of Christianity which has multiplied 
 emancipations. Add to that, that the disorder, which pervaded all 
 the known world by the dismemberment of the Roman Empire, 
 singularly favored the escape of slaves. Nevertheless, the system of 
 emancipation in mass did not prevail ; they continued to be made 
 one by one, but were more frequent and more continuous. In four 
 thousand years ancient civilization had not cast upon society enough 
 freedmen to clog and obstruct it ; while in less than three centuries 
 Christianity had multiplied them, with so much political improv 
 idence and such charitable profusion, that these poor people, turned 
 over prematurely to themselves, in the midst of a disordered and 
 selfish world, of which they had no experience, found themselves 
 in their isolation in a frightful misery. It was, in fact, from the 
 three first centuries of the Christian era that beggars abounded in 
 Europe, a phenomenon until then unseen and full of fearful men 
 aces, which, alas ! have been too fully realized. From that moment 
 individual charity was recognized as insufficient. The intervention 
 of the entire society became necessary, and we find in the code of 
 Theodosius two rescripts of Constantine, of the years 315 and 322, 
 which are the first public acts in relation to paupers, which we meet 
 with in the legislation of the West. The second, which is addressed 
 to Menander, prefect of the praetor s tribunal, proves that, as we 
 have said, emancipation having produced paupers, the paupers be 
 came thieves. 4 . 
 
 1 Plutarch, Sylla, cap. xviii. 2 Ibid., Marius, cap. xxxv. 
 
 8 Sueton., Oct. Caes. August., cap. xvi. 
 4 Cod. Theod., lib. xi., tit. xxvii., leg. 2. 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 125 
 
 Besides, whatever may have been the epoch or the number of 
 emancipations in primitive times, their history leads us to lay down 
 this principle, which this book will demonstrate, namely, that the 
 emancipation of slaves has produced the proletariat. This mass of 
 men, as we have said, is common to all peoples, since all peoples 
 have had slaves ; but it was singularly swollen by the spirit of Chris 
 tianity, and it presses upon modern society with all the weight of 
 six thousand years. 
 
 The proletaries then are the children of the ancient slaves, the 
 ancient children of families, given, traded, or sold by their fathers 
 of the heroic period. This great, active, terrible, poetic, and un 
 happy race tramps, since the beginning of the world, toward the 
 conquest of repose, like Ahasuerus, and perhaps like him will never 
 reach it. It has also upon its head an old curse, which commands 
 it incessantly to tramp. 
 
 All that it has gained by tramping, is what Homer and Plato said 
 to it: " Tramp ; you will not reach it in this world; " and what 
 Paul said: "Tramp; you will reach it in the next." It tramps 
 then since sixty centuries, all covered over with raillery and oppro 
 brium, and without any one taking account of its virtues or its griefs. 
 It is no more beautiful for having produced Aspasia ; no more illus 
 trious for having produced Phaedon ; no more brave for having 
 produced Spartacus. Whatever may have been its patience, intel 
 ligence, and wisdom, it has never been called child of the gods, like 
 the race of nobles; and Plato himself, notwithstanding he was the 
 slave of King Dionysius, cast at it those verses of the poet, which 
 say that a slave has only half of a human soul. 1 Singular fatality ! 
 Emancipation came to break the chains of the slaves ; their necks 
 remained with the hair rubbed off, like the dog in the fable; and 
 one of themselves, the son of a freedman, Horace, 2 in the most bril 
 liant epoch of ancient philosophy and civilization, cast in their faces 
 this eternal stain: " Money does not change the race ! " Whether 
 they gained that money by fatigue of the body or of the mind ; with 
 the hand or with the head ; whether they were merchants or soldiers, 
 senators or philosophers, they were told that "money does not 
 change the race ! " This curse of blood is implacable. Ventidius 
 
 1 Odys., lib. xvii., v. 322, 323; Plato de Legibus, lib. vi. 
 Herat. Sermon., lib. i., Satyr, vi , v. 6. 
 
126 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 Bassus had the good fortune to become consul. They said to him : 
 "You were a boot-black and a groom." 1 Galerius, Diocletian, 
 Probus, Pertinax, Vitellius, Augustus himself, had the good fortune 
 to become emperors. They said to Galerius : " You were a swine 
 herd ; " to Diocletian : " You were a slave; " to Probus : " Your 
 father was a gardener; " to Pertinax: "Your father was a freed- 
 man ; " to Vitellius: " Your father was a cobbler ; " and they went 
 so far as to write on the marble of the statue of Augustus, in the 
 lifetime of this master of the world: "Your grandfather was a 
 merchant, and your father a usurer." 
 
 If this eternal and universal contempt of the freedmen does not 
 respect the highest and most illustrious heads, judge whether it will 
 do reverence to the humble, poor, and degraded proletary. The 
 noble family keeps them away from its hearthstone ; civil society 
 denies him its prerogatives. He is born, lives, and dies apart from 
 other men, and as is said of certain rivers, which flow together in 
 the same bed without mixing their waters, the proletariat and the 
 nobility, the freedman and the gentleman, touch, elbow each other, 
 travel the same road, without ever combining or mingling with each 
 other. 
 
 Thus the proletaries, driven from the families and cities of the 
 nobles, repulsed from the social circle and the senate, should natu 
 rally and providentially be led to some other society, where they 
 could rest their heads. God gave them that society a society 
 new in fact, unknown to the ancient fathers of families, to the an 
 cient heroes, to the divine men of primitive times ; a society timid, 
 submissive, degraded like them, cursed like them the commune ! 
 Yes ! Everywhere, always, in antiquity, in the middle ages, among 
 the Hebrews, the Greeks, the Romans, the French, the freedmen 
 were organized into a society proper to the slave races, which is the 
 commune ; the commune, which has been developed like all other 
 things that are born ; the commune, poor little nest of owls, which 
 has grown great enough for the outstretched wings of the eagle, (a) 
 
 1 Aul. Cell. Noct. Attic., lib. xv., cap. iv. 
 
 (a) The majority report of the H. R. Committee on Education and Labor, (Forty- 
 first Congress, second session, Report No. 121,) intended to whitewash General 
 O. O. Howard, Commissioner of the Freedmen s Bureau, on the charges brought 
 against him by the Hon. Fernando Wood, contains the following (see pp. 18 
 and 19): 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. I2/ 
 
 "FRENCH EMANCIPATION IN THE ANTILLES. * 
 
 " The French Government, in a fit of enthusiasm over liberty, declared emanci 
 pation in all her colonial dependencies. This occurred in 1794. It brought only 
 confusion and collision in the different islands. To proclaim liberty was one 
 thing ; but to maintain it under proper restraints of law, and to allow emancipa 
 tion to bring forth its legitimate fruits, was another and quite a different problem, 
 and one which the wisdom of France could not solve. True, 250,000 slaves had 
 been freed; but war, insurrections, jealousies, and race hatreds arose and bore 
 their natural fruits. Emancipation seemed to be only a consuming curse to these 
 islands, and France, wearied out by the heart-sickening condition of her colonies, 
 in the year 1802, the year of the Peace of Amiens and of the Consulate, solemnly 
 decreed re-enslavement. 
 
 " BRITISH EMANCIPATION. 
 
 "In abolishing slavery, the English Government found itself beset with diffi 
 culties, which it attempted to overcome by adopting a system of semi-slavery or 
 apprenticeship. It is generally understood that this was the scheme of Lord 
 Brougham. Wilberforce, Clarkson, and others had given sixteen years of 
 thought and effort to the abolition of the slave trade ; and now that emancipation 
 itself was a fixed fact, the combined wisdom of English statesmen, Pitt, Fox, 
 Burke, and others, agreed upon apprenticeship : it exploded, however, before the 
 prescribed term of years, which it was to run, had expired. In other words, the 
 entire scheme was a failure. 
 
 " Such were the lights General Howard had before him for his guidance." 
 
 If the Freedmen s Bureau had had competent and honest administrators, it 
 might have been of incalculable benefit to both races in the South, and could have 
 done much to relieve the "frightful misery" resulting from throwing a large 
 number of slaves, without prevision or preparation, on their own resources for 
 support. It in fact exerted a very beneficial influence in some few localities, 
 where the officers of the Bureau happened to be competent and honest. This, 
 however, was unfortunately very rare ; and for some reason or other, such men 
 were dismissed, as soon as it could be reported to headquarters in Washington 
 that they were giving general satisfaction to the people where they were stationed. 
 Why this was, I do not stop to inquire ; but only refer those, who feel an interest 
 in the subject, to the minority report, (same document, page 25,) by which it clearly 
 appears that, however incompetent General Howard was to carry out the benev 
 olent and beneficent designs, contemplated by the honest supporters of that insti 
 tution, he was very competent to make out of it, for himself and his brothers, 
 gigantic fortunes in an incredibly short space of time. 
 
 The actual results of his administration soon brought so many complaints from 
 both races, that President Johnson found it necessary in 1866, within twelve 
 months from its establishment, to send a commission, consisting of Major-General 
 J. B. Steadman and Brigadier-General J. S. Fullerton, to report the true state of 
 facts. (See their report.) 
 
 The New York Herald also sent special correspondents. The result of their 
 
128 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 inquiries, subsequently fully confirmed by the official report of Generals Stead- 
 man and Fullerton, is thus summed up in an editorial of the New York Herald 
 of the 9th May, 1866: 
 
 "The Northern humanitarian has taken the place of the Southern nigger- driver 
 of other days, only to show that he can be the more cruel of the two, and outdo all 
 that maudlin fiction imputed to the other. Our correspondence on this subject, 
 yesterday, showed how a reverend humanitarian from Massachusetts, attached to 
 the Freedmen s Bureau and managing a plantation on his own account, actually 
 shot a negro for attempting to " run away," and this when slavery has been 
 abolished. This establishment (the Freedmen s Bureau) is the- parent of untold 
 evils in every part of the Southern States. 
 
 " All the idleness, misunderstandings, and cases of bad treatment are traceable 
 directly to this Bureau and its agents. It is corrupt through and through. It 
 sells negroes to planters at so much per head, and, following the plan of the 
 bounty-brokers, sells the same negro over and over to different rnen. 
 
 " It is undeniable that the operation of this Bureau is identical with slavery ; 
 that it treats the negro just as slavery did, only that it gives the preference in 
 possession to another class of men." 
 
 At the anniversary meeting of the And- slavery Society in New York city, on 
 the Qth May, 1866, (see New York Tribune, loth May,) "Mr. Calvin Pepper 
 denounced the Freedmen s Bureau. It was the curse of the South, and was used 
 for the purposes of private speculation, selling the labor of the negroes. He 
 could show twenty affidavits to prove his statements, extraordinary and startling 
 as they may appear. He was not in favor of the military occupation of the South. 
 He did not want the habeas corpus eternally suspended there, nor a military des 
 potism. General Howard was doing his duty, but as a general thing the action 
 of the Freedmen s Bureau was disastrous in its effects." 
 
 An editorial in the New York, Herald, loth May, 1866, quotes "a colored 
 correspondent of a journal in the South owned and edited by negroes, who says 
 of the Bureau: A thousand times better far would it be for the colored man 
 were it abolished; for instead of being a safeguard or protection for the freedmen, 
 it is only a place, in which freedmen s rights are bartered away. The sooner it 
 is out of the way the better. " The Herald editor adds : 
 
 " This is the opinion of one likely to be informed of the practical workings of 
 the system. Accounts of official malfeasance in the Bureau multiply with every 
 day s mail. At one time we hear of some swindling or oppressive operation in 
 Louisiana, next in North Carolina, again in South Carolina, Georgia,* and other 
 Southern States. It is an iniquitous, expensive, and altogether unnecessary 
 establishment, and should be abolished." 
 
 May i6th, 1866, the Herald says: 
 
 "It will be seen that General Howard admits one of the main accusations; 
 that is, that the chief and subordinates and representatives of the Bureau were 
 4 running plantations," and furnishing rations to their negro hands at Government 
 expense, for their own personal benefit. Nor does he deny or explain the charge 
 that the same officers were bartering away the services of the freed negroes, and 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 
 
 allowing them to be sent away from home associations and separated from family 
 ties, under circumstances of as much cruelty as ever characterized the late rebel 
 lious slaveholders." 
 
 Mr. Pepper wished to believe, and to make the world believe, that " General 
 Howard was doing his duty," and that the fault was in his subordinates. But 
 General Howard would not permit this ; for the very men, who were making the 
 Bureau a gigantic nigger-trading monopoly, supported by Government, were 
 General Howard s special pets and favorites; men altogether after his own heart, 
 and, in their aptitude for hypocrisy and acquisitiveness, fashioned after his own 
 image. 
 
 To break the force of the official confirmation, by the report of Generals Stead- 
 man and Fullerton, of the Herald s disclosures, he hastened to make himself 
 conspicuous in the religious and humanitarian anniversaries in New York city. 
 There, relying on his sanctimonious reputation, backed by the usual mixture of 
 slanderous abuse of the Southern Whites, he boldly took upon himself the respon 
 sibility for the atrocious practices of his subordinates, admitting that he had 
 "urged (upon them) the renting and running of plantations, to afford practical, 
 examples, to encourage joint-stock companies" (See his letter to the Rev. George 
 Whipple, of 8th May, 1866, published in the New York Tribune, of I4th May.) 
 His excuse was that the Southern whites were indolent, and required to be stimu 
 lated into industry by practical examples of the rapidity, with which the Bureau 
 officials could grow rich, on the labor of the negroes and at the expense of the 
 Government. But aware that this explanation would hardly be sufficient even at 
 the North, without an appeal to their sectional hatred of the South, he sought to 
 divert just indignation from himself and his subordinates, by exciting an unjust 
 indignation against the Southern whites. He therefore added, in his Whipple 
 letter : " The Bureau does not do enough to secure the rights of the negroes, I will 
 admit ; but it does not burn negro churches and school-houses ; it does not reject negro 
 testimony. 1 In his speeches, not fully reported and therefore not of record, this 
 idea was carried out, with amplifications. By this means, and by party influences, 
 General Howard escaped a just responsibility for the infamous atrocities of the 
 Freedmen s Bureau ; but its " disastrous action " was too manifest even for the 
 Radicals to continue it, and it was abolished. 
 
 Since the religious anniversaries of May, 1866, in which General Howard 
 played so conspicuous a part, his tactics have been crystallized down to a single 
 word, Kii-Klux ; and now, whenever the Radical party wish to defend or excuse 
 any outrage on the States, or any violation of the Constitution, all they have to do 
 is to cry out, Ku-Klux ! 
 
 The practical action of the Freedmen s Bureau, while it lasted, was threefold : 
 "First, to stimulate acquisitiveness, by showing what sudden and enormous for 
 tunes its officials could gather together in the South. 
 
 Second, to organize the negroes into loyal leagues, all bound by secret oaths to 
 vote as the Radical party, through Bureau officials, should direct. 
 
 Third, to excite race hatred between the Southern whites and the freedmen. 
 
I3O HISTORY OF THE 
 
 Since the discontinuance of the Bureau, the " race hatred," which it had suc 
 ceeded in exciting to a considerable extent, has nearly entirely disappeared. 
 Mutual dependence on each other the necessity for employment or protection 
 on the one hand, and for labor on the other has brough^the old masters and the 
 old slaves again into kindly contact, and revived the old attachments and mutual 
 fidelity, so strikingly manifested throughout the whole war, and in thousands of 
 instances continued uninterrupted long after the war, in spite of the mischief- 
 making tendencies of the Bureau. A mutual interchange of the offices of good 
 neighborhood is every day strengthening this good understanding between the 
 freedmen and their old masters. A single incident of the last election in Georgia, 
 which happened in my own town of Dalton, will illustrate how these influences 
 are working, generally, throughout the South. 
 
 We have at Dalton a freedman, named Bill Wilson, by trade a blacksmith, 
 very hardworking and honest, and much respected by all the whites. He is 
 moreover a very zealous Presbyterian. Of course the Bureau carried him into 
 the Loyal League, and he was a leading member. No Democrat ever thought 
 of approaching him on the subject of voting a Democratic ticket. But at the last 
 election, to the surprise of everybody, he not only voted the straight-out Demo 
 cratic ticket, without a scratch, but quit his work for the three days of the elec 
 tion, and exerted himself actively to persuade other freedmen to do the same. 
 Being told of this, I asked him if it was true, and why he had left his friends, 
 the Radicals ? His answer was : " I have found out that these Radicals, who 
 pretend to be such great friends to us colored people, are very willing to let us do 
 their work, but very unwilling to pay us for it. I have been working for them 
 till I am tired of it; for I can t get a dollar out of them. I find that all those 
 gentlemen, who give me work and pay me, are Democrats. Besides, last 
 summer we colored people were trying to build our church. We could not get 
 ten cents out of the whole Radical party. We went to you, and you let us have a 
 lot, and gave us fifty dollars. Every other Democrat, that we applied to, gave us 
 something, and liberally, according to his means. So some of us just concluded 
 that hereafter we will vote with those, who give us work and pay us for it, and 
 who helped us to build our church." 
 
 This explains the object of, and the necessity for, the Shellabarger Ku-Klux 
 Bill. Similar influences are producing like results all over the South. The 
 freedmen are quitting the Loyal Leagues and the Radical party, going back to 
 their old and true friends, and voting, with them, the Democratic ticket. Some- 
 tiling must be done to force them back under the control of the " carpet-baggers 
 and scalawags," or their votes will be cast in 1872 for the Democratic nominees. 
 The Freedmen s Bureau, under General Howard s administration, became so in 
 famous and so odious, at the North as well as at the South, that its re-establish 
 ment is out of the question. Hence the necessity and the purpose of the Shella 
 barger Bill ; to enable General Grant, by martial law, suspension of habeas corpus t 
 and such other instrumentalities as may hereafter be devised, to force the freed 
 men to vote in 1872 for the candidates of the cheap labor and imperial party. 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 13! 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 GENERAL IDEA OF THE COMMUNE TWO KINDS. 
 
 THE commune, then, is that special association, to which eman 
 cipated races have tended, universally, among all nations, 
 without exception. In it the slave has found himself redeemed from 
 what may be called social damnation. In it he became completely 
 a man. By it he has taken rank among those other men, who had 
 never been enslaved, whom poetry called divine, and history called 
 noble. Thus, in the fact of the commune, there is nothing acci 
 dental or local, as we will show hereafter. It belongs to no chance 
 of time or country. It has no predilection for the East or the West, 
 for India, Greece, Italy, or France. It is a phase of the life and 
 development of the slave races. On the one hand, as there has 
 never been one single nation, among whom slavery has not at one 
 time existed, it is a universal fact ; on the other, as there is no 
 nation from among whom slavery has not disappeared, it is a neces 
 sary fact. Universal and necessary, it is thus bound up with the 
 very destinies of society, of which it is an element, a form, an 
 inevitable law. In other words, it is human. 
 
 Evidently it is not the word, the name of commune, of which 
 we say that it is universal and necessary, but the fact, which that 
 name designates. In other words, we hope to establish that this 
 association, which was produced in France, for example, in the 
 twelfth century, and which we call commune, is absolutely of the 
 same nature as the association of the freed races of all antiquity; 
 reciprocally that the association of the freed races of all antiquity 
 has had absolutely the same form as the commune. Thus the 
 commune of the middle ages was this human fact of the association 
 of slave races ; this fact, which, in its form and substance, is found 
 in the Bible, in the Odyssey, in the Papyrian Code, and in ancient 
 charters. As we think, one may follow and study it with the same 
 results in all its successive manifestations, and rely with as much rea 
 son for its repetition on a text from Moses as on one from Dumoulin. 
 
 Perhaps this is the time for us to say to our readers that, in the 
 
132 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 subject of this chapter, we will notably cut loose from the opinions 
 of some men of great historic value, to whose talents we have 
 always been one of the first to render justice. Also, it is because 
 of the esteem and respect, which we have always professed for their 
 learning, that we feel the necessity of justifying ourselves in some 
 manner for daring to think differently from them. But the liberty of 
 science is something so inviolable, and they have had to claim it 
 for themselves so haughtily, so justly, of their predecessors, that they 
 will find it quite simple and proper that we demand it after them. 
 Nevertheless, although we find their works on this subject either incom 
 plete or erroneous, we recognize in them too much patience, merit, 
 and true wisdom, to pass on to the exposition of our own ideas, without 
 giving theirs this mark of deference, to mention and examine them. 
 
 There are principally three men, who have treated the matter of 
 the commune, with more or less profundity : M. Raynouard, M. 
 Augustin Thierry, and M. Guizot. We ask pardon of the reader 
 for the intentional omission of a fourth name ; but we cannot re 
 gard M. de Sismondi as a critical historian of any serious value. 
 Nevertheless, we do not mean to condemn absolutely and brutally 
 his very numerous works ; for we recognize a certain merit in col 
 lecting ancient traditions without altering their signification. But 
 we are convinced that M. de Sismondi has left pending all the 
 great questions of the middle ages and of the formation of modem 
 nations ; and if it is true that he has taken nothing from the science 
 of history, it is true that he has added nothing to it. 
 
 The opinion of M. Raynouard is that the communes had no 
 proper existence, and that they were only the prolongation and 
 complement of the municipal system of the Romans applied to 
 Gaul. Wherever there was a commune, M. Raynouard seeks to 
 show that there a municipality pre-existed. As to the municipali 
 ties themselves, he sees in them cities, conquered by policy or force, 
 and admitted to enjoyment of Roman rights. These notions are 
 taken from a chapter of the Attic Nights of Aulus Gellius ; l which 
 
 1 See this passage : " Municipes et municipia verba sunt dictu facilia et usu 
 obvia ; et neutiquam reperias, qui hsec dicat, quin scire se plane putet, quid 
 dicat ; sed profecto aliud est, aliud dicitur. . . . Municipes erg6 sunt cives 
 Komani ex municipiis, LEGIBUS suis ET suo JURE UTENTES, muneris tantum cum 
 populo Romano honorarii participes, a quo munere capessendo appellati videntur, 
 nullis aliis necessitatibus, NEQUE ULLA POPULI ROMANI LEGE ASTRICTO, cum 
 numquam populus corum fundus factus esset." (Aul. Gell. Noct. Attic., liber xvi., 
 cap. xiii.) 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 133 
 
 we will hereafter show that he has not understood. Besides, M. 
 Raynouard finds in the municipalities only a certain form of admin 
 istration invented by the Romans, and applied by them to all of 
 Europe, and particularly to Gaul, of which the communes were the 
 continuation, and which would never have existed, if Rome had 
 not created them. 
 
 M. Thierry finds that the communes are a fact sui generis, spon 
 taneous, proper to France, the same in the centre and at the north 
 of France. He thinks that this fact is properly the first form, which 
 the democratic and revolutionary principle has assumed in modern 
 history, and he gives insurrection as the 1 point of departure and ori 
 gin of every commune. The importance which he attributes to 
 insurrection in the formation of communes is so exaggerated and 
 radical, that he goes so far as to say that the conspiracy (conjuration} 
 organized to establish the communes has given the name vi juris to 
 their members and magistrates, while the magistrates of the munici 
 pal towns were called consuls. We already see that the theories of 
 M. Raynouard and of M. Augustin Thierry are nearly contradictory 
 of each other, and we will see that both are disproved by the facts. 
 
 M. Guizot, with that profound sagacity, which characterizes his 
 mind, has not failed to recognize that the communes were not a 
 simple fact, and all of a piece ; but that they were formed generally 
 and in varying proportions of Roman and indigenous elements. 
 He admits at the same time, in the organization of the towns of the 
 middle ages, the Roman municipality and the commune, of which 
 he comprehends the mechanism in the same manner as M. Ray 
 nouard and M. Thierry. Further, and this is the most important 
 point in the question, he penetrates to the very origin of the com 
 mune, of which M. Raynouard has not spoken, and of which M. 
 Thierry only says vaguely, that it was the democratic and revolu 
 tionary element ; and he thinks that the origin of the communes 
 was the slaves of the lords and convents, set free in mass by numer 
 ous and successive emancipations. We will have occasion to show, 
 in the course of this book, how searching was this glance at the 
 formation of the communes. Only, and this seems strange after a 
 first observation so suggestive, M. Guizot stops short at the com 
 mune of the middle ages, and does not inquire whether this com 
 mune might not be, in form and substance, the continuation of an 
 analogous fact, of which the history of ancient peoples offers a 
 
134 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 thousand proofs. This, perhaps, is all that is wanting to his theory ; 
 but it must be said that it is a great want. Moreover, M. Gui2ot 
 not only does not say that the commune may be anything more 
 than an accident proper to modern history ; but what he does say 
 does not indicate that he had that idea. It is singular that he, who 
 has so clearly explained the municipal system of the Romans, being 
 halfway on the road to a great idea, should not follow it to the end. 
 Has he not observed that the communal system of France has no 
 other origin, or nature, or form ? 
 
 We hope to show clearly, in the course of this book, what is erro 
 neous in the first two of these theories, and what is incomplete in 
 the third. We think that we will not be supposed to be inspired 
 by a desire to find errors in the works of another. We have an 
 object much less personal and much more worthy. It is not our 
 fault, if human science is a fully sown field, where it is impossible to 
 plant one idea without digging up another. We are under this ne 
 cessity. Perhaps we may pull up a stalk of wheat to plant a thistle. 
 Let the reader judge. We only desire to show our intention in all 
 its disinterestedness and purity. Besides, we will only combat the 
 theories we have just mentioned, as we complete our own. The best 
 and most sincere way to criticize an idea is to replace it by another. 
 
 We have reached the point, in our subject, to say that the com 
 mune, among all peoples, is the political and administrative associ 
 ation of slaves. We have prepared and announced this fact rather 
 than proved it. What we have said shows that it is possible and even 
 probable. It remains for us to produce what will render it certain. 
 
 Before entering upon the detail of the formation of communes, 
 and to remove some difficulties, which spring up from the develop 
 ment of our subject, we should say that there are in history two 
 kinds of communes, of which the difference is perhaps more ap 
 parent than real ; but it is necessary to distinguish and characterize 
 them, so that their juxtaposition may create no mistake or confusion. 
 We will call one the spontaneous commune, and the other the artificial 
 commune ; and these are the ideas we attach to these two designations. 
 
 We call a spontaneous commune, that which was originally formed 
 spontaneously, naturally, by the sole fact of the agglomeration on 
 one spot of a certain number of freedmen, who had obtained or 
 assumed the right to govern themselves. We call an artificial com 
 mune that, of which the mechanism has been intentionally imitated 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 135 
 
 from another, and which was not produced, like the first, without a 
 model or premeditated design. 
 
 It is very important to make the distinction between these two 
 communes, for this reason : Wherever a commune was formed of 
 itself, without reference to any theory and without being the work 
 of any legislator, we may be certain that those, who composed it, 
 were freedmen ; because, as we will hereafter establish, the com 
 mune is the government, to which the slave races invariably come. 
 But when, on the contrary, a commune was imported into any 
 place, of deliberate purpose, by a conqueror or legislator, it may 
 very well have been that those, to whom it was applied, or who 
 adopted it, were not freedmen, or even they may have been 
 people of noble blood. For example, when the Romans, hav 
 ing conquered Europe, had applied to the smallest boroughs of 
 Gaul or Greece their form of government, which was the communal 
 or municipal, it often happened that the families, which accepted or 
 submitted to this government, were rich, ancient, powerful, glorious. 
 Thus in the first years of the empire, the decurions, that is to say, 
 the municipal officers, were persons of great distinction. This came 
 from the fact that all Europe was brought under the form of the 
 Roman government, without regard to its origin, taking it as it was 
 without reference to the past. Nevertheless, this government, which 
 then suited the greatest, proudest, and most illustrious people of the 
 world, commenced by a collection of fugitive slaves on Mount Palatine. 
 
 When then we say, that every commune invariably corresponds 
 with a population of the slave, race, we speak of communes, which 
 were originally formed spontaneously, and not of those, which, 
 after having been slowly modified, corrected, ameliorated gradually, 
 by revolution after revolution, came at last some fine day to be 
 applied, as a model government, to a free people. Certainly the 
 Roman government was not formed of slaves under Julius Caesar ; 
 but it was under Romulus. ^ < ^ 
 
 Ancient history is full of instances of certain cities, which have 
 been suddenly struck with admiration for the government of some 
 other city, and were not satisfied until it was given to them. They 
 did not ask from what point this government started, but what 
 point it had reached ; not what it had been formerly, but what it 
 was then. They took no account of its first trials, its experiments, 
 its revolutions. They regarded only its last phase and its great 
 
 3 tf^M^Ot- <i u^T&Ar 4v>v 
 
 T/ \ U 
 
136 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 progress. Thus Aulus Gellius relates that the little city of Ceres, 
 toward the end of the last invasions of the Gauls into Italy, full of 
 admiration for the mechanism of the Roman Republic, asked of 
 the senate permission to adopt it. 1 The city of Ceres did not 
 inquire as to the successive changes this government had gone 
 through. It did not dream of the seven kings of Rome, nor of the 
 revolution, which drove them out, nor of the mutinies of the people, 
 nor of the aggrandizement and ennobling of the senate. It saw a 
 government well understood, at the same time active and conserva 
 tive, multiplicate and consolidated, and it desired to have one on the 
 same plan. Thenceforward the commune of Ceres was not a com 
 mune of freedmen, since the Roman government, which it imitated, 
 was applied without distinction to its entire population; but its 
 ancient government, its primitive commune, which had been spon 
 taneous in its origin, and the customs of which it preserved in 
 taking the Roman form, had been a commune of freedmen. 
 
 Aulus Gellius says in effect, in a passage which we have quoted 
 above, that the cities, which, like Ceres, had adopted the form of 
 the Roman government and become municipia, preserved neverthe 
 less their own laws, which can only be understood of the civil, 
 criminal, and commercial laws, which were applied by their muni 
 cipal councils or by their magistrates. 2 This proves that the muni- 
 cipia, before existing as an imitation of Rome, had existed in their 
 own name and according to their special form. Aulus Gellius 
 adds that from his time the Roman scabbard had used the national 
 sword, and that the municipia had forgotten their own ancient cus 
 toms, so far as not to know how to use them. 3 They had become, 
 as Aulus Gellius expresses it, little Romes, after the likeness of the 
 great Rome.* 
 
 We can now see, by this analysis of the passage from Aulus 
 
 1 Primes autem municipes sine suffragii jure Cerites esse factos accepimus. 
 (Aul. Gell., lib. xvi., cap. xiii.) 
 
 * Legibus suis et suo jure utentes. (Aul. Gel., lib. xvi., cap. xiii.) 
 
 8 Obscura obliterataque sunt municipiorum jura, quibus uti jam per ignorantiam 
 non queunt. (Aul. Gell., lib. xvi., cap. xiii.) 
 
 4 Quasi effigies parvse simulacraque Romie esse quaedam videntur. (Aul. Gell., 
 lib. xvi., cap. xiii.) 
 
 Later, Justinian justified in these terms that imitation of the Roman form, which 
 was imposed on all the cities of the empire : " Secundum Salvii Juliani scripturam, 
 quoe indicat debere omnes civitates consuetudines Romoe sequi, qua? est caput 
 orbis terrarum, non ipsam alias civitates. "(Prefat. Prim, de Concept. Digestor, ad 
 Tribonian.) 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. Ij/ 
 
 Gellius, quoted by M. Raynouard, that he has not been well under 
 stood. In effect, the theory drawn by M. Raynouard from this 
 passage rests on the idea, that the communes of the middle ages did 
 not exist of themselves, and that they were only the continuation 
 and revival of the ancient Roman munidpia. Now M. Raynouard 
 has not observed that the cities, which, like Ceres, became muni 
 dpia in taking the Roman form, were previously communes, on their 
 own account, with their own special and national form, and using 
 their own ancient laws, even after they had adopted that form ; 
 whence it evidently follows that it was not impossible for communes 
 to be spontaneously organized in the middle ages, without reviving 
 the ancient munidpia, since they were organized in the cities of 
 primitive Italy, before they had the idea of grafting the Roman 
 government on the trunk of their own history. 
 
 What has been seen in Italy of fancies, which certain cities have 
 taken for another, had also been seen in Greece, and instances can 
 be cited of munidpia organized with the form of the Athenian gov 
 ernment. In the discourse, which Thucydides makes Pericles pro 
 nounce, at the funeral solemnities celebrated by the Athenians in 
 honor of the soldiers, who fell in the first year of the Peloponne- 
 sian war, it is formally said that the government of Athens served 
 as a model for other cities. 1 Some years before that war, and in 
 the height of the power of the Athenians, they went to Samos, and 
 there established, as conquerors, the form of their own republic. 2 
 Besides, it suffices to recall the custom of the ancient cities of Greece 
 of having their laws made by a philosopher, or of sending to search 
 for them in some neighboring city, to comprehend how there must 
 have been among them artificial communes, which were superim 
 posed on the spontaneous communes. 
 
 We have now said enough about each of these two kinds of com 
 munes, to pass on to the development of our subject, without fear 
 of confusion. 
 
 yap TroAirtia ov ^rt\ovarj rovj T&V rreXaj vo/jouj, TrapatJayfia Si av.-oi fia\\oi> ovre$ 
 vot erepovj. (Thucyd. Hist., lib. ii., cap. xxxvii.) 
 ovv AOrjvdloi j Zdpov vaval naoapaKovra, dn^oKpariav Karsurrjaav, (Thucyd. 
 
 Hist., lib. i., cap. cxv.) 
 
138 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE FRENCH COMMUNE. 
 
 IT is of the greatest importance, for the proper understanding of 
 the matter to be treated of in this chapter, to understand ex 
 actly, first, what constitutes a commune, and then the different 
 names by which the communes are designated by the charters and 
 by historians. 
 
 The right of commune consisted in the privilege granted to the 
 inhabitants of a borough or city to govern themselves, instead of 
 being governed by the officers of a lord, lay or ecclesiastic, baron 
 or abbd. 
 
 The confirmation of the charter of commune granted by Hugo, 
 Count de la Marche et d Angouleme, to the inhabitants of Ahun, in 
 the year 1268, expresses exactly in three words in what a commune 
 consisted. 
 
 " ApprobamuS) said the count, consulatum, sigillum, et communi 
 tatem." J Consulatum, that is to say, administration ; sigillum, that 
 is to say, the dispensation of justice ; communitatem, that is to say, 
 the public treasury, the area communis. The inhabitants of a city, 
 who obtained or took these three things, had, properly speaking, a 
 commune. So, to take away from a city the right of having a pub 
 lic seal and magistrates, or the consulate, was to take away its com 
 mune. This was done to the commune of Laon, by decree of the 
 Parliament of La Toussaint, in the year I295, 2 and to the city of 
 Paris by King Charles VI., in the year 1382, after the sedition of 
 the Maillotins. 
 
 If a city had the right of self-government, it had a commune. It 
 may be said that certain cities had a commune, more or less than 
 others, in this sense, that their right of dispensing justice, for exam 
 ple, was more or less extensive. One city had only civil jurisdic- 
 
 1 Approbamus expresse et confirmamus hominibus villse nostrae Agedunensis . . . 
 consulatem, sigillum et communitatem. (Charter of Hugo, Count de la Marche, 
 for the franchise of Ahun. La Thomassiere, Local Customs, ch. cvi.) 
 
 8 Olim., vol. ii., fol. 108. 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 139 
 
 tion. Another had the right to take cognizance of affairs both civil 
 and criminal. This was the case with most of the great cities of 
 the kingdom, at least until the Edict of Moulins, which left the 
 cognizance of civil affairs only to the municipalities of Toulouse, 
 Rheims, Boulogne, and Angouleme, which proved that they had 
 possessed this right since the time of the Romans. 1 
 
 The name, designating this privilege, granted or taken by a city, 
 of governing itself and being perfectly independent, within the terms 
 of its charter, varied in different localities. Sometimes it was com- 
 munio / 2 sometimes communia;* sometimes communitas; sometimes 
 franchisia;* sometimes consuetudines ;* sometimes libertas / 7 some 
 times burgesta* Nevertheless, whatever the difference in name, the 
 substance of the thing remained the same. It was the right of self- 
 government, or, as the charter of Ahun says, consulatum, sigillum et 
 communitas. 
 
 On the other hand, whatever may have been the source of the 
 right of self-government possessed by a city, this right was none 
 the less a right of commune, whether it came from a lord, or from 
 the king ; whether it was a grant or a purchase ; whether obtained by 
 humble remonstrances or by open rebellion. 
 
 It is thus seen that M. Augustin Thierry has committed two 
 great errors in what he has written about the communes : first, in 
 
 1 The Edict of Moulins, issued by Charles IX. in 1556, was intended to re 
 strict the rights of the municipal magistrates, for the profit of the royal magis 
 trates. The Chancellor de 1 Hospital was the promoter of it. This edict, the 
 meaning of which was afterward greatly extended, was one of the most power 
 ful causes, which more lately produced the consolidation of the administration 
 of the kingdom. 
 
 2 Communio autem, novum ac pessimum nomen. (Guib. abb. de Novigent, lib. 
 iii., cap. vii., apud Script, rer. Franc., t. xii.) 
 
 3 Concessimus communiam habendam. (Charter of the commune of Cerny. La 
 Thomassiere, Local Customs, chap, civ.) 
 
 * Communitas habitatorum villae Parisiensis. (Decree of Parliament of I June< 
 1316. Olim., vol. iii., folio 154, cited by De la Mare in his treatise on Civil 
 Government, t. i., p. 149.) 
 
 5 Frater meus franchisiam voluit et concessit. (Charter of the city of Lury. 
 La Thomass., Local Customs, chap. Ivi.) 
 
 6 Subscriptas consuetudines habendas in perpetuum concedimus. (Charter of 
 the city of Duns le Roi. La Thomass., Local Customs, chap, xlviii.) 
 
 7 Hominibus commorantibus apud Cellas talem concessi libertatem. (Privileges 
 of the inhabitants of Celles. Charter of Robert de Courtenay, 1216. La Tho 
 mass., Local Customs, chap. Iviii.) 
 
 8 In conservationem jurium burgesice hujusmodi. (Chapter of the borough of 
 Aigues-Mortes. La Thomass., Local Customs, chap, cv.) 
 
I4O HISTORY OF THE 
 
 refusing to recognize a commune where the name of communia was 
 not to be found ; secondly, in asserting that every commune sprang 
 from a rebellion. First, the commune of Aigues-Mortes, estab 
 lished by Charles V., in 1373, was as complete a commune as could 
 be, 1 and nevertheless it was not called communia, but burgesia. 
 Next, the commune of Cerny, which was called communia, did not 
 spring from a rebellion, and its members were called jurati, although 
 they had never conspired. 2 Besides, as La Thomassiere observes, 
 the name of juratus m jurat was universally given to the magistrates 
 of the communes of La Guienne. 3 
 
 It is important again to notice an historical error very common 
 among those, who have treated of the communes. We refer to the 
 common opinion as to the date of their institution. M. Augustin 
 Thierry has with much reason reproved the authors of the Charter 
 of 1814, who in the preamble have attributed the establishment of 
 communes to Louis the Fat. Perhaps we should now reprove M. 
 Augustin Thierry himself for having believed, with so many others, 
 that the formation of communes dated from the twelfth century. 
 The formation of communes, as we believe, does not date pre 
 cisely from any century, because it dates from all. It is a permanent 
 fact of the history of all peoples, and for this reason : The com 
 mune, as we have already said and will presently clearly establish, 
 is the government, to which the emancipated slaves in every country 
 attain. Now in Europe, from the commencement of society to the 
 1 5th century, slaves have been constantly obtaining their liberty, 
 and consequently, communes have been constantly forming, under 
 one of the names mentioned above. We find in every century of 
 the history of the middle ages privileges more or less extensive ac 
 corded to different cities, that is to say, a self-government of com- 
 
 1 The charter of Charles V. says expressly that the city of Aigues-Mortes 
 should have the same privileges and franchises as the city of Montpelier : " Sta- 
 tuimus edicto irrevocabili . . . burgenses predictos . . . vocari burgenses Aqua- 
 rum Mortuarum, prout burgenses Montispessulani antea vocabantur ; volentes ut 
 universi et singuli cujuscumque conditionis et status qui voluerint se burgenses 
 nostros constituere, modo et forma consuetis et debitis, hoc facere possint in 
 dicta villa Aquarum Mortuarum, prout in dicto loco Montispessulani." (La 
 Thomass., Local Customs, ch. cv.) 
 
 2 Majori et juratis . . . satisfactionem faciet. (Charter of the commune of Cerny. 
 La Thomass., Local Customs, ch. civ.) 
 
 3 The jurats, which is the ordinary name in the province of La Guienne of the 
 magistrates of the people. (La Thomass., Local Customs, ch. xix.) 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 14! 
 
 mimes confirmed or established. For example, a letter of Theodoric, 
 King of Italy, in the year 510, confirms the immunities previously 
 granted to the city of Marseilles. 1 A formula of Marculfus speaks 
 of communal property, and thus proves that the word commune itself 
 existed toward the end of the sixth century. 2 An act of sale of the 
 year 877 mentions a communal way , and proves that the word com 
 mune was likewise used in the ninth. 3 A diploma of Charlemagne, 
 of the year 777, confirms the privileges of a place called Salona, in 
 the bishopric of Metz. 4 A charter of Pons, Count d Alby, of the 
 year 797, declares free a borough called Viancium. 5 Lastly, a 
 charter of the 3oth of March, 1068, mentions Jane, wife of Pierre de 
 Coq, burgher of Pontoise. 6 The establishment of communes, that 
 is to say, of the self-government of freedmen, is then, as we have 
 said, a permanent fact of history. All that can be said of the 
 twelfth century, is that it was the precise moment when the greater 
 part of the populations passing from slavery found themselves 
 organized for self-government ; a commune formed then set the 
 example for a crowd of others. Thus there was a time in the 
 history of Greece, when all the cities wished for a commune like 
 that of Athens, and another time in the history of Italy, when all 
 the cities desired a commune like that of Rome. 
 
 We repeat, the commune is nothing else than the self-govern 
 ment of the freed races, whatever may have been, in other respects, 
 the origin, extent, or name of that government ; whether it was 
 taken by force, granted, or purchased; whether absolute or limited; 
 whether called communio, or communia, or communitas, or liber- 
 tas, or consuetudines, or franchisia, or burgesia. Communes were 
 formed all along the history of peoples, as slaves attained their lib 
 erty, and the grave question of knowing to what precise epoch the 
 establishment of communes dates back, whether to Louis the Fat, 
 
 1 Cassiodori variar., lib. iv., epist. xxvi. 
 
 2 Cum terris, silvis, campis, pratis, pascuis, communiis, necnon et mancipiis. 
 (Formul. Marculf., a Lindenbrogio edit., No. 58.) 
 
 3 Speaking of the boundaries of a piece of land : De uno fronte centerius 
 communalis pergit ; de alio vero fronte strada publica pergit. (Perard. Recueil de 
 pieces curieuses, p. 155, 156.) 
 
 * D. Calmet, History of Lorraine, t. i. 287. 
 
 5 Catel., Counts of Toulouse, p. 100. 
 
 6 History of the Curacy of Pontoise k Venin, p. 22. 
 
142 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 or Philip the First, is a scientific puerility, into which the critic of 
 our day should take care not to fall. 
 
 The communes, which were formed, confirmed, or extended in 
 France, in all the course of our history, were of two kinds. One, 
 the least numerous, were a remnant of the Roman communes, or 
 of the Roman municipia, (for these two expressions are identical,) 
 with which Gaul was covered during the golden era of the empire. 
 The other was the aboriginal, national communes, which sprang up 
 spontaneously upon the soil, and were formed little by little, year 
 by year, as the slaves attained their liberty. 
 
 The communes of Roman origin were themselves of two kinds : 
 one entire, having resisted, without dissolution, all the waves of 
 invasion, and having preserved intact their primitive and original 
 form ; the others, mutilated, defaced, scarce recognizable, being 
 nothing more than a ruin marked only by some remnant of an in 
 scription, rising pitifully to the surface of new manners, like a half- 
 buried stone of a monument which has long since disappeared. 
 
 As is well believed, the Roman communes, which passed through 
 the middle ages, were few in number. But few suspect that when, 
 in the year 1556, the Edict of Moulins came to take away from the 
 magistrates the right of civil jurisdiction, on the ground that they 
 held it by grant, and that the king could take away what the king 
 had given, some of them resisted the edict, replying and proving 
 that they were more ancient than the French monarchy. The 
 commune of Rheims was the first which ventured upon this memor 
 able struggle. The Parliament of Paris recognized the legitimacy 
 of their pretensions by decree of the 25th May, I568. 1 Boulogne 
 and Angouleme followed the example of Rheims. The pretensions 
 of Boulogne were recognized to be founded in right by the decree 
 of parliament of January, 1571. Those of Angouleme by decree 
 of the year 1572, which, however, did not prevent the execution of 
 the Edict of Moulins, 2 by letters-patent. Toulouse was treated in 
 the same way, that is to say, deprived by letters-patent of the right 
 of civil jurisdiction, although she proved that her magistracy, or 
 capitoulat, was anterior to Clovis. 8 
 
 1 Borgies, Discourse on the Antiquity of the Magistracy of the City of Rheims. 
 
 2 Dubos, History of the Establishment of the French Monarchy in Gaul, lib. 
 vi., ch. xii. 
 
 8 La Faille, Annals of Toulouse, t. i., p. 55. 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 143 
 
 The communes, that were only a debris of the Roman munici 
 palities, and in which a young and vigorous franchise of the mid 
 dle ages was grafted on the old trunk of a curia, were very numer 
 ous. M. Raynouard cites nearly a hundred in two chapters only of 
 his History of Municipal Rights; 1 and M. de Savigny, in his curious 
 and patient work on the History of the Roman Law in the middle 
 ages, cites many examples of ancient Roman cities becoming French 
 communes. We refer, on this point, to the two books we have men 
 tioned, having no taste for treating questions which have been already 
 treated, and well treated, and we pass on to the communes of purely 
 French origin, and which arose as the freedmen accumulated on some 
 point of territory. 
 
 Nothing is more frequent in the history of the middle ages than 
 the formation of communes with men recently emerged from slavery. 
 We have, therefore, plenty of examples to choose from. The re 
 volt of the burghers of Bruges, and the assassination of Charles the 
 Good, Count of Flanders, in 1127, was one of the events of demo 
 cratic nature and intent, which resounded most in the twelfth cen 
 tury. Now, the prevot of the Chapter of Bruges, the first and 
 richest of their burghers, the author and instigator of the sedition, 
 Bertulphe, was claimed by the count as a slave, enjoying, it is true, 
 a kind of liberty, but only by favor and complaisance. It is cer 
 tain, on the one hand, by the inquest, which the count caused to 
 be made, that Bertulphe could not produce any act of emancipation, 
 and it is true, on the other, that he was so much a slave, although 
 he had become prevot ? that is, grand judge in all the extent of 
 the jurisdiction of the chapter, that a cavalier, who had married 
 one of his nieces, had himself declared a slave at the end of a year 
 and a day, following the custom of the country. 2 The great revolt 
 of the inhabitants of Veselay against the Abbe and Chapter of St. 
 Marie Madeleine de Veselay, in 1152, also offers the spectacle af a 
 tumultuous association of serfs and slaves, who wished to obtain the 
 legal association of a commune ; and, in the insurrectionary and 
 provisional municipality which was formed, the prevot Simon was 
 reclaimed by the chapter as a slave. 3 
 
 1 Book 3, chap, viii., xi. 
 
 2 Vita Caroli Boni, auctor Galbert. Brugens. notar. Apud Script, rer. Franc., t. 
 xiu., p. 347. 
 
 3 Hugues de Poitiers, Chronicles of Ve selay. 
 
144 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 La Thomassiere says : There are few cities in the kingdom that do 
 not bear the marks of this servitude, and that have not been re 
 deemed from it by the grant of privileges, which conferred citizen 
 ship upon them. It is especially in the customs established among 
 the freedmen, who, having long had to contend with family interests 
 and the rentage of land, before being completely free, had need of a 
 special law, not being able to take advantage of the civil law; it is 
 especially in the customs, we say, that we find numberless and unde 
 niable traces of the ancient slavery of the burghers, who constituted 
 the communes. Thus, the communal charter granted by Philip Au 
 gustus to the inhabitants of St. Jean d Angely, in 1204, accords to 
 them the right of giving their children in marriage, and of making a 
 will, which clearly proves that they did not previously have this right, 
 and that they had been slaves. 1 And thus another charter, granted 
 by Philip Augustus to the burghers of the city of Bourges, in 1197, 
 also gives to them the right of devising by will, which ranks them 
 in the same category with those of St. Jean d Angely. 2 Likewise, 
 a charter granted to the inhabitants of Chateau Roux, on the i5th No 
 vember, 1370, by Guy II., Lord of Chauvigny and Chateauroux, con 
 cedes to them the rights of inheritance ; 3 and even the burghers of 
 Paris themselves could only have the guardianship of their children 
 and parents, by special grant recorded in the book of royal ordi 
 nances in the office of the Prdvot of Merchants. 4 So, the inhabitants 
 of the faubourg St. Germain, who made part of the ancient commune 
 of Paris, communitas habitatorum villa Parisiensis, in the words of 
 a decree of parliament of the ist June, 1316, which we have quoted, 
 were set free by Frere Thomas de Mauleon, Abbe" of St. Germain, 
 in consideration of the sum of two hundred Paris livres. 5 So, the 
 plebeians, roturiers, in mass, were degraded by certain customs, as 
 for example, the custom of Bretagne, which denied them the right 
 
 1 Cartul. de Philippe Auguste, p. 998. 
 
 2 ... Noverint universi prsesentes . . . nos bene velle ut quando aliquis ex burgen- 
 sibus nostris Biturigensibus moriens legatum suum fecerit, ipse, si voluerit, par- 
 tern suam et partem puerorum suorum in manibus alicujus amicorum suorum mittat. 
 (Cited by La Thomassiere, Local Customs, chap, xlviii.) 
 
 3 Item, que les dits habitans pourraint et pourront succeder Pun a 1 autre, en 
 quelque degre, ordonner de leur biens, meubles, heritages, a leur pure et liberale 
 volonte*. (Cited by La Thomassiere, Local Customs, chap. Ixxv.) 
 
 4 Bacquet, Des Francs Fiefs, part, i., chap x., No. 6. 
 
 5 Renat. Chopin. De Moribus Parisiens, lib. ii., tit. viii., where he quote^ the 
 charter. 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 145 
 
 of testifying on certain occasions. 1 So a clause of the charter ac 
 corded by the Bishop Geoffrey to the city of Amiens, under penalty 
 of a fine, forbids calling the burghers serfs ; whence it follows that 
 they had only recently ceased to be such. 2 So, Roger de Rosoy, 
 having become Bishop of Laon, in 1177, applied to Louis VII. , 
 praying him to have pity on his church, by abolishing the commune 
 of Laon, which he calls the commune of his serfs. 8 
 
 Behold a last example of what we have said in relation to the 
 formation of communes by slaves, and we limit ourselves to this, 
 among many others, because it generalizes our principle, and con 
 firms it theoretically. It is a passage of Guibert, Abbe of Nogent, 
 quoted and translated by M. Thierry, in his fourteenth letter on the 
 History of France, but translated with an essential omission, which 
 we are going to supply : " Commune, new and execrable word, sig 
 nifies that all those, who are subject to poll tax, shall only pay once 
 a year, to their masters, the customary dues of serfdom ; and as to 
 the other arbitrary taxes customarily inflicted upon serfs, they are 
 altogether exempt. * We see clearly by this passage, applicable to 
 all the communes, that those, who formed them, were previously 
 subjected to a poll tax, were serfs, and had masters. 
 
 It now remains for us to show rapidly, and as a matter of second 
 ary importance, the form of the communes. 
 
 We distinguish in the communes two sorts of persons, the burghers 
 and the dwellers (nianants}. The burghers were members of the 
 
 1 Nul roturier doit-etre reu en temoignage pour fait de noblesse, de personne, 
 ni de fiefs. (Cout. Nouv. de Bretagne, art. 152.) 
 
 2 Guibert. Abbat. de Novigent, de Vita sua. Apud Script, rer. Franc., t. xii. 
 
 3 It was, in fact, a commune formed by the serfs of the Bishop of Laon. "Ho 
 mines de Lauduno . . . communiam ordinarunt habere, et sic perperam cogitantes 
 a jugo servitutis cervices suas et suorum heredum excutere arbitrati sunt. At 
 Rogerius, egregius Laudanensis episcopus regis presentiam adiit, et ecclesiae suae 
 misereretur, communiam servorum suorum delendo, omnibus modis exoravit. 
 (Chronic, anonym. Canonici. Laudurens. Apud Script, rer. Franc., t. xiii., p. 677.) 
 
 4 Communio autem, novum ac pessimum nomen, sic se habet, ut capita censi 
 omnes solitum servitutis debitum dominis semel in anno solvant . . . caeterae cen- 
 suum exactiones, quae servis infligi solent, omnibus modis vacent. (Guibert. Ab 
 bat. de Vita sua, lib. iii., cap. vii., Apud Script, rer. Franc, t. xii.) 
 
 See the translation of M. Thierry, which will explain our idea perfectly by the 
 omission found there. " Commune is a word, etc., which signifies that taxable 
 people paid only once a year to their lord the dues which they owed him." It 
 is to be remarked, that taxable people is not a proper translation of capite censi, 
 which signifies slave, or serf of the body ; and that these words of Guibert, solitum 
 servitutis debitum, which confirms this meaning, are omitted. 
 
14 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 commune ; that is to say, those, who were inscribed on the registers 
 of the municipality, and who had sworn to observe its laws. The 
 dwellers were simply people from without, who had -their domicile 
 in the city erected into a commune, without* participating in its 
 privileges, or even natives, whom low birth made yet unworthy of 
 the immunities of the borough. 
 
 This distinction between burghers and dwellers is remarked in 
 the communes of antiquity, as well as in the communes of the middle 
 ages. A passage of Thucydides shows that the burghers of Athens 
 were called mo^iVat, cives, citizens, and the dwellers jUftoi xot, manentes, 
 inhabitants. The Roman laws also make a great distinction be 
 tween the burghers, whom they called cives, and the dwellers, whom 
 they called incolce. 1 Besides, without having the right of burgher- 
 ship by birth, it could be acquired, as we have said, by an inscrip 
 tion on the municipal registers. Plutarch relates an inscription 
 made at Rome, under the censorship of T. Quintius Flaminius, 
 in favor of a great number of individuals born of free parents. 2 
 Thucydides also speaks, in the history of the Peloponnesian war, of 
 many foreigners, whom the Leontines inscribed on their registers 
 as burghers. 3 An ordinance of Philip IV., of the year 1302, like 
 wise mentions burghers, whom it calls recepti et annotati, received 
 and inscribed;* and we read in a very remarkable dissertation, in 
 troductory to the History of Paris by Felibien, that foreigners, who 
 wished to become burghers of Paris, caused themselves to be regis 
 tered at the Hotel de Ville. 5 
 
 The inhabitants of a city, who obtained or purchased their lib 
 erty, the right of commune, organized for themselves a government 
 at their pleasure. In general it is to be remarked that the cities, 
 which obtained the right of commune, copied voluntarily one from 
 another. The charter of Laon, for example, had as many imitators 
 
 1 Gives quidem origo . . . incolas vero . . . domicilium facit. (Code of Justi 
 nian, lib. x., tit. xxxix., law vii.) 
 
 2 Upoffeit^avTO <!e n-oXiraj diroypa<pe.i>ovs iravrag oaoi yoviuv tXevdepwv f\aav. (Plutarch, Fla- 
 minius, chap, xviii.) 
 
 3 btovrivoi yap, dirt\6ovr<i>v AQqvaioiv CK S(Ataj . . . TroXi raj iirtypatyavro TroXXouj. 
 
 (Thucyd., lib. v., cap. iv.) 
 
 4 Est enim ordonnatum quod nullus vel nulla Burgensis recipiatur aut defend- 
 atur in aliqua Burgensi, quamdiu tenebit primam in qua receptus fuit et advocatus, 
 seu annotatus. (Ord. of Philip IV., of the year 1302, in the collection of ordi 
 nances of the kings of France. La Thomassiere, Local Customs, chap, xix.) 
 
 5 Dissertation of M. le Roi, on the origin of the Hotel de Ville, \ 9. 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. I.|/ 
 
 in the twelfth century as the English institutions in the nineteenth. 
 This government of the communes consisted of a municipal council, 
 in imitation of the ancient senates and areopagi. The number and 
 names of the members of this council were very various. Peronne 
 had twenty-two cossors. Tournay had thirty jurats. Chateauneuf, 
 in Touraine, had ten burghers. The officers of the commune of 
 Verdun were called li communs de la ville ; those of Boussac consuls ; 
 those of the city of Aix selectmen, elects ; those of Issoudun gover 
 nors ; those of Nancy free burghers. 
 
 At the head of this council was a magistrate differently called in 
 different cities. Sometimes he was called the maire, sometimes the 
 ma ieur, sometimes the prevot. Ordinarily there was at the head 
 of these councils only one magistrate ; sometimes, however, there 
 were two for example, at Tournay. The functions, as well of 
 the councilmen as of the mayor, were generally annual and always 
 elective. The election generally took place on the Monday after 
 Easter, or on the feast of St. John the Baptist. Bapaume re-elected 
 its officers every fourteen months. 
 
 The municipal magistrates took cognizance of all the affairs of 
 the commune, administrative, civil, criminal, commercial, and po 
 lice. A commune was, as we see, a complete state. It was what 
 the small republics of antiquity were, and what the free cities of 
 Germany are at this day. We have already said how the Edict of 
 Moulins began the demolition of the communes by despoiling them 
 of jurisdiction in civil matters. Half a century ago the communes 
 perished altogether in the general shipwreck of the institutions of 
 old France. There only remain three stones of this great edifice 
 erected by the hands of the freed races. These are the tribunals of 
 municipal police, the obscure jurisdiction of the prudhommes, (a) 
 and the tribunals of commerce. 
 
 We conclude by calling attention to the singular blunder com 
 mitted by the legislators of the Revolution, when they abolished the 
 ancient division of France into parishes, to establish the division by 
 communes. These brave men, whose great patriotism must excuse 
 their little learning, did not remark that the commune was not an 
 extent of territory, but a right of self-government, which certain 
 
 (a) These were men chosen by the fishermen of the French seaports, to have 
 authority over the rest and keep good order among them. 
 
148 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 cities enjoyed, and that a commune being thus a moral thing, in 
 scribed in a charter, might very well serve as a bond of union for 
 men, but not as the type of a geographical limit. The commune 
 of a city was contained in a record, and not in its walls, and the 
 grandeur of this commune depended, not on the size of the city, 
 but upon the extent of the privileges which it enjoyed. 
 
 The legislators of the Revolution, therefore, showed themselves, 
 perhaps, to be very good statesmen, but assuredly very poor histo 
 rians, when they made of the commune, which is an idea, a territo 
 rial limit, (a) 
 
 (a) Our author s very clear and precise explanation of the French commune 
 throws a flood of light on the present condition of France. The general, al 
 most universal, idea in this country, which has confounded the French com 
 mune with what is understood by the English word, communism or socialism, is 
 a great error. It is a great mistake also to confound it with agrarianism. It is 
 nothing more nor less than the right of local self-government; the right of the 
 inhabitants of a city to raise and expend their own local revenues, and to regulate 
 their own local matters, by officers chosen by themselves from among themselves, 
 instead of being governed by some "carpet-bagger" or "scalawag," appointed 
 over them by some lay or ecclesiastical lord, or by some centralized despotism, 
 called king, or emperor, or president. 
 
 M. Guizot, in his Lectures on the History of Civilization, draws a glowing pic 
 ture of the advantages of centralization and monarchy over republicanism, and 
 explains how, by a " silent and hidden process," the right of local self-govern 
 ment was taken from the cities and centred in the crown. Our author explains, 
 in a note, that the object of the Edict of Moulins was to restrict the rights of the 
 municipal judges, for the profit of the appointees of the king. The Bonapartists 
 and the Legitimists, or advocates of the old Bourbon dynasty, agree with M. 
 Guizot (who wrote in the interests of the Orleans dynasty) in his admiration for 
 a centralized despotism. The only difference between them is, as to who shall 
 exercise that power "for the profit" of his favorites a Bonaparte, a Bourbon, 
 or one of the house of Orleans ? 
 
 The communists, on the other hand, seek to take advantage of the fall of 
 Louis Napoleon, to decentralize the government into a republic, and to recover 
 the right of local self-government, of which the "silent and hidden " process of 
 centralization had robbed them. They are tired of " carpet-bag " and " scalawag " 
 rule, and wish to get rid of it. We know in the South what that is. To those, 
 who suffer under and are impoverished by it, it is equally grievous, whether 
 inflicted by an emperor or king, through the instrumentality of a standing army, 
 or by a radical Congress and a President, who wants to be an emperor, through 
 the instrumentality of a Freedmen s Bureau or a Ku-Klux Bill. 
 
 The recent act of Congress, taking away the commune of the cities of Wash- 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 149 
 
 ington and Georgetown,/^ the profit of the appointees of the President of the 
 United States, is another "Edict of Moulins" for those cities. The Ku-Klux law, 
 which has just passed Congress, taking away the commune from the States, for 
 the profit of the "carpet-baggers" and "scalawags," is another " Edict of Mou- 
 lins" for the States. 
 
 This process of centralization would seem to be what our author would call a 
 human, because universal, fact; confined to no time or country. We are begin 
 ning what republican France is seeking to put an end to. There the effort is to 
 recover the right of local self-government ; here the effort is to suppress it. Here 
 the process is open as day, and is made noisy with the cry of Ku-Klux ! There, 
 though M. Guizot says it "was silent and hidden," the cities of Toulouse, Rheims, 
 Boulogne, and AngoulSme made such a noise, in defence of their rights of com- 
 mune, that Charles IX. did not dare to do to those cities what a Radical Con 
 gress has done to what were sovereign States before there was any Congress. 
 The difference is that here the noise is made by those, who are seeking to sup 
 press the right of local self-government; there it was made by those, who were 
 defending that right. In the sixteenth century that right prevailed in France ; 
 in the nineteenth, it was trodden under the foot of centralism in the United 
 States. 
 
 Yet, after all, there must be something silent and hidden in the process ; or 
 surely the people of the North would not be so deaf as not to hear, nor so blind 
 as not to see that, as the South is impoverished, they will lose prof, table customers, 
 and when the South is stripped of all rights of local self-government, their turn 
 will come next. 
 
 If the right of local self-government enjoyed by a city or State, makes their 
 inhabitants free, e converse, the negation of that right makes them slaves. 
 
 The enslavement of the inhabitants of the cities of Washington and George 
 town, in the now Territory of Columbia, "for the profit" of the appointees of 
 the President, furnishes a remarkable illustration of the truth enunciated by M. 
 Guizot, in the passages which we have quoted in our preface. Men may become 
 "the free and intelligent artificers of a work, the plan of which they do not per 
 ceive or comprehend." The Democrats in Congress, who voted for that law, did 
 not see that they were taking a long, long step in the process of centralization. 
 The citizens of Washington and Georgetown, who urged it upon Congress, did 
 not see that, in seeking to get rid of one swarm of half-gorged flies, they were 
 exposing themselves to another more thirsty and of greater suctorial powers. 
 Their purpose was to get relief from the burdens imposed by the corrupt officials 
 foisted upon them by negroes, imported periodically, for the occasion, from the 
 adjoining States of Maryland and Virginia and the fish-landings of the Potomac. 
 But have they not mistaken the remedy ? Have they not made too much haste 
 to get well ? It is sometimes better to bear the ills we have, than fly to others 
 that we know not of. It is an old, old adage that " power is always stealing 
 from the many to the few." And it is no less true, that as the power of the few 
 
I5O HISTORY OF THE 
 
 increases, their capacity of absorption from the public treasury is magnified a 
 thousand-fold. 
 
 This enslavement of the inhabitants of the cities of Washington and George 
 town is also an exemplification of the idea, (attributed by the old Federalists 
 (monarchists) to Mr. John Quincy Adams,) that the only way to disgust the peo 
 ple of the United States with republican government, and prepare them for a 
 transition to a monarchy, or a despotism, was to join in with the ideas of demo 
 cracy, and run them to extremes. On this principle the imperialists, commonly 
 called Radicals those who, like Governor Holden of North Carolina, " want to 
 see General Grant an emperor, and his son succeed him as emperor "* have 
 acted ; and already we see the cities of the District of Columbia asking to be 
 disenfranchised, and voluntarily surrendering that right of local self-government, 
 which the cities of Toulouse, Rheims, Boulogne, and Angouleme successfully 
 asserted against Charles IX. in the sixteenth century. 
 
 The people of the District have mistaken their remedy, and have swallowed 
 an tverdose of mercury, the tendency of which is to corrupt and undermine the 
 whole constitution of republican government. They should have waited, bear 
 ing with silent and dignified endurance as the South have borne the corrupt 
 and infamous rulers forced upon them, through the instrumentality of the Freed- 
 men s Bureau and martial law until reason can regain its throne at the North, 
 and hurl the authors of their troubles from power. 
 
 Then the freedmen will settle down to some regular labor ; and range them 
 selves in one or the other of De Cassagnac s four classes of the proletariat. 
 They will become hirelings, beggars, prostitutes, or thieves, and will cease to be 
 six-barrelled voting-machines, by which bad and corrupt men can climb into 
 office, and by office put money in their purses. Then, without in any way in 
 fringing on any of the rights secured to them by the constitutional amendments, 
 they can easily be brought to abandon the idea that less than 4,000,000 of negroes, 
 lately slaves, can govern more than 30,000,000 of free-born whites. Then the 
 necessity for employment or protection on the one hand, and for labor on the 
 other, will again bring the freedmen and their late masters into kindly relations. 
 Then the freedmen will cease to be the means of creating a disgust for demo 
 cratic principles, and by fair and just treatment may in time be educated to exer 
 cise honestly and intelligently their right of suffrage. 
 
 * See testimony of Rev. J. B. Smith, principal of the normal school for the education of colored 
 teachers, at Raleigh, N. Carolina. Sen. Doc., 42d Cong., ist Sess., Report No. i, page 221. 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 SYMPTOMS OF THE ANCIENT COMMUNE HIRELINGS AND 
 
 BEGGARS. 
 
 TO repeat one of the principal ideas, on which the economy of 
 this book rests, the commune is not, as now and in the present 
 state of historic study is generally believed, a fact of modern times 
 and Western kingdoms. It is also an error to believe that the first 
 formation of communes dates only from the twelfth century. As 
 we think, the commune is a general fact, universal, human, be 
 longing to all countries and to all times ; a fact, developed under 
 the certain circumstances, which we have shown, among the He 
 brews, Greeks, and Romans, as well as among us, absolutely by the 
 same causes, and almost in the same form. There is among all 
 peoples an element we have said what it is which undergoes a 
 certain fermentation, a certain secular preparation, and when the 
 moment arrives, is regularly, infallibly metamorphosed, and be 
 comes the commune. This metamorphosis, we say, takes place in 
 every country, because it operates on a human element ; but it is 
 not always taking place, because it is the supreme effect of many 
 successive causes, which must have the natural delay of their gesta 
 tion. Admitting this, it follows then that at a given time every 
 people have their communes. 
 
 Our intention, in a matter so grave, is not only to make an 
 assertion, but to prove it. We do not shrink from the necessity 
 of establishing the existence of communes among the ancients. 
 Nevertheless the reader must find it very natural that we should 
 make the conditions of our labor as little arduous as possible, leav 
 ing to him the sincerity and strictness which it is our desire to give 
 him. Thus we have commenced by re-establishing, as exactly as 
 we knew how, the French commune in all the truth of its principles 
 and in all the fidelity of its form. We have given the first place to 
 modern, before ancient, times, because the latter are less under our 
 hands, and are more concealed from our knowledge. In this we 
 have had no other object than to proceed from the more known to 
 
152 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 the less known ; to spare the reader the prolonged and fatiguing 
 effort of the analysis, which we must make, to rebuild the ancient 
 commune directly, without any point of comparison, without look 
 ing elsewhere, and collecting one by one thedebris, which it has 
 left in history j and, on the contrary, to give him the easy and 
 complete view of the commune at an epoch near to us, in which it 
 appears well determined and plain, to aid us afterward to recog 
 nize its principle and form at an epoch remote from us, in which 
 it only appears, especially at the first glance, uncertain, undeter 
 mined, and doubtful. 
 
 But we must premise that we shall not be so categorical in regard 
 to the ancient communes as we have been in reference to the French 
 commune, or, better said, we will not be so systematic and complete. 
 First, the important thing for us in this book is less to fix the form 
 and mechanism of the commune among the ancients, than to re 
 move all doubt of its existence. It is especially to this last point 
 that we direct our efforts. Besides, we havebe^n so explicit in every 
 thing relating to the French commune, only that we might not have 
 to be so again in what relates to the ancient commune, which is in 
 our opinion an historic fact exactly similar. We will, therefore, 
 confine ourselves to presenting the different order of symptoms, 
 which attest in the most formal manner the existence of the ancient 
 commune, leaving the reader free to fix more or less its form, after 
 the complete type, which we have placed before his eyes. 
 
 When we speak of the antique commune, we wish to designate 
 the Hebrew, Greek, and Roman. 
 
 We have not yet found a natural occasion for saying why we 
 have introduced the Jewish municipality. It is nevertheless an ex 
 planation necessary for us, and which we are going to venture here, 
 in the form of parenthesis, without knowing precisely whether we 
 have selected the best or the worst moment for it. We have placed, 
 or rather we wish to place, the Jewish commune alongside of the 
 Greek, Roman, and French ; because the Jews, who are the trunk 
 and centre of all Semitic people, may be considered as represent 
 ing the East; and we desire, in the universal, human, and absolute 
 explanation, which we wish to give of the commune, to show it 
 always identical in the most opposite circumstances ; for example, 
 among the peoples of the East and among the peoples of the West. 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 153 
 
 The testimony which we have sought, and are going still to seek, 
 in the Bible, is not then an effect of the desire to display our 
 erudition, but makes an integral part of our thoughts, and is the 
 natural stay of our subject. We resume. 
 
 We said that there are symptoms, the presence of which, suffi 
 ciently established, always infallibly certify the formation of com 
 munes. It is by the aid of these symptoms that we proceed to 
 re-establish the ancient commune. 
 
 The first of these signs is the existence of hirelings and beggars. 
 Without wishing to repeat on this subject what we have already said 
 at the commencement of this book, it is evident, that in the primi 
 tive periods, that is to say, during the periods of pure slavery, there > ^- 
 were no beggars, because each master supported his slaves. Even 
 now, notwithstanding the very considerable decline of their primi 
 tive institutions, the European colonies of the Antilles (a) and of 
 the Indian Sea have not one single beggar ; and for some years, we 
 have a sort of likeness, sufficiently faithful, of people -under their 
 primitive constitution, in the Arabs of Atlas and the Desert, where 
 mendicity is a thing perfectly unknown, and unheard of; for this 
 reason, that there the masters are above want, because they are mas 
 ters, and the slaves also, because they are slaves ; the former having 
 all they want, since they are able to give, and the latter also, as 
 they receive what they need from their masters. The first paupersT 
 seen since the formation of great peoples, thus come from the hire 
 ling freedmen, who, having been turned over to themselves, with 
 little property or industry, that is to say, in the language of the 
 economists, with a capital and a credit naturally very inconsider 
 able, run the risk of spending the one, and losing the other, and 
 of being reduced to beggary for their support. Now, as the fewer 
 hireling laborers there are in a country, the greater the chances of 
 making a living, to find beggars among a people is a sign that the 
 hirelings, that is to say, the freedmen, are already there in great 
 number ; and, on the other hand, as the freedmen have always and 
 everywhere been repelled with disdain from the government, () and 
 
 (a) How different the condition of the West Indies, now that pauperism and 
 beggary have become, by emancipation, the normal condition of three-fourths of 
 the freedmen ! 
 
 (6) The only exception, and a very notable one it is, to the general rule here laid 
 
 
154 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 from the alliances of noble families, to find the freedmen numerous 
 among any people, furnishes a strong presumption, is almost a posi 
 tive indication that they form a separate association, fraternity, cor 
 poration, or commune, which are all more or less the same thing. 
 
 Here we have a sign, on the faith of which we are disposed to 
 believe, in presence of texts from the Odyssey, from Leviticus and 
 Deuteronomy, that there had been enfranchisements of communes 
 among the Greeks, and among the Jews, at the time of the disper 
 sion of the chiefs, and at the epoch of the sojourn in the desert. 
 We have above indicated our proofs, which are the existence of 
 hirelings and beggars. Beggars are mentioned in the Odyssey, in 
 Hesiod, and in Leviticus. We have already said that they are not 
 to be found in the Iliad ; and in the primitive poets, above all in 
 Homer, silence as to a great fact is almost equivalent to an affirma 
 tion, because of the scrupulous exactness with which all realities, 
 historic, political, and even scientific, moral, and religious, are there 
 always set forth. We say that there is no mention of paupers in 
 
 down by our author, is to be found in the condition of the Southern States, since 
 the late war. There the freedmen now fill the legislative halls, and control the 
 government, while their former masters, the once free citizens of a State, have been 
 v deprived of their commune, or right of self-government. This remarkable phe 
 nomenon is not without a cause, which is this : all other emancipations, of which 
 we read in history, were made by the masters themselves, either from good-will 
 to their slaves, or to rid themselves of the burden of their support. But in this 
 instance, emancipation was forced upon the masters by their conquerors ; and, 
 as the avowed object of those conquerors was to make free labor cheaper than 
 slave labor, that is to say, " to reduce the wages of labor below the cost of feeding 
 and clothing a slave and taking care of him in infancy, sickness and old age" the 
 war was not made upon the slaveholders because they held slaves, so much as 
 because they voted, with the working classes of the North, to shape the legisla 
 tion of the country so as to keep up the wages of labor, and keep down the cost 
 of living. Therefore, the late masters have, since the war, been as much as pos 
 sible excluded from all participation in the government ; while the late slaves. 
 have been placed in power by the bayonets of the conquerors, for an additional 
 reason, namely, because the natural tendency of the European immigrants, Ger 
 mans and Irish especially, is toward the Democratic party, because of its pro 
 clivities for high wages and cheap living. Therefore, the monarchists, who de 
 spise democracy, and the capitalists, who seek to reduce wages, have sought to 
 use the freed negro in the Southern States as a counterpoise to the Irish and Ger 
 mans in the North and West. 
 
 S> ^--M^t Cs W, OvtXV 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 155 
 
 the Iliad ; but we must add, that there is in the Odyssey, a poem 
 which we consider as a little posterior ; for there is a passage in the 
 fourth book, which says that there were no paupers in the Greek 
 camp. 1 
 
 Moreover, other reasons, for we give them all, those that are 
 against us, as sincerely as those for us other reasons cause us to 
 affirm that, although there is no mention of paupers in the Iliad, 
 the Trojan population must have been organized as a commune. 
 First, mention is made of hirelings in the twenty-first book ; 2 and 
 as to the establishment of municipalities, the existence of hirelings 
 is a sign almost as certain as the existence of paupers, as it presup 
 poses, though in a less degree, the operation of manumissions. In 
 the second place, in a passage of the ninth book, mention is plainly 
 made of an association, which could be no other than a communal 
 association, or an industrial corporation. Achilles says to Ajax, 
 that he had been treated by Agamemnon like a wretch driven from 
 y his fraternity. 3 This passage is literally repeated in the sixteenth 
 book, verse 59. The word fjutavaaiys by itself only signifies one 
 banished from an association, a body, a city ; but the word of con 
 tempt, fatfujtos, evidently indicates that the question was of an asso 
 ciation much below Achilles, who was a gentleman, and often 
 boasted of it. Finally, and we only come to proof by words, after 
 having given the proof by facts, the expression, burgher or citizen, 
 formally appears in the Iliad, book twenty-second.* We have seen, 
 in the preceding chapter, that the word rto>.<,V>7$ expressly signifies 
 burgher, in Thucydides. Besides, we must not forget how precise, 
 particular, and of exact meaning the primitive writings are. More 
 over, there are so many passages in Homer that establish the ele 
 vated position of the Trojan nobility, that it is not possible to ap- 
 
 1 A.VTOV #om 
 At/CTj;, &s ovtiev rolof lr\v iiri vijvolv 
 
 (Homer. Odyssey, lib. iv., v. 247, 248.) 
 ^TiJre rwt Qirjoara m<r8ov aitavra. 
 AKO^i6(t)v IWAayoj affftX^aaj 6 ansnt^irsv^ 
 
 (Iliad, lib. xxi., v. 451, 452.) 
 3 Mvwro/icii , wj fttgnxfa\N> ev Apyttotaiv cpcfcc 
 
 (Iliad, lib. ix., v. 647, 648.) 
 
 hit ie artvaxovro vo\iTai. 
 
 (Iliad, lib. xxii., v. 429.) 
 
156 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 ply the word TtoXtVot to others than the burghers. Finally, there are 
 many other reasons, which we will present hereafter, why we do not 
 hesitate to affirm that Troy had a commune. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 SYMPTOMS OF THE ANCIENT COMMUNE ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 second sign by which, among ancient peoples, the forma- 
 A tion of communes is infallibly recognized, is the existence of 
 walled cities. 
 
 We hasten to resume, and make this observation : it is a great 
 error to imagine, without having closely examined, that the con 
 struction of houses or of cities has always been a matter of indiffer 
 ence, caprice, or whim, and that it would be impossible to draw 
 from it any instruction. It is true that at present the history of 
 architecture proves nothing, for the simple reason that there is no 
 history of architecture. But if that history were written, we would 
 very soon realize that architecture has its laws like every other 
 order of facts ; that intimately connected with the nature of families 
 and their developments, it always receives a counterblow from 
 social revolutions, and that such and such form of habitations in a 
 country may, after thousands of years, aid the historian to recognize 
 such or such species of inhabitants, as the shells that the laborer s 
 plough raises to the surface cause us to say, with certainty, The sea 
 has been here. 
 
 On our own account, and only as far as the exposition of our ideas 
 about the ancient commune requires, we will essay to write a chapter 
 of the history of architecture. We must be permitted meanwhile 
 to point out the singular position of every historian of the present 
 day, on account of the disorder, incoherence, and, above all, the 
 insufficiency of their studies. Having ventured to describe the 
 communal and burgher life of antiquity, it happens that we have 
 occasion to consult on one point the history of architecture ; but 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 157 
 
 this history has not been written. We will have need to consult 
 in the next chapter the history of ancient law ; but that too has 
 not been written. Whenever, then, we wish to penetrate into the 
 critical history of an order of facts other than the list of kings, 
 cities, and battles, we are arrested constantly by the want of certain 
 preparatory and necessary works. Thus, having now undertaken to 
 write the history of the ancient communes, we are forced to leave 
 that subject, and first, for our own special use, write a small chapter 
 of the history of architecture ; like a woodman, who had started to 
 cut down a forest, and finds it necessary to retrace his steps to forge 
 an axe. 
 
 We were just saying that the existence of walled cities proves 
 among ancient peoples the existence of communes. We will, in 
 fact, show that whenever a city was enclosed with a wall, it is a 
 proof that its houses were constructed in blocks, en patts, as we 
 say in our language, insulas, as would be said in the Latin tongue. 
 Now, on the other hand, we will show that in the commencement of 
 all peoples, the noble families always inhabited isolated houses, and 
 the burgher families houses built together and associated ; so that a 
 castle invariably corresponds to a gentleman, as a partition wall in 
 fallibly corresponds to two burghers. 
 
 Without going farther, we can say in two words, reserving all the 
 developments and proof, that noble families must naturally have in 
 habited houses differently constructed from those of the burgher 
 families. We have already shown that, in the first ages of every 
 people, every chief of a family had jurisdiction. Now in all times, 
 in antiquity as in the middle ages, the centre of the jurisdiction was 
 the seignorial tower. For example, all the territory of the ancient 
 Viscount of Paris was held in fee from the Tower of the Louvre. 
 It must necessarily then have been that the residence of every noble 
 family stood alone, because every seigniory was indivisible. In a 
 word, architecture always represents the organization of society; 
 for the nobles it built isolated houses ; for the associated burghers, 
 associated houses. 
 
 We regret to enter now, ever so little, on the history of the noble 
 races, which we purpose to treat separately ; but the noble races 
 and the slave races are two great facts so intimately connected that in 
 a multitude of cases it is impossible to speak of one without touch- 
 
158 HISTORV OF THE 
 
 ing upon the other. There are some occasions, when they are so 
 evidently the counterparts, the cause or the effect, the limitation 
 or the generalization of each other, that it becomes indispensable 
 to study them together to fully comprehend them separately. We 
 will therefore briefly explain what the isolated houses were, to explain 
 fully what the associated houses were. 
 
 Primitively, that is to say, before the time of emancipations for 
 it is necessary to go back so far, that the two histories, of the noble 
 races, and of the slave races, may be distinct, and not encroach 
 upon each other primitively, an isolated house, a castle, always 
 belonged to a gentleman, to one of the nobles, to one of the 
 fathers, whom the poets call divine, and to this castle a tower was 
 essential. This is fundamental and universal, and nothing is more 
 historically correct than the expression of Horace in the ode, where 
 he says that "death strikes equally the huts of the poor and the 
 towers of the princely races." l Turn s means strictly DONJON in 
 this passage, and we will tell why. 
 
 In the first ode of Horace, in which the poet dedicates his verses 
 to Maecenas, he calls him, in his language, atavis edite regibus? 
 issue of the blood of kings, as the translators say ; which, in our 
 opinion, is a wrong construction. The difficulty of the passage is 
 in the word regibus, which is erroneously translated king, which is 
 the modern meaning, and not the true one in this case. First, it 
 should be remarked that the ode of Horace is dedicatory, and con 
 sequently Maecenas ought to be designated in it by the titles which 
 he bore officially. He is, in fact, designated in it by the title of 
 rex, which is in the ode a word of strict sense, belonging to the 
 heraldic vocabulary of the Roman nobility, and ought to be trans 
 lated in French prince, equally in the strict sense, and signifying 
 what this word signifies in a name like that of M. le Prince 
 d Henin, or M. le Prince de la Tremoille. Maecenas, in fact, 
 took in the public acts the title of rex, which proves very clearly 
 that it does not signify king, as the translators of Horace think. 
 Besides, a passage of Plutarch is very explicit on this point, for he 
 
 1 Pallida mors oequo pulsat pede pauperum tabernas 
 
 Regumqueturres. (Horat. Carmin., lib. i., od. iv.) 
 
 1 Maecenas, atavis edite regibus. (Horat. Carmin., lib. i., od. i., v. I.) 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. I5Q 
 
 says that there were at Rome four families, the Mamerci, the Cal- 
 purnii, the Pomponii, and the Pinarii, who alone had the right of 
 signing and taking the title of reges. Plutarch adds that these 
 four families justified this title, in saying that they were descended 
 from Numa. 1 Now, Maecenas was of one of these families. It 
 results from this passage of Plutarch that the explanation, true or 
 false, of the origin of the title of prince, given by the four families 
 which bore it, was invented too late. It is thus that the first-born 
 of the house of Rohan also justify their title of prince, by saying 
 that they were descended from the dukes of Brittany, which is only 
 half true ; for they are descended from them, but only through the 
 females. All that we have said of the princely title of Maecenas 
 will be strengthened by the evidence in the second volume of this 
 work, which will treat of the noble races, and in which we will 
 essay to revive the principles which regulated proper names, the 
 blazon, the titling, in fine, all the heraldic ceremonial of the Greek 
 and the Roman nobility. 
 
 We have then shown that in the verse of Horace, of which we 
 speak, the word rex signifies prince. Now this signification, which 
 is the true one, reacts upon that of the word turns, in the same 
 verse, which does not mean simply tower, but seignorial tower, 
 donjon. In its character of a seignorial house, the house of a gen 
 tleman, that of a Maecenas, ought to have had a donjon. It, in fact, 
 had one. Horace mentions it in an ode, in which he writes to 
 Maecenas that he will be happy to drink with him under his roof. 2 
 
 I O< 6z npof ravrrj rcaaapaf tuouj avaypaipovoiv avrov fNot^afV Ilo/*?ra)^a, TIivov, KaXrroi-, 
 ^.afiepKOv, &>f EKaarov OIKOV 6ia6o\ i rtv *rai ysvovf ii/ripou /caraAtTmv uvai yap and ^tv TOV 
 rto/ujra^of rovj riofiiruviovg, dno di U.IVOM rouj Hivapiovf, and rJc KaXn-ou rouj KaXrrovpviovf, 
 arro <5c Ma/*tp<fou rouj Ma^cp/a ovf 015 <5ta TOVTO KOI p?ya$ yeveaftai napavvpiov, 6irsp ian 
 /?a<T(Xca{. (Plutarch, Numa, ch. xxi.) 
 
 The text of this passage proves very clearly that reges, in the present case, was 
 a technical word, and did not signify king, since Plutarch, who could not trans 
 late it strictly into Greek, Grecianizes it, and renders it by //ya{, adding only for 
 his Greek readers that this word means to say, in their language, 0aai\iai ; but 
 that was only the approximative and derivative sense, since the primitive and 
 proper sense had no corresponding word in the Greek language, unless pnya s , 
 which is a barbarism. 
 
 a , Quando 
 
 Tecum sub alta, sic quando Jovi gratum dome, 
 Beate Maecenas, bibam? (Horat. Epod., lib. od. 9.) 
 
I6O HISTORY OF THE 
 
 Besides, this tower is expressly named by Suetonius, who says that 
 Nero went up into it to see the burning of Rome. 1 
 
 The characteristic of all the houses of the nobles was, as we have 
 said, to have a tower, and to be isolated. It is 9. principle, which 
 has no exception among any people in the primitive times. Thus, 
 in the Iliad, Patroclus and Hector are mentioned as having a high 
 house, 2 and, in the ^Eneid, Turnus also has one. 3 
 
 More than that. We may descend from the Homeric tijnes to 
 those nearer the Christian era, without ceasing to find isolation 
 and the tower the characteristic signs of seignorial houses. In the 
 Anabasis, Xenophon cites a village without walls, and consequently, 
 as we will show, a village of nobles, whose houses were surmounted 
 by towers,* and a little farther on he also mentions a chief of a tribe 
 of Asia Minor, who lived in a tower. 5 
 
 The history of the Jews is full of analogous facts. To limit our 
 examples, we will cite Demetrius, King of Syria, who inhabited, at 
 some distance from Antioch, a castle with four great towers, 6 and 
 Herod the Great, who built, sixty stadii from Jerusalem, a pleasure 
 castle, which also had towers at its extremities. 7 
 
 As to the Romans, Suetonius relates that Augustus, being still an 
 infant, disappeared one day from the family country-seat, where he 
 was raised, and that the women, after a long search, found him at 
 the top of the tower. 8 As to the form of these towers, it appears 
 that they were round, and that they were at the angles of the build 
 ing. This, at least, is what is proved by a tower almost entire in a 
 Roman wall, which may be seen in the curious Pelasgian Museum 
 
 1 Hoc incendium e turri Mseceatiana prospectans. (Sueton. Tranquil., Nero, 
 Claudius Caesar, cap. xxxvi.) 
 
 2 rijjcpt$is jieya <5/ia. (Horn. Iliad., lib. xix., v. 333.) 
 Ad/iot> i>\^ri\oio. (Horn. Iliad., lib. xxii., v. 440.) 
 
 Tectis hie Turnus in altis. (Virg. ^Eneid., lib. vii., v. 443.) 
 
 E j 61 fiv d<piKOVTO Kupriv, jjtyaAi? rs fiv, xai ~Raai\tiov rt il\ ra> earpairrj, rat cnl raif 
 
 TT\S <rracj ol/aatj nSpacij iirrtaav. (Xenophon, Anabasis, lib. iv., ch. iv., $2.) 
 
 O i f>v t rvpaci jiaAa $uAarr6^i/oj. (Xenophon, Anabasis, lib. vii., cap. ii., $ 21.) 
 
 AiroK^tioas yap aiirdv n { rcrpairvpytov ri BaffiAnov, 6 KartaiccvaoEV dt>r<5f owe aitoXtv rfjj 
 
 A no\tias, ovtiiva npoaiero. (Flavius Josephus, Antiq. Judaeorum, lib. xiii., cap. iii.) 
 
 npoaxartaxtvaaaro Qpovptov ini roxov . . . <pwti 6s ia\vpdv . . . 6tei\citrai 6i KVK\WTtpfoi 
 rrvpyojf. (Flav. Joseph., Antiq. Jud., lib. xv., cap. xii.) 
 
 8 Diu quaesitus, tandem in altissima turre repertus est. (Sueton. Tranquil., 
 Oct. Caesar Aug., c. 114.) 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. l6l 
 
 of M. Petit-Radel. The houses of the German nobles made no ex 
 ception to this rule of seignorial houses. Tacitus relates that the 
 Roman ambassadors sent to Velleda found her in a tower, which 
 she made her habitual residence. 1 
 
 Moreover, it is certain that the towers of these castles were 
 intended for defence, for they were fortified in the country, and 
 in the cities they stood apart by themselves. In the Odyssey, the 
 house of Ulysses, which likewise had its tower, on which the eagles 
 perched, 2 was girt by a wall, and its entrance was closed by a solid 
 double door. 8 Within this enclosure were kept the greyhounds of 
 the chatelain,* and, what will perhaps surprise, the geese raised by 
 the chatelainess. 5 This house, then, nearly resembled those castles 
 of the fourteenth century, which are still to be seen in Bourbonnais 
 and Quercy. Homer adds that only the house of Ulysses, among 
 all those of the neighborhood, was thus constructed. 
 
 In the history of Greece and Asia Minor we frequently find these 
 fortified castles, even at epochs much later than Homeric times. 
 Alcibiades had one in Chersonesus. 6 These castles in the Greek 
 chronicles bore the name of tf i%<>$ or that of gaotxetov, as one would 
 say chateau-fort, or Palais-Royal ; but a great number of texts es 
 tablish that, whatever their name, they were always provided with 
 towers. In the Anabasis, Xenophon speaks of a castle of King 
 
 1 Legati ad ... Velledam missi cum donis . . . ipsa edita in turre. (Tacitus, lib. 
 iv., cap. Ixv.) 
 
 3 . . . *O not aierdf etcrave xfivas, 
 
 p ?er irrl irpovxovrt /ieAa0p<u. 
 
 (Odys., lib. xix., v. 543, 544.) 
 
 o 
 
 , Svpat 
 
 (Odys., lib. xvii., v. 266-268.) 
 * "A.v (5a KVMV K(f>a\fii> rt KOI ovara KIHSI>OS ta\ev 
 "Apyoj, OJwffiJof Ta\aoi<ppovos, ov fid TTOT afcdf 
 Gptyc pev. 
 
 (Odys., lib. xvii., v. 291-293.) 
 6 . . . X>;ya; evl ntydpouri vorjaa, 
 Hvpov cperrTOpivovs napd 7rve\ov. 
 
 (Odys., lib. xix., v. 552, 553.) 
 
 6 Aaa)>> rtifiprj ^tav, dntir\tvaev if \epfrovrioov, if rd tovrow reiX i. (Xenophon, Hellenic., 
 lib. i., ch. v.j 
 
l62 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 Asidates, which had a tower with ramparts, 1 and contained a strong 
 garrison. A little lower he adds that after having undermined this 
 castle, they found the walls to be eight bricks in thickness. 2 In 
 the Cyropedia, Xenophon mentions the castle of a chief named 
 Gobryas. He adds that this castle was strong. 8 It results from 
 another passage that the tower of this castle must have had a 
 platform with battlements, for it was furnished with machines of 
 war. 4 
 
 In Virgil we find this kind of fortified castles very positively men 
 tioned in two places, in the ^Eneid 5 and in the Georgics. 6 As to 
 seignorial houses in enclosed cities, they stood apart and on an 
 elevation. Those of Priam, Hector, and Paris were all three sep 
 arated, as Homer relates. 7 Virgil says as much of that of Anchises, 
 and of that of King Latinus. 8 
 
 All the testimony, which we have collected, in relation to the 
 houses of the nobles in primitive times, are then unanimous on these 
 two points, that they had a tower, and that they were isolated. The 
 tower was a sign of seignorial jurisdiction, and the isolation was a 
 consequence of the paternal jurisdiction. We have already observed 
 
 i eircl ow ifivvavro \a6eiv r^ rvpaiv, vt//ijX/? yap ijv, *ai fieyu^rj, xai 
 Xt&vas, Kai avipaf woXXovj, Kai ^axi^ovf exovoa, iiopVTreiv tnc.\cipriaav rov Trvpyov. (Xenophon, 
 Anab., lib. vii., cap. viii., \ 13.) 
 
 2 O ie rotxoj ijv inl oro> ir\ivQuv ynivuv rd svpog. (Xenophon, Anab., lib. vii., cap. 
 viii., I 14.) 
 
 3 "ExoJ oe *ai Telxfls iaxvpov, KOI \upas ctrapxu no\\ns> (Xenophon, Cyrop., lib. IV., 
 
 cap. vi., \ 2.) 
 
 * ... yiyvovrai vpdf rw Ta>6pvov Xo>f)tw, rai bp&aiv virepioX.vpdv rt TO epv^a, <cai in rdv 
 rii\&v navra irapcoKtvaapiva, uf a.v xpanoTa dn-o/*dwtro. (Xenophon, Cyrop., lib. V., Cap. 
 
 ii., \ 2.) 
 
 8 Aut montana sedet circum castella sub artnis. 
 
 (Virgil, yneid, lib. v., v. 440.) 
 
 6 ... Norica si quis 
 Castella in tumulis. 
 
 (Virgil, Georg., lib. iii., v. 473, 474.) 
 
 "Ejrrup 6k npdf to/^or AX|d/^poto BeSfiKei 
 KaXa, TO p atfrdj erev^e ovv avfipdoiv, ot r6r > apiorot 
 Haav hi Tpoiy epi6a>\UKi rtKroutt avdpef 
 OT ot iiroitioav SdXapioi/ cai (5a5/xa, Kai avXr>, 
 Eyyt50t rt Hpiaftoio, Kai "Epropoj, tv n6\ci apKt}. 
 
 (Iliad, lib. vi., 313-317.) 
 
 8 Anchisse domus arboribus obtecta recessit. (yEneid., lib. ii., v. 300.) Tectum 
 augustum, horrendum sylvis. (^neid., lib. vii., v. 313-317.) 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 163 
 
 that it is not difficult to give the reasons for this latter fact. The 
 general and primitive fact, on which the historic value of families 
 rests, is the paternal power, and the paternal power itself rests on 
 an uninterrupted succession of noble ancestors. Now, this paternal 
 power, exercised in the name of ancestors, had its seat by the hearth, 
 which was, in some sort, the sanctuary of domestic justice. Corio- 
 lanus, banished from Rome, went to seat himself by the hearth of 
 Tullus, King of the Volscians. It was precisely there, that the 
 fathers of families offered sacrifices to the gods of their houses, who 
 were called the gods of parents, divi parentum, 1 in the same man 
 ner as the Bible says: the God of our fathers , the God of Abraham, 
 of Isaac, and of Jacob. Now, as in a whole noble family there was 
 but one father, in a noble house there could be but one hearth, but 
 one sanctuary, but one tribunal ; and, as a stranger could not par 
 ticipate in the paternal power of a noble, so a house near to the 
 house of a noble did not participate in the sanctity of its hearth. 
 The paternal authority of a noble was a perfect whole ; the house 
 of a noble was another. 
 
 The association of houses, that is to say, the creation of the party 
 wall, is contemporaneous with the association of the freedmen, and 
 the creation of burghers. It is a very difficult history, but one very 
 important, and which we can only sketch. 
 
 And, first, it is a general fact for all the primitive cities, that 
 they were formed by the accumulation of houses built around a 
 castle. 
 
 The birth of cities, and the epoch of their infancy, when they were 
 still in the condition of feudal villages, is one of the most curious 
 spectacles in history. The Greek chronicles furnish abundant ex 
 amples of these primitive boroughs, the houses of which were grouped 
 around a seignorial castle. Xenophon mentions the castle of the 
 satrap Pharnabases, around which villages were built. 2 Elsewhere, 
 he also mentions the castle of the King of the Mossynsecians, situ 
 ated also in the centre of a village ; and what he says of it is very con 
 clusive of the general principle, which we have laid down ; for he 
 
 1 Sei. Parentum. puer. verberit. Ast. oloe. plora. Sit. diveis parentum. Sacer. 
 Estod. (Codex Papyrian., leg. 30. Terrass., History of Roman Jurisprudence.) 
 2 Xenophon, Hellenic., lib. iv., cap. L, \ 15. 
 
 ; to 
 
164 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 relates that this king or this seignior protected the village, and that 
 its inhabitants paid him, for so doing, an annual tribute. 1 
 
 Asia Minor does not present the only examples of this accumula 
 tion of men of the slave race around a seignorial castle. The same 
 fact is found in what Plutarch relates of the foundation of Athens 
 by Theseus, and of Rome by Romulus. There was this peculiarity 
 of certain cities of ancient Greece, that, instead of being formed 
 around a castle, they were founded around a temple. It was always 
 a vassalage and a seigniory. Such were the cities of Delphos and 
 Olympia. They were sacred cities, to which the temple, which 
 was in the centre, served as a safeguard ; and became free early, 
 governing themselves and having jurisdiction. 2 This explains how 
 these two cities were almost the only ones of Greece, which were at 
 the same time cities having a commune and not having walls. 8 
 
 In our middle ages, this phenomenon of little cities founded under 
 the protection of a seignior, baron, or abbe*, is presented with exactly 
 the same characteristics as in Asia Minor, Greece, and ancient Italy. 
 A chronicler of the twelfth century relates that Louis VII. founded, 
 under his protection, a multitude of new cities, which did great 
 wrong to the monasteries and seigniors of their vicinity, whose slaves 
 came thither for refuge. 4 As we go back in the history of France, 
 analogous examples multiply. In 1118, a charter permitted the 
 monks of Machecoul to build a free borough. 5 On the 28th July, 
 noo, another charter determined and sanctioned the enclosure of 
 the borough of Nogaro, in the territory of the church of Sainte 
 Marie d Auch, which is at this day a principal town of the canton. 8 
 In 1080, one Archambaud de Liriac, near Ancenis, gave to a monas 
 tery lands, on which to build a borough. T 
 
 When these nascent cities were thus founded around a castle or a 
 temple, the castle or the temple always occupied the high ground, 
 and the houses were extended en echelon on the plain. 
 
 1 Xenophon, Anabasis., lib. v., cap. iv., \ 26. 
 
 2 Thucydides, lib. v., chap, xviii. 
 
 Xenophon, Hellenic., lib. iii., ch. ii., g 27. 
 
 4 Quasdam villas novas aedificabit, per quas plures ecclesias et milites de pro- 
 priis suis hominibus ad eas confugientibus, exhaeredasse non est dubium. (Apud 
 Script, rer. Franc, t. xii., p. 286.) 
 
 5 D. Morice, Preuve de 1 Hist. de Bretagne, t. i., col. 541. 
 
 6 Chroniq. eccles. d Auch., part iii., preuve, p. 62. 
 
 7 D. Morice, Preuve de PHistoire de Bretagne, t. i., col. 451. 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 165 
 
 For example, as to Troy, Homer relates that Dardanus, son of 
 Jupiter, built his castle upon a height, and that long afterward he 
 built in the plain the sacred city of Ilium, for men speaking different 
 languages, who had till then lived at the foot of Mount Ida. 1 It is 
 evident on the one hand, that the city of Ilium was called sacred 
 because it served as an asylum ; and on the other, that these men, 
 speaking different languages, and consequently belonging to different 
 nations, who lived at the foot of Mount Ida, and came together in 
 the city, were slaves or freedmen ; because it is not to be supposed 
 that free men, nobles of different nations, should naturally be found 
 brought together at the foot of Mount Ida. Plato, in his treatise 
 on the laws, speaks of the advantage which he had of possessing 
 only slaves speaking different languages, to avoid complots by the 
 difficulty of communication. 2 
 
 To the example of Troy, we should add, among many others, 
 that of Athens. Thucydides says expressly that Athens was com 
 menced by the citadel, which at first was all the city. 3 Those, who 
 are familiar with the Greek history and language, know that nearly 
 all the cities had then within their enclosure a castle situated on a 
 height, and bearing at Athens the name of Acropolis, at Corinth 
 the name of Acrocorinthus, and so of others. Thucydides adds 
 that the circumference of the citadel, which had been formerly all 
 of primitive Athens, still bore in his time the name of moxtj, that is 
 to say cityf (rtofatijf, burgher^) a word which must not be confounded 
 with oi<jT"t, which designated the modern city. All the important 
 cities of Europe at this day, and among others Paris and London, 
 have thus two names, like Athens. They are called city (cite) in 
 their ancient part, where was, at London the seignorial tower of 
 the kings of England, at Paris the palace of the kings of France ; 
 and town (yille} in their modern part. 
 
 Moreover, the building of seignorial residences on the heights 
 and of the houses of the freedmen on the plain, was a thing so 
 noticed by the ancients that to designate a noble, they almost always 
 said, "a man born in a high place" and to designate a burgher, 
 one of the commonalty, they said, "a man born in a low place." 
 The examples of this sort of speech are so numerous that we find 
 
 1 Iliad, lib. xx., v. 216-218. 2 Plato de Legibus, lib. vi. 
 
 s Thucydides, lib. ii., ch. xv. * Ibid. 
 
l66 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 some embarrassment in choosing from them. They are found in 
 Titus Livius, 1 in Cicero, 2 in Valerius Maximus, 8 in the treatise on 
 illustrious men attributed to Pliny, 4 and in a hundred other places, 
 into the detail of which we think it useless to enter. This mode 
 of speech of the ancients even remains in our language, for we say, 
 "a high-born man," " low-born man." 
 
 Thus we are now certain that the houses of the nobles had the 
 several characteristics, which we have attributed to them, viz. : that 
 they were isolated and had a tower ; the isolation to mark the 
 seignorial authority; the tower to mark the military authority. We 
 pass on now to the houses of the burghers, and will show that they 
 were grouped together in masses, in blocks, as we have said, and 
 then, for their common defence, they were enclosed by a wall of cir- 
 cumvallation, and formed the walled cities. 
 
 There were among the ancients two kinds of cities : some, which 
 may be called cities of nobles and which were open ; others, which 
 we may call cities of burghers, and which were walled. 
 
 The cities of nobles, were found among the peoples, with whom 
 emancipations, still restricted, had not produced a great mass of 
 freedmen, and consequently had not necessitated the establishment 
 of communes. In general, the peoples, among whom emancipa 
 tions were slow, were mediterranean and agricultural, while the 
 islanders and inhabitants of the coasts, addicted to piracy and com 
 merce, arrived much sooner at the communal and democratic life. 5 
 The cities of the agricultural peoples were open, because they were 
 composed of isolated houses, or rather because they were only an 
 assemblage of some strong castles, having the dwellings of the serfs 
 or vassals around them. 
 
 The ancient Sabines were of these pastoral and aristocratic 
 peoples, who inhabited open cities. 6 The Cisalpine Gauls were a 
 nation of the same kind, and their cities had no walls. 7 This fact 
 
 1 ... Tanaquil summo loco nata. (Titus Livius, decad. i., lib. i., ch. xxxiv.) 
 ... Sed tamen tres fratres, summo loco natos. (Cicero, Epist., lib. ii., epistle 
 18.) 
 
 3 Lucius Petronius . . . admodum humili loco natus, ad equestrem ordinem 
 pervenerat. (Val. Max. Hist., lib. iv., ch. vii., 5.) 
 
 4 Caius Marius septies consul, Harpinas, humili loco natus. (De Vir. Illust., 
 incert. auctor., cap. Ixvii., i., A pud Aurel. Victor.) 
 
 5 Thucydides, lib. i., cap. viii. 
 
 6 Plutarch, Romulus, ch. xvi. 7 Polybius, lib. ii., ch. xvii., \ 9. 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. l6/ 
 
 relative to the Gauls is all the more characteristic, since Polybius 
 adds that they lived in seignorial state and had vassals. 1 Neither 
 had the Germans of the time of Tacitus, in their towns, houses 
 united by a party wall, 2 and we know that it was only a little before 
 the middle of the fourth century, about 330, that the Emperor 
 Henri 1 Oiseleur caused the cities of Germany to be walled. Thu- 
 cydides represents the Etolians, the Acarnanians, and the Locrians 
 as people who were at the same time agricultural and warlike, 
 always with sword in hand, like the barons of the middle ages. 3 
 Afterward he adds that they all inhabited castles in the centre of 
 different boroughs, without walls of enclosure, according to the 
 primitive usage of Greece. 4 The noble and open city most curi 
 ous to study of all antiquity was Sparta. Xenophon says formally, 
 in two places, in the Life of Agesilaus, 5 and in the Hellenics, 6 that 
 Sparta had no walls. Thucydides affirms the same fact, and ex 
 plains it by saying that the city occupied a great extent of terri 
 tory, being composed of isolated houses, surrounded by cultivated 
 fields. It elsewhere appears that the isolated houses were seigno 
 rial residences, castles more or less fortified ; for Xenophon relates 
 that, during an incursion of the Thebans into the territory of Sparta, 
 the Lacedemonians placed an ambuscade of three hundred hop- 
 lites in the castle of the Tyndarides, which made part of the city. 8 
 Plutarch likewise says that Sparta had no walls, and he explains 
 the fact in another manner, in saying that there was in the city no 
 company of tradesmen, no trades union, and consequently no com 
 munal association. 9 Thus, in recapitulating these three equally for 
 mal testimonies, we arrive at this striking re sult : First, Xenophon 
 testifies that Sparta had no outer walls ; secondly, Thucydides tes 
 tifies that she had no party walls ; thirdly, Plutarch testifies that she 
 had no corporation of working-men, and consequently no com 
 mune. 
 
 1 Polybius, lib. ii., ch. xvii., \ 12. 
 
 2 Ne pati quidem inter se junctas sedes. Colunt discreti ac diversi, ut fons, ut 
 campus, ut aemus placuit. Vicos locant, non in nostrum morem, connexis et 
 cohcerentibus edificiis : suam quique domum spatio circumdat. (Tacitus, Ger- 
 mania, cap. xvi.) 
 
 3 Thucydides, lib. i., ch. v. * Thucydides, lib. iii., ch. xciv. 
 5 Xenophon, Agesilaus, ch. ii., \ 24. 
 
 * Xenophon, Hellenics, lib. vi., ch. v., | 28. 7 Thucydides, lib. i., ch. x. 
 8 Xenophon, Hellenics, lib. vi., ch. v., \ 31. Plutarch, Lycurgus, ch. xxiv. 
 
l68 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 Nevertheless, as the theory which we develop in this chapter will 
 gain nothing by being specious, if it is not solid, and we desire 
 to reply not only to the objections of others^ but to our own, we 
 must confess that these three imposing witnesses, whom we have 
 just cited, appear to be formally contradicted by a fourth of great 
 weight in history. Polybius affirms in two places that Sparta had 
 walls. 1 
 
 We hasten to say that the contradiction is only apparent. Xeno- 
 phon and Thucydides speak of Sparta as she was in their time, 
 more than 400 years before the Christian era. Polybius speaks of 
 Sparta as she was in his, only 30 years before the Christian era. 
 The walls of Sparta, then, were only an accident, since Polybius 
 speaks expressly of their demolition, and Plutarch, posterior by 
 more than a century to Polybius, has no account of them. We 
 add some details, which confirm instead of attacking our theory. 
 
 In the mutilated state, in which the Greek chronicles have reached 
 us, the history of Sparta is very incomplete. At the epoch of which 
 the fragments of Polybius speak, Sparta had undergone a popular 
 revolution ; the seignorial population of the city had been banished, 
 their property confiscated, and a kind of insurrectional commune, 
 of which a person named Chseron appears to have been the soul, 2 
 had been installed, and had surrounded the city with walls, which 
 were afterward destroyed by the Acheans. Thus and this fact 
 seems to us very remarkable as long as Sparta was a city of 
 nobles, she was open, and when she became a communal city she 
 was walled. 
 
 Moreover, there are *in the Greek history of the fourth and fifth 
 centuries before the Christian era, two conclusive examples, which 
 establish, as we have said, that every walled city was a communal 
 city. First, Thucydides relates that the people of Samos, having 
 massacred a part of the noble population, and driven out the rest, 
 immediately erected themselves into a commune, at the instigation 
 of the Athenians, 8 and immediately afte nvard surrounded with walls 
 the city, which until then had been open. 4 Secondly, Xenophon 
 
 1 Polybius, lib. xxii., fragm. Hi., ch. xii., \ 3 ; vii. \ 6. 
 
 2 Polybius, lib. xxv., fragm. v., ch. vii., I. 
 Thucydides, lib. viii., ch. xxi. 
 
 * Thucydides, lib. viii., ch. iv. 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 169 
 
 relates that the Spartans, wishing to revenge themselves on the Man- 
 tineans, decided to take from them the popular or communal gov 
 ernment, and for that reason ordered them to demolish their walls, 
 which had been recently built. 1 The Mantineans having resisted 
 this injunction, the Spartans forced them to resume the government 
 of the nobles ; that is, they pulled down the walls of the city, and 
 re-established the burgher population in villages around the castles, 
 according to ancient usage? 
 
 Thus, when the city of Samos obtained a commune, she was en 
 closed by walls ; and when the city of Mantinea lost her commune, 
 she saw her walls destroyed. Walls of enclosure are, then, among 
 the ancients, as we have said, a certain sign of the formation of a 
 commune. 
 
 Thus, the walled cities were those burgher cities, of which we have 
 spoken above. They were inhabited by freedmen, they had a mu 
 nicipal government, and their houses were contiguous. We have 
 already seen that in the open cities generally, and especially in Sparta, 
 the houses were isolated. 3 We can show that in the walled cities, 
 on the contrary, the houses were contiguous. For example, as to 
 Platea, which was a walled city, Thucydides gives the details of a 
 siege by the Thebans, from which it results that the houses had party 
 walls. 4 On the other hand, every kind of association which accom 
 panies the commune, is found in the walled cities, and wanting in 
 the open cities. Thus all the closed cities of Greece had a public 
 treasury ; Sparta, which was an open city, had none. 5 Thus again, 
 Thucydides mentions a city of Boeotia, named Mycalessa, which 
 had a public school, 6 an infallible sign of a commune, because noble 
 families have all their children educated by private tutors. Now, * 
 he immediately adds that the city was walled. 7 Finally, Xenophon 
 speaks of Tegea, a city which had a communal house, town hall, 
 (hotel de ville,) and Tegea was enclosed with walls. 8 
 
 At first, however, the burgher houses were not built in blocks, 
 
 1 Thucydides, lib. viii., ch. li.; Xenoph., Hellen., lib. v., ch. ii., i. 
 
 2 Xenophon, Hellen., lib. v,, ch. ii., $ 7. 3 Thucydides, lib. i., ch. iii. 
 
 4 Thucydides, lib. ii., ch. iii. 5 Thucydides, lib. i , ch. Ixxx. 
 
 6 Thucydides, lib. vii., ch. xxix. 7 Thucydides, lib. vii., ch. xxix. 
 
 6 There is a passage which says that the Thebans, having taken Tegea and many 
 prisoners, filled the city prison and the town hall with them ; and a passage in the 
 same chapter proves that Tegea had walls. (Xenoph., Hellen., lib. vii.,ch. iv., $36. 
 
 12 
 
 Vw ^ 
 
 V 
 
 IXXVv 
 
I^O HISTORY OF THE 
 
 neither had they a party wall. The first freedmen and fugitives 
 were too poor to build houses of stone ; and, strictly speaking, it was 
 not until a large number of them had been brought together at one 
 point and had somewhat improved their primitive settlements, that 
 street and road laws came into existence and introduced some regu 
 larity into what may be called the police of houses. In taking for 
 example the history of the Roman road laws, all these ideas come 
 to light and are wonderfully strengthened. Thus, although Rome 
 had a species of commune from her foundation, this commune did 
 not take the essential characteristics of a municipality until toward 
 the year of Rome 260, at the time of the creation of the tribunes 
 and aediles, a creation which established a burgher magistracy with 
 a civil jurisdiction, analogous to the right of magistracy established 
 in the communes of France, until the Edict of Moulins, under 
 Charles IX. Also we find that before the complete formation of 
 the Roman commune, that is to say, before the creation of aediles, 
 the regularly built houses, which all belonged to the nobility, were 
 isolated one from the other. 1 Tacitus also testifies that after the 
 burning of Rome by the Gauls, in the year 390 B. C., and conse 
 quently fifty-three years before the entry of the burghers into the 
 prsetorship, which took place in the year of Rome 416, and which 
 was the veritable sanction of the communal institution, the houses 
 were separated from each other within the enclosure of the city. 2 
 This state of ancient Rome may be compared to the state of ancient 
 Paris, filled with mansions with battlemented towers, and where even 
 the burgher houses were mostly separated, because they were built 
 on small lands held by feudal tenure. 
 
 It was by degrees, and principally toward the time of the em 
 perors, that the burgher houses of Rome were grouped in blocks, 
 always excepting the dwellings of the nobles, which remained for 
 a long time still separated. With Augustus commenced the urban 
 services, which were the result of this new order of things. He 
 fixed the height of houses, so that one should not intercept the 
 light of the other. 3 Under Nero appeared the laws produced by 
 
 1 This results from the terms of the law of the Twelve Tables relative to build 
 ings, and which is thus mentioned by Varro : Ambitus, iter quod circumeundo 
 teritur; nam ambitus circumitus, ab eoque Duodecim Tabularum interpretes am 
 bitus parietis circumitum esse describunt. (Varro, de Lingua Latina, lib. iv.) 
 
 3 Tacitus, Annals, lib. xv., cap. xliii. Strabo, Geograph., lib. v., cap. iii. 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 171 
 
 the party wall, and which, in the laws upon services, bear the 
 names of oneris ferendi, tigni immittendi, non officiendi luminibus, 
 and some others. Thus houses required nearly eight centuries in 
 passing from the system of isolation to that of association, just the 
 time required for the freedmen to enter the senate, and to conquer 
 without dispute a participation in political affairs. Plutarch, re 
 counting the privilege granted by the Roman senate to Valerius 
 Publicola for his great services, of opening the door of his house 
 outward, adds that anciently all the doors of Greece opened in 
 this way. 1 This independence of the houses and the species of 
 seigniory which they exercised around them, even on the public 
 highway, is the characteristic of the epoch anterior to the estab 
 lishment of the freedom of cities, and the point of departure for 
 architecture ; the urban services, commencing under Augustus and 
 completed under Nero, are the characteristics of the epoch essen 
 tially municipal, and the point of arrival for architecture. 2 She 
 has for alpha the door opening outward and the tower ; for omega, 
 the door opening inward and the party wall. 
 
 Now it must be comprehended that the wall of enclosure is the 
 natural and necessary complement of burgher houses, constructed 
 en pate, that is, associated, and that it is to a commune what a line 
 of circumvallation is to a camp. The wall is in effect the unity of 
 defence applied to the multiplied interests drawn together, com 
 bined and united. Generally, the isolated house, the castle, has 
 no wall of enclosure, being itself a sort of citadel with its tower. 
 The burgher house, on the contrary, is much too poor to have ks 
 own tower ; it is united to its equals in blocks, and all together, 
 as one and the same corporation, are surrounded by one and 
 the same wall, which is their common defence. It is to be re 
 marked in history that as soon as a slave, in consequence of some 
 political revolution, becomes ennobled, or even a burgher, he at 
 once hastens to give to his poor house the distinctive sign of no- 
 
 1 Plutarch, Publicola, ch. xx. 
 
 2 This distinction between doors opening outward and doors opening inward 
 was profound in the ideas of the Romans. The former were called fores, and 
 the latter/#w#. It results from a passage of Tertullian that Janus was the god 
 who presided over the latter, and Foreculus the god who presided over the 
 former. See this passage : At enim Christianus nee januam suam laureis infama- 
 bit, si novit quantos deos etiam ostiis diabolus affixerit, Janum a Janua . . . Fore- 
 culum a foribus. (Tertul. de Corona, cap. xiii.) 
 
1/2 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 bility, which is the battlemented tower. The serf of the church of 
 Veselay, who showed himself the boldest in the revolt against the 
 abbe, during the insurrection, and the attempt to establish a com 
 mune, built a superb tower to his hut, and certainly one of his 
 greatest griefs must have been to see it fall under the victorious 
 hammer of the chapter. 1 (a) 
 
 The wall of enclosure is not the only monument of unity which 
 the communal association has produced. There is the town hall, 
 the hotel de ville, which is to the civil side of the commune what 
 the wall of enclosure is to the military. Considered in its unity, 
 the commune has a seignorial existence ; it has its law, its judge, 
 its gallows, its hangman. Being thus sovereign, it gives place for 
 an architecture, which enters into the conditions of the architecture 
 of the nobility, that is to say, which ends in an isolated house with 
 its tower ; with this difference, nevertheless, that it in a manner 
 divides up this house, only preserving at the centre its hearth, which 
 is the seat of justice in the town hall, and moving its tower, which 
 is the symbol of its power, to the ramparts. 
 
 We believe that we have now sufficiently established by all the 
 considerations we have presented, that a city has walls of enclosure 
 only when the houses have not towers, when they are not isolated ; 
 that is, when they are built in blocks and with party walls, and that 
 these two last characteristics are an infallible sign of a free borough. 
 Whence we conclude that whenever we find a walled city in the 
 primitive books, it is a proof that they were composed at an epoch 
 when a communal institution existed. 
 
 Thus the Hebrews had communes from the time of Moses, since 
 mention is made of walled cities in many places of Leviticus ; and 
 the Greeks from the time of Homer, since the city of Troy was 
 enclosed by a wall. It is to be remarked that among the large 
 
 1 Hugues de Poitiers, Chron. de Veselay, liv. iv. 
 
 (a) This remark of our author calls to mind the fact, that Senator Wilson, of 
 Massachusetts, originally a shoemaker, having grown rich by politics, now be 
 longs to, and is a leader of, that party, which carried fire and sword through the 
 Southern States, in order to " make free labor cheaper than slave labor ; " to reduce 
 the wages of white shoemakers below the cost of feeding and clothing a negro ; 
 and whose whole legislation is intended, and tends, to cheapen labor and enrich 
 capital. 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 173 
 
 number of cities named in the Iliad and the Odyssey, Homer men 
 tions with great care those that had walls, and that the number was 
 very inconsiderable as compared to the number of those that had 
 none. There are near a hundred cities, at least, cited by Homer, 
 and of this number four only had walls, including Troy, namely, 
 Thyrintha, Gortyna, and Calydon. 1 
 
 We would not insist longer on this point, if the matter of which 
 we treat was not so new and unusual, and if the historic theory, which 
 we present, had not so many chances of passing for strange and 
 paradoxical. We do not attach too much importance to the serious 
 difficulties, which may be opposed to what we have said. Never 
 theless, we do not wish to seem to advance lightly opinions on such 
 grave matters. We therefore present another kind and series of 
 proofs establishing beyond reply, as it seems to us, that walled 
 cities are really burgher or communal cities. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 SYMPTOMS OF THE ANCIENT COMMUNE JURISPRUDENCE. 
 
 THE new proofs by which we have to establish the existence of 
 the ancient communes, belong to the history of jurisprudence, 
 and are drawn from the fundamental difference to be observed be 
 tween property within the enclosure of a city, and property without 
 its walls. 
 
 As in the preceding chapter, we are forced again for a moment 
 to leave our subject and make a digression before pursuing our route. 
 We are convinced that the history of property would aid us to prove 
 that with the ancients walled cities were always, as we have said, 
 municipal cities ; but the history of property has not been written 
 any more than the history of architecture. We will therefore essay 
 to sketch it, but only within the limits that the necessity of the sub 
 ject imposes, and will give to it only that just degree of importance 
 necessary to present its results. 
 
 1 Iliad, lib. ii., v, 559, v. 646; lib. ix., v. 552. 
 
174 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 Taking property in its most general aspects and in its most sum 
 mary history, we find that it is always constituted from the same 
 point of view as the family ; and this is what we understand by these 
 words. 
 
 There is an order of families which are, if we may so speak, con 
 stituted to last always, and always in the same condition ; in which 
 the son is the exact continuation of the father in his rights, in his 
 prerogatives, and in his actions ; and in which the first and most 
 sacred of all duties is to maintain and leave after him all things in 
 the state, in which they were maintained and left by his ancestors. 
 These are the noble families. 
 
 There is another order of families, of which it may be said that 
 they recommence with every generation ; in which there is no pre 
 cise domestic tradition necessary to be observed under penalty of 
 historic loss, and in which the sons are much more occupied in 
 establishing and building up themselves than in continuing their 
 ancestors. These are the burgher families. 
 
 Now history proves that in these two orders of families, property 
 is constituted like the families themselves ; that is, it is perpetual 
 and entailed in the first, movable and alienable in the second. 
 
 What we have said of property in the two kinds of families which 
 fill history, and which are the family of the man of noble race, and 
 the family of the man of slave race, is fully confirmed by the pro 
 perty of another species of family, which is, if one may so speak, 
 the third of the genus, the corporation. The corporation, in effect, 
 whether religious, commercial, or communal, constitutes in a meas 
 ure a family, in that it is reproduced. Now the corporation is not 
 only reproduced, but it is reproduced perpetually. Its members 
 die, but it is renewed and lives always. Well, the property of the 
 corporation, which has the characteristic of the noble family in that 
 it is perpetual, is always entailed and inalienable, like the property 
 of the noble family. We will return to this subject. 
 
 Property, we have said, is always constituted like the family. 
 We have added to these words the explanation they require. The 
 family is constituted in two ways, according to the nature of the 
 noble races and according to the nature of the slave races ; or rather 
 there are two sorts of families. There are, then, two sorts of pro 
 perty. Let us take first noble property. 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 175 
 
 Noble property corresponds to the noble family, and undergoes 
 the same number of revolutions. Now the noble family has two 
 ways of being successive. Primitively, as we have established, all 
 the noble family was in the father, and- was summed up in him. The 
 father absorbed the wife, the son, the daughter, the servant, all 
 persons that had neither right nor individuality outside of his will, 
 who were less persons than things. In this state of the noble family 
 the property in land resided in the father as absolutely as the pro 
 perty in the persons and life of the wife, son, daughter, and servant. 
 In this first period, therefore, noble property was alienable : the 
 father could sell his land as he could sell his posterity. 
 
 But little by little and what we call civilization consists in this 
 the wife, son, daughter, and servant, withdrew from the paternal 
 restraint, acquired a personality at first doubtful, then more com 
 plete and solid, and ended by existing in their own proper names. 
 Then the rights of the fathers were no longer sole, absolute, and 
 without limits in the family ; on the contrary, they ended where 
 those of the wife, son, daughter, and servants began. This new 
 state of the noble family is developed in history, as to the wife by 
 the establishment of dower ; as to the son and daughter, by the 
 establishment of the child s portion ; as to the servants, by the estab 
 lishment of wages. In this second period, noble property ceases 
 to depend absolutely upon the father, becomes inalienable and en 
 tailed, and passes to his descendants in spite of him. 
 
 We add that when democracy dominates society and absorbs the 
 nobility, noble families are dissolved and noble property disappears. 
 Thus there have been years when entailed and inalienable property 
 came to be destroyed in France. 
 
 The proofs of what we have said are easy and numerous. But as 
 this matter belongs more especially to the history of the noble races, 
 we ask permission to give here only those indispensable to an under 
 standing of the subject. 
 
 The first period of noble property, that is to say, of property de 
 pendent on the absolute will of the father, is so ancient that it had 
 even disappeared when the primitive books commenced, and can 
 only be established by induction. The second period of noble 
 property, that is to say, the period of entailed property, belongs to 
 historic times. 
 
1/ HISTORY OF THE 
 
 Among the Hebrews, entailed property existed fully for the 
 sacerdotal races from the time of Moses, as we will see presently ; 
 and it had not long ceased to exist for the noble races ; for the law 
 of jubilee, by which all property necessarily returned to the family 
 after seven times seven years of alienation, evidently succeeded to 
 entails, by which no property ever left these families. 
 
 Among the Greeks, entails were abolished from the time of Solon, 
 according to Plutarch, who expressly says that up to that time 
 fathers of families had not the right of making a will. 1 
 
 Among the Romans, a people having communal institutions, en 
 tails disappeared very early. But we find a first trace of them in the 
 sacred, that is to say, noble (the nobles being the sons of the gods) 
 character of the Ager Romanus? and a second in the judicial action 
 for the sale of lands, which was introduced very tardily, only in 
 the 648th year of Rome, by the praetor Publius Rutilius. 3 
 
 In France, the two periods of noble property were developed 
 successively and established under our eyes. Down to an epoch, 
 which we will not undertake to fix precisely, but which must have 
 been near the eighth century, fathers had the absolute right to give 
 away or sell their lands. By degrees came restrictions, which 
 limited their authority. Thus, toward the ninth century we find a 
 multitude of public acts, in which fathers made their wives and even 
 the infant at the breast parties, to have the power of selling or giving 
 away. We do not now cite any of these acts because of the diffi 
 culty of choosing one rather than another. 
 
 At that time entails, then, were progressing toward their estab 
 lishment ; and what is singularly curious, we find how they pro 
 gressed toward their fall. At the end of the twelfth century came 
 other laws, providing that, if a noble wished to sell his land, 
 
 1 Plutarch, Solon, ch. xxi. 
 
 2 We will treat, in the history of the noble races, of the nature of the Ager 
 Romanus, which was a noble property, and could not be held by freedmen. We 
 limit ourselves to giving its exterior characteristics. Limites sunt in agris limi- 
 tatis, qui populo iter prsebent, ex lege Sempronia. ... Ex eis alii sunt Decumani 
 Maximi, qui fiunt ab oriente in occidentem, alii Cardines Maximi, qui ex trans- 
 verso currunt, alii Actuarii, alii Subruncivi. Decumani . . . pedes xl., Cardines 
 pedes xx., Actuarii pedes xii., Subruncivi pedes viii. habent. (Jacob. Cujac. Ol> 
 servat., lib. ii., cap. ix.) 
 
 8 Quae species actionis appellatur Rutiliana, quia a praetore Publio Rutilio, qui 
 et bonorum venditionem introduxisse dicitur, comparata est. (Gaii Instil., lib. iv., 
 235-) 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 
 
 the next of blood should buy it j if the next of blood could not, 
 then the next after him, and so on ; if none of the blood could buy 
 it, then, when it was well established that it could not remain in 
 the family, the father was free to sell it to a stranger. These laws 
 add that, even in that case, the relatives have seven days to annul 
 the sale. 1 
 
 We have assimilated corporations to noble families. It was their 
 nature to last always, and, on the other hand, it is certain that their 
 property was entailed. As to the property of commercial or in 
 dustrial corporations, we will establish their entailed character in 
 the chapters, in which we will treat of the trades unions. We will 
 only say two words as to the property of the religious corporations 
 of Christendom. Pope Urban VIII. was the first, who departed 
 from the jurisprudence of the canons, which sanctioned the per 
 petual inalienability of the property of the Church ; 2 to which we 
 should add that the beginning of the departure goes back to Paul 
 II. , who permitted alienations for three years by papal authority. 3 
 
 The burgher family commences precisely where the noble family 
 ends. When the father has lost all his primitive authority over his 
 wife and children ; when the latter acquire a distinct individuality 
 and personal rights well established ; when the son and the daughter, 
 detached from their ancestors, go where their own will leads them ; 
 when there is no longer a first-born, who represents and sums up in 
 himself the traditions of the family ; when the whole family crum 
 bles and falls apart, like a too-ripened head of grain; then the noble 
 family ends, and the burgher family begins. 
 
 Thus burgher property is essentially movable, like the species 
 of family, of which it forms the material side. In all legislations it 
 has always preserved its special character of alienability, and the 
 power of entailment has never been given to it. It even appears 
 certain, judging at least from past history, without occupying our 
 selves with what the future may produce, that it is in the nature of 
 property to escape from the immobility, which attaches to it in the 
 first ages of history, and that progress consists for it, as for the chil 
 dren and wives of the heroic and divine fathers, in withdrawing 
 
 1 Assis. de Jerusal., Cour des Bourg., ch. xxviii., copie de manuscrit de Venise, 
 biblioth. du roi. 
 
 2 Bull. Magn. Constitut. Urban VIII., 715, \ I. 
 
 3 Bull. Magn. Pauli II., Constit. 2, g I. 
 
i;8 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 itself from the absorbent action of the primitive family, to acquire a 
 value of its own, individual, distinct, and, as it were, a sort of per 
 sonality. At this day, France is the country o/ the world, in which 
 property has gone through the most successive evolutions, and in 
 which it is completely detached from the family, or rather individ 
 ualized and mobilized, like the family. The law in relation to en 
 tails upon the eldest son was the last blow struck at the old im 
 movable and entailed property; and probably those, who were its 
 promoters, little dreamed of the species of necessary and providen 
 tial functions, which they filled at that moment. 
 
 Whenever, then, we meet in the ancient books a movable and 
 alienable property, we cannot avoid recognizing in it a burgher pro 
 perty, for the reason that the ancient books are not so old as to show 
 us noble property, before it entered upon the immobility of entails, 
 or are too old to show it, after it had escaped from it. The mobility 
 of property in the ancient books is therefore as certain an index of 
 the existence of free boroughs, as mendicancy is of the existence 
 of emancipations. 
 
 In the Bible, for example, movable and alienable property is only 
 found in the walled cities. In the first place, Moses, when he speaks 
 of cities, always takes great care to indicate whether they were open 
 or walled. Thus, when he sent twelve commissioners to spy out the 
 promised land, he instructed them to examine the fertility of the 
 land, what cities there were, whether they had walls or not. 1 In 
 Leviticus, property was entailed and alienable only for forty-nine 
 years, (#) after which the first possessors retook it, 2 which was, as we 
 have said, an improvement on the primitive epoch, when it was ab 
 solutely inalienable ; but this property was noble property, because 
 burgher property is movable and alienable. The proof of this is 
 found in chapter xxv. , where it is said that if a house is sold in a 
 walled city and the owner shall not have redeemed it within a year, 
 
 1 And see the land . . . and what the land is that they dwell in, whether it be good 
 or bad, and what cities they be that they dwell in, whether in tents or in strong 
 holds. (Numb., ch. xiii., verses 18 and 19, as published by the American Bille 
 Society, 1850.) 
 
 (a) In the original there is a misprint of seven for seven times seven, or forty- 
 nine, years. 
 
 "Levit. xxxv. 8, II, 13. 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 179 
 
 it was aliened forever ; l and the thirty-first verse adds, that if this 
 house was in a village without walls, it was subject to the law that 
 governed lands, that is to say, to the law of the nobles, to the law 
 of entails, and the first possessor should retake it in the fiftieth, or 
 year of jubilee. A last very characteristic trait to be added to all this 
 is that verse fifty-four expressly forbids the sale of anything in the 
 suburbs, that is to say, without the walls, where all was entailed, 
 lands and houses, (a) 
 
 There were, therefore, among the Jews, two different civil laws, 
 which governed property, according as it was found within or with 
 out the walls of a city ; and such was the importance of these walls 
 of enclosure, that is to say, such was the difference between the two 
 sorts of society, which they separated, that on one side, property had 
 a certain nature, on the other, an opposite nature ; on one side, it was 
 alienable and commercial ; on the other, immovable and entailed. 
 
 Now the history of property, which we have only sketched, but 
 which will be fully treated in the volume on the noble classes, proves 
 that salable or alienable lands are always either a burgher pro 
 perty, or a noble property in its first or last degree of development. 
 It is to be remarked, that neither of these two latter cases could be 
 that spoken of in Leviticus, not only because noble property was 
 then entailed, but also because it was still when the book of Ruth 2 
 was composed, and even when Jeremiah wrote. 3 We must therefore 
 necessarily conclude that the alienable property of walled cities was 
 
 1 Levit. xxv. 29-31. 
 
 (a) And if a man sell a dwelling house in a walled city, then he may redeem it 
 within a whole year after it is sold ; within a full year may he redeem it. And if it 
 be not redeemed within the space of a full year, then the house that is in the walled 
 city shall be established forever to him that bought it, throughout his generations ; 
 it shall not go out in the jubilee. But the houses of the villages, which have no 
 walls round about them, shall be counted as the fields of the country ; they may 
 be redeemed, and they shall go out in the jubilee. Notwithstanding the cities of 
 the Levites and the houses of the cities of their possession may the Levites re 
 deem at any time. And if a man purchase of the Levites, then the house that 
 was sold and the city of his possession shall go out in the year of jubilee ; for 
 the houses of the cities of the Levites are their possession among the children of 
 Israel. But the field of the suburbs of their cities may not be sold, for it is their 
 perpetual possession. (Levit. xxv. 29-34.) 
 
 2 Ruth iv. 3, 4. 3 Jeremiah xxxii. 7, 8. 
 
ISO HISTORY OF THE 
 
 a burgher property, which establishes that there was a free govern 
 ment in those cities, a thing already proved by the very fact of their 
 walls. 
 
 We are thus brought back to what we have already said at the 
 beginning of our two chapters on the history of architecture and 
 the history of property, viz., that all the walled cities mentioned in 
 the primitive books were burgher cities, in which there already was 
 a commune. And as, if that were not true, many things in relation 
 to houses and property, otherwise undeniable, must be false, we do 
 not think it possible to dispute with us this result. We should, 
 nevertheless, here again repeat that all this history of the slave 
 races will be otherwise clear, plain, and evident, after our history 
 of the noble races ; so that if we cannot now remove every mist 
 from our ideas, that mist will be certainly dissipated, we hope, as 
 we shall sufficiently develop and support those views. The com 
 mentary will be found in the whole. 
 
 Meanwhile and we think we have done enough to be pardoned 
 for this boldness, if it is one we lay it down as an established 
 principle that communes existed among the Jews from the time of 
 Moses, and among the Greeks from the time of Homer, and we 
 draw this certainty from the walled cities mentioned in the Penta 
 teuch and in the Iliad. 
 
 We should say, without more delay, that we do not pretend that 
 the communes of Jericho and of Troy exactly resembled those of the 
 thirteenth century for example, those of Soissons and of Rheims; 
 that is to say, that they had exactly the same administrative forms 
 and the same number of magistrates. We have already shown that 
 the details of the administrative organization are not what constitute 
 essentially the commune ; and that the number, the functions, and 
 the names of the administrators amount to nothing ; but what we 
 firmly believe is that there was in Jericho, Troy, Calydon, and 
 Gortina, in the small number of walled cities mentioned by Moses 
 and Homer, an association of men of the freed races, living apart 
 from the noble races, having their own statutes, their own distinct 
 civil law, their own separate administration ; and it is in this asso 
 ciation of organized freedmen that we make the commune to con 
 sist, whatever may otherwise have been the mechanism of that 
 organization ; whether there was one chief, or two ; whether he 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. iSl 
 
 was called consul, mayor, prevot, or e*chevin. We believe, more 
 over, that these primitive communes were organized spontaneously, 
 gradually, day by day a little, without premeditated agreement, 
 without precise purpose, without a plan for the future, without any 
 preconceived political theory; and that, nevertheless, for having 
 been thus formed peaceably, insensibly, without noise, revolt, or 
 massacre, they were none the less communes, as well, as completely, 
 as those of Laon and Cambray, in which rebellion and murder were, 
 in our opinion, only local circumstances and fortuitous accidents, 
 without general value or human signification. 
 
 To sum up the progress of this book to the point to which we 
 have brought it, we have taken the slave races in the bosom of 
 the primitive family, and have followed them up to the moment, 
 when, being sufficiently numerous, they have obtained from their 
 masters, their seigniors, the faculty of living apart, of organizing, 
 of creating for themselves a government humble, lowly, obscure, 
 despised the commune. We have shown the communal govern 
 ment forming, little by little, in every country, in the East and in 
 the West, as slaves were emancipated. 
 
 Nevertheless, the freedmen, who organized into communes, who 
 were grouped around some seignorial castle, temple, or church, and 
 who thus, in building poor villages, laid the foundations of future 
 great cities, did not constitute all* the freedmen. Independently 
 of those, whom a professional industry permitted to choose a resi 
 dence at their pleasure, and to shut themselves up within walls, 
 there were still those, whom agricultural or pastoral life retained 
 forcibly in the fields. By the side of the burghers were the peasants. 
 
 Thus we have another moiety of the freed races, of whose mode 
 of administrative association we should give some account. The 
 peasants did not have the commune : what, then, had they? 
 
l82 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 CHAPTER XI. * 
 
 THE PEASANTS. 
 
 AMONG the innumerable writers who have treated of the 
 ancients, none have dreamed of sketching the history of the 
 peasants. They have mentioned the cities and their inhabitants, 
 for a thousand different reasons : because they were the residences 
 of princes ; because they were the schools of philosophy and litera 
 ture ; because they sustained sieges ; in fine, because they were the 
 cause, the victim, or the theatre of some great fact of a nature to 
 resound among men ; but for the peasants, who were dispersed 
 through the country, poor, ignorant, obscure, powerless, no one 
 has thought of them. Nevertheless, the order of peasants made 
 part of the whole body of the ancient peoples, as well as the order 
 of senators. Although the peasants were in some sort hidden in the 
 political life of antiquity, though they were not prominent, though 
 they did not strike the eye, they were none the less there. Neither 
 do we see the roots of trees nor the foundations of walls ; but for 
 all that there is no wall without a foundation, no tree without roots. 
 But in reading the history of the ancient peoples, one is almost 
 authorized to believe that there were no peasants among them. The 
 historians, who are guilty of this forgetfulness, who pass over with 
 this indifference the moiety of the human kind, should observe, in 
 their own interest, that this gap makes an irreparable break in the 
 middle of their books, and that this great fact forgotten, must leave 
 a multitude of historic ideas incomplete, and many problems with 
 out a solution. It is now for the young critic, born in this century, 
 to make the tour through the historic edifice left to us by our 
 fathers, to visit its holes and crevices, and to at least repair, if not 
 to rebuild it. 
 
 This history of the peasants among the ancient peoples is pre 
 ceded by another, which we are not now free to undertake, but of 
 which it is necessary that we should say something. This other his 
 tory is that of the landed proprietors, whose laborers were the 
 peasants. The history of the landed proprietors, which also has 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 183 
 
 not been written, would require a book. It will therefore be found 
 very natural that we should say of it what it is impossible for us to 
 omit here. 
 
 We believe and this firm belief, which we announce here^ 
 will be discussed, and, we hope, justified in the second volume of 
 this work that the most remote historic times of ancient peoples, 
 of which we have any knowledge, were nevertheless, for them, very 
 secondary. For example, we are convinced that in Italy before Rom 
 ulus, and in Greece before Theseus, there was a long historic epoch, 
 corresponding in its character to what the middle ages were to us. 
 The existence of a middle age, but of a. feudal middle age, in the his 
 tory of ancient Greece and ancient Italy is, to our eyes, and in the 
 present state of our historic studies, a fact completely demonstrated. 
 The foundation of Rome, and the establishment of the first muni 
 cipalities, like that of Ceres in Italy, the foundation of Athens, and 
 the establishment of the small republics of Peloponnesus, in Greece, 
 ended, according to our ideas, that ancient feudality, and are in 
 ancient history what the enfranchisement of the communes was in 
 modern history. It is not our intention to prove this, in this chap 
 ter ; but we give some detached observations on this general opinion. 
 
 The existence of this antique middle age once admitted and it 
 is for us completely we can, if we wish, follow its traces through 
 history. For example, and to limit ourselves to Italy, a system of 
 vassalage and suzerainty was still completely organized in all the 
 extent of the Roman Empire in the times of Marius and Sylla. On 
 this point may be cited among other testimony the efforts of Marius 
 to withdraw himself from the vassalage, in which he was, and his 
 ancestors always had been, to the house of Herennius, a house whose 
 seignorial rights the judges maintained, although Marius alleged 
 that having been elected praetor, that rank was for him equivalent 
 to a title of freedom and nobility. 1 
 
 Besides, it is not doubtful that the expression vassal (vasattus, 
 vassus, vas, in the language of the jurists of the middle age) belonged 
 to the most remote Roman legislation. Aulus Gellius, who con 
 tains on this point very precise and clear documents, asked a lawyer, 
 in an interview which took place, he says, in the market-place at 
 Rome on a festival day, what was the meaning of some terms found 
 1 Plutarch, Marius, ch. xxii. 
 
1 84 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 in the third book of the Annals of Ennius, which some one had read. 
 The lawyer excused himself, saying that he knew the law very well, 
 but not the philology; but when it was answered that he ought to 
 be competent to explain these terms, since trfey were found in the 
 Twelve Tables, he again excused himself, saying that he could not, 
 because he had not studied the laws of the Aborigines and the 
 Fauns. 1 
 
 Now among these terms, of the signification of which the lawyer 
 acknowledged himself ignorant, were vas and subvas, vassal and 
 arriere vassal ; and this primitive legislation of the Aborigines and 
 Fauns, which the jurists of the time of Aulus Gelliushad not studied, 
 because it no longer entered into the practice of the civil law, and 
 which they left as a curiosity of learning to the historians and poets, 
 (for a poet explained the terms which the lawyer did not understand ; 2 ) 
 this legislation of the Aborigines and Fauns was the old feudal juris 
 prudence of Italy. More than that, and singular to have to say at 
 this day! the expression serf of the glebe m so many words belonged 
 to the Roman law, and is formally found, as we will hereafter show, 
 in a constitution of Honorius and Theodosius. 
 
 Thus ancient Italy was feudal, like modern Europe from the fifth 
 to the fifteenth century. 
 
 This feudal Italy contained seigniors, (lords) who inhabited the 
 country ; for the cities only began to have importance, when the 
 nobility had decayed and the free boroughs were formed. These 
 seigniors had, to work their lands, slaves, who later became serfs of 
 the glebe, who still later became the peasants. 
 
 Perhaps it may be well to say here in a few words that the men, 
 who in the ancient Roman legislation bore the name of proletaries, 
 proletarii, were precisely these serfs of the glebe of primitive feudal 
 Italy. It results from the chapter of Aulus Gellius, of which we 
 have just now spoken, that the expression proletary had become very 
 difficult to understand, and had entirely dropped out of the lan 
 guage of the law, to which it belonged, toward the twelfth century 
 of the Christian era. The poet, who undertook to explain the 
 terms taken from the laws of the Aborigines and Fauns, in default 
 
 1 Aul. Gell., lib. xvi., cap. x., $ 7. 
 
 2 Turn forte quadam Julium Paulum, poetam memoriae nostrae d octissimum 
 praetereuntem conspeximus. Is a nobis salutatus rogatusque uti de sententia 
 deque ratione istius vocabuli nos doceret. (Aul. Gell. xvi. ; cap. x., \ 9, 10.) 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 185 
 
 | 
 
 of the lawyer, who never had studied them, said that in the ancient 
 jurisprudence, the proletaries were the serfs, who came immediately 
 above the capite censi? Now the capite censi were properly serfs 
 of the body, paying, according to the ancient custom of Italy, three 
 hundred and seventy-five pennies tax ; the proletaries paid fifteen 
 hundred. 2 We see by this that the Saint Simonian school, which has 
 latterly put in circulation the word proletary as signifying a free man 
 possessing nothing, and which has undertaken to base the sense, which 
 it gives, upon Roman history, was not very sure of the erudition, 
 which it displays on this point. 
 
 This being well understood and established, viz., that the country 
 of ancient Italy was inhabited by rich and lordly families, and that 
 there were great domains belonging to the temples, of which the 
 pagan clergy, as proprietors, superintended the culture and received 
 the revenues, we may ask what became of the numberless slaves, 
 laborers, vintners, gardeners, shepherds, who cultivated the lands 
 and tended the flocks, and of whom a certain number from time to 
 time attained to freedom. The masters always, for a thousand differ 
 ent causes, set free some of their slaves in the cities : why should they 
 not have set free some in the country ? Besides, the fact of a rural 
 population, attached only to the soil, but possessing a property of 
 their own, sometimes even of a rural population entirely free, is so 
 evident in ancient history that we will presently take a rapid notice 
 of them. 
 
 We may then ask, we say, what became of the serfs and freed- 
 men of the country ? Did they remain isolated ? Did they live in 
 communities ? Did they possess an administration of their own ? 
 Did they have judges taken from among themselves in their disputes ? 
 
 And what we have said of the rural serfs and freedmen of Italy, 
 we may equally say of the serfs and freedmen of France. What 
 became of those so numerous serfs, who were primitively slaves, 
 whether of lords, or of monasteries, or of chapters, and who, not 
 withstanding their number, being separated in little groups or scat 
 tered in hamlets through the country, were never expressly erected 
 
 1 Extremus autem census capite censorum sens fuit trecenti septuaginta quinque. 
 (Aul. Cell., lib. xvi., cap. x., f 10.) 
 
 2 Qui in plebe Romana tenuissimi pauperrimique erant, neque amplius quam 
 mille quingentum sens in censum defuebant, proletarii appdlati sunt. (Aul. Gell., 
 lib. xvi., cap. x., 10.) 
 
 13 
 
l86 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 into communes? Nearly all the agricultural population of the 
 kingdom, and a considerable multitude of burghs and villages, 
 whose inhabitants, first slaves, then serfs, then freedmen, were finally 
 brought into the common mass of the tiers-Hat, have never passed 
 through the form of municipal association. Now, what was the 
 domestic and civil state of these rural populations? Who took 
 care of them ? Who judged them ? All these are difficult but very 
 important questions, on the solution of which must evidently depend 
 the general and superior signification of the history of the peoples 
 of the West. 
 
 It appears certain, as far as it is possible to have certainty and 
 precision in a study attempted for the first time, on facts so distant 
 and obscure, that the slave population of the country, as they were 
 set free, resolved themselves into little villages, little burghs, and 
 hamlets. It should be remarked that these primitive little villages 
 became the germ of communes that were formed later, when they 
 had acquired some development. Besides, these villages always 
 had for their centre a castle or a temple in ancient times ; a castle, 
 a church, or a monastery, in the middle ages. The castle or the 
 temple, the church or the monastery were the safeguard, to which 
 the serfs, feeble, naked, disarmed, came for shelter. It was thus, 
 in every country, in all times, the boroughs and cities commenced. 
 This perhaps would require some examples, which it would be easy 
 to give ; but we limit ourselves to Rome, commenced by a castle 
 on Mount Palatine, and Athens, by a castle on the Acropolis. We 
 must except from this general rule only those cities, which have been 
 founded all at once by colonies or by peoples emigrating ; but it 
 must not be lost sight of that we speak of cities and boroughs 
 founded by nascent, not by old, populations. 
 
 These open boroughs, having a castle in the centre, and formed 
 by the accumulated houses of the serfs of the seignior, were frequent 
 in primitive Italy. Plutarch testifies in the Life of Romulus that the 
 ancient Sabines lived thus. The Cisalpine Gauls, according to 
 Polybius, and the ^Etolians, according to Thucydides, also led this 
 feudal life. There still remained in Greece some of these burghs in 
 the time of Pericles; and Thucydides mentions four or five; but 
 the greater part of them had at that epoch acquired sufficient im 
 portance, either by the number of their inhabitants or by the extent 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. l8? 
 
 of the franchises which they enjoyed, to be erected into communes; 
 and, besides, some of them were surrounded with walls and changed 
 into strongholds by the Athenians or the Lacedemonians, during 
 the Peloponnesian war. 1 
 
 In the middle ages, open burghs, having a castle or a monastery in 
 the centre, were innumerable. Although the greater part of them 
 have since become cities, it is very easy to recognize some of them 
 at this day by their names, in which is mentioned the castle, to 
 which they owe their origin, as Chateau-roux, Chateau-Meillan, 
 Chateau-neuf, Castelnau, and the other cities, in whose names ap 
 pear the wordferre , which also signifies strong castle; firmitas, as 
 the ancient charters express it. 
 
 The slave population of the country, we say, flowed into these 
 thousand small burghs, of which some became cities and others 
 have disappeared. In fact, it must be remarked that isolated houses 
 in the country belong to modern times ; in primitive times, we have 
 shown, there were none isolated but the castles. 
 
 At the time when these burghs were formed, they were inhabited 
 by populations in a state of slavery. Italy was still covered with 
 them toward the first century of the Christian era. For example, 
 there were few grand Roman lords, who did not possess many vil 
 lages, and they were masters of them as absolutely as the French 
 lords of the middle ages were of theirs. 
 
 The lords, who owned these villages, had them governed by of 
 ficers, whose functions nearly corresponded to those of our baillis. 
 Suetonius expressly relates that the Emperor Claudius had thus on his 
 domains officers, who administered justice to his vassals, not in his 
 name as emperor, but in his name of seignior. 2 There were laws 
 of Gordian, Diocletian, Maximian, Julian, and Zeno, 3 which insti 
 tuted in the empire judges called pedanes, (a) who by the nature of 
 their attributes, were exactly what in the fourteenth century were our 
 village judges, who were called, says Loyseau, juges sous / orme, 
 judges under the elm. 4 Finally, a constitution of Justinian, of the 
 
 1 See the speech addressed to an assembly of the people, at the commencement 
 of the Peloponnesian war, by Pericles, as to the disposition of the Athenians 
 and Lacedemonians to fortify different points of territory. (Thucydides, lib. i., 
 cap. cxlii.*) 2 Suetonius, Tib. Claud. Coesar, ch. xiii. 
 
 3 Cod. Justin., lib. iii., title iii., leg. 2, 4, 5. 
 
 (a) So called because they had no bench, but judged cases standing. 
 
 * Loyseau, on the abuses of village judges, p. 21. 
 
188 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 year 539, established, or rather regulated, the jurisdiction of lords 
 over their vassals, or of masters over their laborers, as in the Latin 
 tongue it is expressed. 1 Moreover, we should never hesitate to 
 employ, on occasion, the terms of heraldry in treating Roman his 
 tory. We will show summarily hereafter that the titles of prince, 
 duke, marquis, count, baron, chevalier, belong to the Latin tongue. 
 
 It is easily understood that it is difficult to say with precision up 
 to what time the villages of Italy remained thus the property of the 
 lords. There were some still in the fifth century. We know that 
 moral revolutions never have any precise date. Otherwise, the laws 
 of Theodosius, Arcadius, Valentinian II., Diocletian, Leo, and An- 
 themius contained most precise indications as to the state of the 
 peasants of the empire. 
 
 The most precise idea, that can be formed of the peasants of antiqui 
 ty, is this : they were slave agriculturists, slave laborers, slave vintners, 
 slave shepherds, to whom their masters, in pursuance of a new system 
 of management applied to their property, no longer gave lodging, 
 clothes, and food, as in the past; but accorded to them the faculty 
 of managing, at their pleasure, but under their responsibility, either 
 the cultivation of a certain extent of land or the care of the flocks, 
 on condition of paying annually to the master a certain portion of 
 the revenues of the flocks or land, and to keep the rest for them 
 selves, as an equivalent for food, clothing, and lodging, which they 
 no longer received. 
 
 This general idea, which we express, as to the peasants of antiquity, 
 results from a comparative study of the mode of emancipation of 
 agricultural slaves in antiquity and in the middle ages ; and, as 
 regards the Roman Empire, it rests on the formal text of a law of 
 the Emperor Anastasius, which dates from the first years of the sixth 
 century. 2 This law, as may be seen, is important on three points : 
 first, in that it announces the fact generally ; second, in that it 
 shows that it was ordinarily after thirty years of trial that the 
 masters intrusted the cultivation of the lands to the discretion of 
 
 1 Si vero forsan cum instituerint auditores litis, aut agricolarum domini, qui a 
 nobis sunt judices statuti. (Anth. Coll. vi., tit. ix., novel. Ixxx., cap. iii.) 
 
 a Agricolarum alii quidem sunt adscriptitii, et eorum peculia dominjs compe 
 tent ; alii vero tempore annorum triginta coloni fiunt, liberati manentes cum rebus 
 suis ; et ii etiam coguntur terram colere et canonem prestare. Hoc et doiniao et 
 agricolis utilius est. (Cod. Just., lib. xi., tit. xlvii., leg. 18.) 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 189 
 
 their slaves ; third, and finally, in that it says that this new mode 
 of cultivation was at the same time more advantageous to the slaves 
 and to the masters. 
 
 This law, well interpreted, explains with admirable simplicity 
 and rigor the nature and condition of the peasants in the Roman 
 Empire. 
 
 The masters, we have said, in place of lodging, feeding, and 
 clothing their slaves, as they had done in more remote times, found 
 it more convenient to get rid of this care, and to leave them free to 
 cultivate the lands at their discretion, and to give to them from the 
 fruits of their labor all beyond a certain fixed rent, called canon, 
 that is to say, custom. 
 
 It is very evident that the masters did not grant this favor, for it 
 was a very great one, to all their slaves, but only to those, who 
 evinced regular habits of intelligence and industry, and in whose 
 hands they could be certain that the lands would not lie fallow. 
 Hence we have two species of peasants ; those, who were still under 
 the hand of the master, and those, who had deserved to be intrusted 
 with the cultivation of the lands and the care of the flocks. The 
 former were called coloni adscriptitii, and were veritable slaves ; the 
 latter were called coloni originarii, inquilini, censitt, or simply 
 coloni, and were what serfs of the glebe were in the middle ages. 
 
 The coloni adscriptitii were, we say, veritable slaves ; * the master 
 could sell them at his pleasure. The coloni censiti, originarii, or 
 inquilini were no longer slaves ; all personal action of the master 
 over them had ceased, and he could no longer sell them except by 
 selling the lands to which they were attached. 2 
 
 This latter species of peasants, after thirty years evidence of an 
 active and regular life, became then, by the terms of the law of 
 Anastasius, entirely free in their persons. Nevertheless, even in 
 this freedom, which they had acquired, they were bound to work the 
 grant, the^^/, and to pay rent, cogentur terram colere et canonem 
 prestare. A law of Theodosius and Valentinian calls them serfs of 
 
 1 Quse enim differentia inter servos et adscriptitios intelligatur, cum uterque in 
 domini sui positus sit potestate. (Cod. Just., lib. xi., tit. xlvii., leg. 21.) 
 
 2 Quemadmodum originarios absque terra ita rusticos censitosque servos vendi 
 omnifariam non licebit. (Cod. Just., lib. xi., tit. xlvii,, leg. 7.) Si quis prsedium 
 vendere voluerit vel donare ; retinere sibi transferendos ad alia loca colonos pri- 
 vata pactione non possit. (Cod. Just., lib. xi., tit. xlii., leg. 2.) 
 
HISTORY OF THE 
 
 the land, 1 and a law of Honorius and Theodosius says that they were 
 attached to the glebe? These laws consider slavery as if it ought to 
 be eternal ; 3 but it results from the terms of a^constitution of Theo 
 dosius and Valentinian that there were degrees in this slavery ; for 
 example, there might be exemptions from the poll tax, which the 
 coloni censiti, inscribed in the public register of rents, 4 generally 
 paid. 5 
 
 The law of Anastasius teaches us, we have seen, that the serfs of 
 the glebe paid annually to the master a part of the revenues to rep 
 resent his right of property, and kept the other part to represent 
 their food, lodging, clothing, and profits. All this is elsewhere 
 found formally expressed in a constitution of Valentinian and 
 Valens. 6 Another constitution of the same emperors provides that 
 this rent should be paid in kind, unless the custom of the land 
 otherwise prescribed. 7 
 
 Once free in their persons by the expiration of thirty years, the 
 serfs of the glebe, provided they were faithful to the terms of their 
 feudal compact, acquired a moral value and a civil capacity in -the 
 sphere of their own interests. Public officers could not, under heavy 
 penalties, impose upon them menial labor, 8 and if their lord exacted 
 
 1 Servi tamen terras ipsius, cui nati sunt, existhnentur. (Cod. Just., lib. xi., 
 tit. li., leg. I.) 
 
 2 Quos ita glebis inhcerere praecipimus, ut ne puncto quidem temporis debeant 
 amoved. (Cod. Just., lib. xi., tit. xlvii., leg. 15.) 
 
 8 Cum . . . lex . . . colonos quodam seternitatis jure detineat, ita ut illis non liceat 
 ex his locis, quorum fructu relevantur, abscedere. (Cod. Just., lib. xi.,tit. l.,leg. I.) 
 
 4 Qui in suis conscripti locis proprio nomine libris censualibus detinentur. 
 (Cod. Just., lib. xi., tit. xlvii., leg. 4.) 
 
 5 Sublato in perpetuum humanse capitationis censu, jugatio tantum terrena 
 solvatur. Et ne forte colonis tributariae sortis nexibus absolutis, vagandi, et quo 
 libuerit recedendi facultas permissa videatur, ipsi quidem originario jure tene- 
 antur. (Cod. Just., lib. xi., tit. li., leg. I.) 
 
 6 Caeterum si profugi, quod alieni esse viderentur, quasi sui arbitrii ac liberi apud 
 aliquem se collocaverunt, aut excolenles terras partem fructuum pro solo debitam 
 do minis prtestiterunt, ccetera proprio peculio reservantes, vet quibuscumque 
 operis impensis mercedam placitam consecuti sunt. (Cod. Just., lib. xi., tit. xlvii., 
 leg. 8.) 
 
 7 Domini praediorum id, quod terra pnestat, accipiant, pecuniam non requirant, 
 . . . nisi consuetudo praedii hoc exigat. (Idem, lib. xi., tit. xlvii., leg. 5.) 
 
 8 Sd quis eorum, qui . . . sub quocumque pretextu publici muneris possunt esse 
 terribiles . . . rusticano cuipiam necessitatem obsequii . . . imponant, aut servum 
 ejus, vel forte bovem in usus proprios . . . converterint, . . . ablatis omnibus facul- 
 tatibus, perpetuo subjugantur exilio. (Idem, lib. xi., tit. liv., leg. 2.} 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. IQT 
 
 a greater rent than was the custom of the domain, the serfs could 
 reclaim it before the judge. 1 
 
 These two, or rather three, species of peasants, those who were 
 purely slaves, those who were serfs paying a poll tax, and those who 
 were serfs paying only rent, habitually collected in little villages, 
 and bore the name villagers, vicani. It appears that toward the 
 middle of the fifth century these villagers were already preparing 
 the way for a political result, which was completed in the compul 
 sory feudality of the middle ages, by placing themselves under the 
 safeguard of a powerful lord, who granted them his protection in 
 consideration of a tribute paid to him, that is to say, by creating a 
 voluntary feudality. 2 The law of Leo and Anthemius, which signal 
 izes this fact, forbids it under severe penalty ; but it prevailed later, 
 as we know, and gave birth to the whole system of feudal depend 
 encies. 3 
 
 We thus come to see that ancient Italy was fundamentally feudal : 
 we will show that it was feudal even in its language. With very 
 little more trouble we could show that feudality was Greek, next 
 that it was Jewish, and finally that it is, like the commune in another 
 order of facts, a phase of the history of humanity. 
 
 Without wishing to set forth here all the facts and ideas, by which 
 we will establish, in the volume on the history of the nobility, that 
 the nomenclature of the nobility of the middle ages belonged to the 
 ceremonial of the Roman Empire, we can nevertheless show, as we 
 have announced, that the titles gentleman, chevalier, baron, count, 
 marquis, duke, and prince, are taken from the Latin language. 
 
 Gentleman {gentilhomme} is the literal translation of gentis homo, 
 and designates exactly the same thing, viz., a man of free race, 
 one who counts no freedman among his ancestors. This is the 
 sense given to gentilhomme and gentis homo by the French and 
 Latin jurists.* Moreover, if we consider the word gentilhomme at 
 the moment when it first entered into the French language, we again 
 
 1 Quisquis colonus plus a domino exigitur quam ante consueverat . . . adeat 
 judicem, cujus primum poterit habere presentiam. (Idem., lib. xi., tit. xlix., leg. I.) 
 
 2 Ne quis vicanis patrocinium polliceatur vel agricolas in clientelam suscipiat, 
 redituum, alteriusve lucri promissione recepta. (Cod. Just., lib. xi., tit. liii., leg. I.) 
 
 8 Freeterea ut vicani, si servi sint, dominis castigati reddantur ; si liberi xx. libris 
 multentur. (Idem, leg. 2.} 
 
 4 Servi genus vel gentem non habent ; liberti, vel ab iis orti, gentem non 
 
192 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 find its form purely Latin ; for example, we read gentis hons in the 
 romance of Bertha with the Big Feet, which was of the year 1240, 
 or very nearly; 1 and gentifhomo in a charter of 1228, cited by 
 Adrian de Valois in his Notice of the Gauls. 2 
 
 Chevalier is the translation into the Celtic idiom of the Latin 
 eques. Already in the time of Nero the barbarian word caballus, 
 to signify horse, had entered into the Latin language. It is found 
 in Perseus. 3 In following the charters of the middle age, we trace 
 all the successive transformations, by which caballus became cheval? 
 and the grade of nobility, designated by eques among the Romans, 
 very nearly corresponds to the grade of nobility designated by che 
 valier in France. 
 
 We find baron in so many letters in the Commentaries of Caesar, 
 or rather in the continuation of the Commentaries by Hirtius, the 
 friend and colleague of Caesar ; 5 and again baron is expressly given 
 in four places by Cicero ; first, in his book De Finibus ; 6 secondly, 
 on his treatise on Divination ; 7 third, in his letters to Atticus ; 8 
 fourth in his letters to his friends. 9 Finally, we find baron in the 
 Satires of Perseus. 10 
 
 It must be admitted that baron, in the authors we have just men 
 tioned, does not signify precisely what it signifies in the history of 
 
 habent ; nam gentem habent soli, quorum parentes nemini servierunt. (Jacob. 
 Cujas, in lib. iii., quaest. Papinian. Comment, ad leg. I, de probat.) 
 
 1 Moult ot el roy Pepins tres gentis hons. (Le Romans de Berte aus grans 
 pies, verset. cxxxix.) 
 
 2 Hadrian. Vales. Notit. Gall., p. 333. 
 
 3 Nee fonte labra prolui caballino. (Perseus, Prolog., v. I.) 
 
 4 Caballus is found in most of the laws of the seventh century. (Lex Salic., tit. 
 xxvii., $ 9;) in a record of 1275 we read cavalcata, (Ordon. du Louv., t. iii., p. 
 58;) in a charter of 1224 we read chevalcata (Carpent. Gloss. Med. /Ev.;) finally, 
 cheval is found in Villehardouin. 
 
 5 Concurritur ad Cassium defendendum : semper enim barones compluresque 
 evocatos cum telis secum habere consueverat. (A. Hirtii de Bell. Alexand., 
 cap. liii.) 
 
 6 Haec cum loqueris, nos barones stupemus : tu videlicet tecum ipse rides. 
 (Cicero de Fin., lib. ii., cap. xxiii., $ 77.) 
 
 7 Huic quidem Antipho, Baro, inquit, te victum esse non vides ? (Cicero de 
 Qivinat., lib. ii., cap. Ixx., $ 14.4. ) 
 
 Apud patronem et reliquos barones te in maxima gratia posui, et hercule 
 merito tuo feci. (Cicero, Epis. ad Atticmn, lib. v., epis. xi., \ 5.) 
 
 9 Ille baro te putabat quoesiturum, unum ccelum esset, an innumerabilia. (Cicero, 
 epist. ad divers., lib. ix., epist. xxvi.) 
 
 10 ... Eheu ! 
 
 Baro, regustatum digito terebrare salinum 
 Contentus perages, si vivere cum Jove tendis. 
 
 (Pers. Satyr., v. 1 37-1 39.) 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. IQ3 
 
 the French nobility ; but we do not hesitate to affirm that its mod 
 ern is derived from its ancient sense. In Perseus, and in some pas 
 sages of Cicero, and notably in the two first and in the fourth of 
 the passages quoted, it appears to signify something like rustic ; 
 but in the third, taken from his letters to Atticus, baron has evi 
 dently an honorable signification. In the Commentaries of Caesar, 
 baron designates a certain kind of soldier. As the word baron is 
 Celtic, we are authorized to believe that it was applied to the Gauls 
 in the Roman service. The passage from Hirtius completely justi 
 fies this opinion. Once admitted that the barons were barbarian 
 soldiers, it is easy to conceive how baron might equally mean rustic. 
 In the middle ages, before the noble hierarchy was completely 
 organized, baron signified simply seignior or gentleman. We find 
 the epithet baron given to St. Peter in two passages of the Romance 
 of Bertha ; 1 and we read in a third place that King Pepin was " tre*s 
 gentis hons et ber." 2 Besides, it results from a great number of 
 texts that ber and baron meant the same thing in the middle ages. 
 As to the etymological meaning of the word, the glossarists pretend 
 that baron or ber signified a brave man, vtr. 3 
 
 Count is the translation of comes. Many witnesses establish that 
 the eminent persons of the Roman nobility had always around them 
 men, who were attached to them by some bond little known, and 
 who were called counts, comites. Cicero speaks of his counts in a 
 letter to Atticus;* he also mentions the counts of Verres. 5 Sueto 
 nius, in his Life of Claudius, speaks of the counts, who followed the 
 young Roman gentlemen to the schools of rhetoric. 6 In the Life 
 of Caesar he also mentions the counts of the magistrates, and what 
 he says of them necessarily attributes to them public functions, by 
 virtue of their title of count, since in determining the persons, who 
 had authority to be absent from Rome for three years, Caesar ex- 
 
 1 A Dieu s est commande e (Berte) et au baron St. Pierre. (Le Roman de Berte 
 aus grans pies. (Vers. xl. ; ibid., vers. cxxx.) 
 
 2 Moult o t el roy Pepin tres gentis hons et ber. (Ibid., vers. cxxxix.) 
 
 3 Porro quod in quibusdam glossariis exponerentur Baro, d*<)p et vir fortis in 
 laboribus, putarunt quidam baronem vocabulum et dignitatis et honoris. (Forcel. 
 Lexic., verb. Barb.) 
 
 4 Hominem certum misi de comitibus meis. (Cicero ad Atticum, lib. viii. i.) 
 
 5 Coraites illi tui dilecti manus erant tiue. (Cic. in Verrem., Act. ii., lib. ii., 
 cap. 10.) 
 
 6 Vix remisit (Claudius) ne cuivis comiti calamarioe adimerentur. (Suet., Tib. 
 Claud. Caesar, cap. xxxvi.) 
 
HISTORY OF THE 
 
 cepts only the military and the counts of the magistrates. 1 In the 
 Life of Adrian, Spartian speaks of the counts of the emperor, and 
 distinguishes them from his friends. 2 Moreover, it is certain that 
 comes, as employed in these passages of the different authors we 
 have mentioned, does not simply mean companion. This word had 
 already received, from the usages of society and the language of 
 ceremony, a special signification ; for the Greeks, as we will show 
 presently, translated this word in the cases cited by xo^j, which was 
 a barbarism ; when, moreover, they had the word axoxovroj, if comes 
 had meant companion. 
 
 When the emperors had abolished the last remnants of the re 
 publican form of the Roman government and become absolute in 
 fact and by law, they made their counts so many public officers, 
 without ceasing by that to keep them attached to their persons. In 
 absolute governments, the magistrates are always the familiars of the 
 prince. Thus the grand chamberlain and the grand pantler of the 
 kings of France were at the same time officers clothed with immense 
 powers. 
 
 It was about the time of Constantine that the counts of the em 
 peror became public officers. The first count of the sacred lar 
 gesses was of the year 340, under Constant ; 3 the first count of the 
 privy purse was of the year 342 ; 4 the first count of the domestics 
 was of the year 367 ; 5 the first count of the Orient is of the year 
 342 ; 6 the first count of Egypt was of the year 391 ; 7 the first count 
 of Macedonia in 327; 8 the first count of Africa in 326 ; 9 the first 
 count of Spain in 31 7 ; 10 the first count of the Gauls in 367. n The 
 counts mentioned are the most ancient whose names are known ; but 
 nothing authorizes us to believe that they were the first that existed 
 with like functions. 
 
 The title of count was common to the Empires of the East and 
 
 \ 
 
 1 Sanxit (Cresar) neu quis senatoris filius, nisi contubernalis aut comes magis- 
 tratuum, peregre proficisceretur. (Suet. Tranquil., C. Jul. Caesar, cap. xliii.) 
 
 2 Cum judicaret, in concilio habuit non amicos suos et comites tantum, sed 
 jurisconsultos. (Spartian. in Hadrian.) 
 
 3 Zosim. Hist., lib. ii., cap. 42. * Cod. Theod., lib. x., tit. x., leg. 6. 
 5 Ammian. Marcel. Hist., lib. xxvii., cap. 8. 
 
 6 Cod. Theod., lib. xii., tit. i., leg. 33. 
 
 7 Cod. Theod., lib. xvi., tit. x., leg. 1 1. 
 
 8 Cod. Theod., lib. xi., tit. iii., leg. 2. 9 Cod. Theod., lib. xii., tit. i., leg. 15. 
 10 Cod. Theod., lib. xii., tit. i., leg. 4. " Cod. Theod., lib. vii., tit. i., leg. 9. 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. IQ5 
 
 of the West. We have said that the Greek writers called them 
 xoprftft. The word is found in a great number of authors ; among 
 others, in Constantine Porphyrogenitus, 1 in Leo, 2 and in Pachy- 
 merus. 3 
 
 In France, under the kings of the first race, there were magis 
 trates representing the government in the provinces, who bore the 
 title of count. 4 
 
 The Latin expression signifying marquis was comes limitis, count 
 of the frontiers. The word limes was rendered in the Celtic lan 
 guage by marca, whence was first derived the false Latin word mar- 
 chio, signifying marquis, and thence was afterward derived the 
 French word mar chef signify ing frontier. This is expressly shown 
 in a letter of Pope John VIII., written between the years 872 and 
 882, which were the two limits of his pontificate. 6 Moreover, the 
 counts of the frontiers are named in a law of Valentinian and of 
 Valens of the year 367, and in a law of Honorius and Theodosius 
 of the year 417.* 
 
 The title of duke is also Roman, and comes from dux. Before 
 passing into the language of ceremony, dux meant general. The 
 word had, however, a meaning sufficiently precise ; for example, 
 dux was next below imperator. Pompey received the title of im- 
 perator after having long commanded the Roman armies, and Me- 
 tellus after a victory gained in Portugal over the army of Sertorius. 8 
 Cicero very clearly distinguishes these two titles. 9 Phaedrus gives 
 to the Emperor Tiberius the title of dux. 10 In the fourth century 
 
 1 Const. Porphyrog., lib. i. de them., cap. I. 
 
 2 Leo in tact., cap. iii., 10. 3 Pachymer., lib. i., cap. n. 
 
 4 Si quis judicem fiscalem, quern comitem vocant, interfecerint. (Lex ripuar., 
 tit. Iv.) 
 
 5 Si quis. alterum ligat et foris marcha eum vendiderit. (Lex Allaman., tit. 
 xxxiv.) 
 
 6 Marca dicitur comitatus terra? alicujus, unde ipse comes marchio dicitur. (Joan. 
 Pap. VIII., epist. ii.) 
 
 7 Comites . . . quibus Rheni est mandata custodia. (Cod. Theod., lib. vii., tit. i., 
 leg. 9.) 
 
 Lege dudum latu, quse licentiam exigendi . . . comitibus inferioribus denegavit, 
 duci limitis Eufratensis. (Cod. Theod., lib. viii., tit. xi., leg. 2.) 
 
 8 Plutarch, Sertorius, ch. xxii. 
 
 9 M. Attilius Regulus, quum consul iterum in Africa ex insidiis captus est, duce 
 Xantipo Lacedaemonio, imperatore autem patre Hannibalis, Hamilcare. (Cicero 
 de Off., lib. iii., cap. xxvi.) 
 
 10 Turn sic jocata est tanti majestas ducis. (Phoed. Fabul., lib. ii., fabula v.) 
 
196 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 the dukes are found among the officers of the emperors, and in 
 the hierarchy next below the counts, 1 The first Duke of Egypt was 
 of the year 364, under Valens. 2 There wgs a Duke of Mesopo 
 tamia in 349. 3 A law of Valentinian, of the year 367, mentions 
 the dukes, who were in Gaul and who guarded the passages of the 
 Rhine.* We find in Cassiodorus the terms, in which the investiture 
 of the dukes was made by the emperors. 5 
 
 As for the title of prince, we have already shown in the ninth chap 
 ter that it corresponds to the character expressed by the word rex. 
 
 It results from this rapid glance at the origin of the feudal titles 
 of the middle ages, that their roots extend far into Roman history. 
 As we have said, we do not wish to conclude from that, that they had 
 in the Latin of the age of Augustus exactly the same meaning as with 
 us, but only that our feudalism was not an isolated fact in the history 
 of the West ; that it was immediately preceded by the feudalism of 
 ancient Italy, a feudalism identical in substance and like enough in 
 form to have given to ours some of the principal terms of the heraldic 
 vocabulary. 
 
 Another order of facts, which serve to prove the state of feudal 
 subjection of ancient Italy, is the fairs, which the seigniors had the 
 right of establishing in the villages ; which proves that these villages 
 belonged to them. In the second Philippic, Cicero reproaches 
 Anthony with having defrauded the state of its rights by establishing, 
 on his own private authority, fairs in the villages situated on his 
 lands. 8 On the other hand, Suetonius relates that the Emperor 
 Claudius, wishing to establish them on his private domains, asked 
 authority for so doing from the senate. 7 It appears by a letter of 
 the younger Pliny to Valerius, that the villages, which had fairs, 
 sometimes made remonstrances to the senate against the neighboring 
 
 x Emensa ad magistros militum, et comites et duces omnes. (Cod. Theod., lib. 
 viii., tit. xii., leg. 1 1.) Dukes are called inferior counts in law 2, tit. xi., book vii. 
 
 2 Cod. Theod., lib. xii., tit. xii., leg. 5. 
 
 3 Cod. Theod., lib. viii., tit. iv., leg. 4. 
 
 4 ... Duces . . . quibus Rheni est mandata custodia. (Cod. Theod., lib. vii., 
 tit. i., leg. 9.) 
 
 5 Ducatum tibi credidimus Retiarum, ut milites et in pace regas, et cum eis 
 fines nostros solemni alacritate circumeas. (Cassiod. Var., lib. vii., cap. iv.) 
 
 6 Imperium populi Romani hujus domesticis nundinis diminutum est. (Cicero, 
 Philipp. ii., ch. xxxvi.) 
 
 7 Jus nundinarum in privata prsedia a consulibus petiit. (Suet. Tranquil., Tib. 
 Claud. Caesar, cap. xiii.j 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 
 
 lords, who wished to establish them on their lands. 1 A fragment of 
 Modestin, in the Digest, testifies that from the time of Justinian it 
 was the emperor, who authorized the creation of fairs in the villages, 2 
 and a law of Valentinian and Valens makes known that all, who at 
 tended them, were inviolable during their continuance. 3 
 
 The establishment of these fairs in the villages belonging to the 
 lords had a double object. First, they facilitated the sale of the 
 slender productions of the soil, and procured for the peasants a 
 small income. Next, they created for the lords an annual revenue 
 from the various taxes, which they did not fail to establish, on the 
 merchandise and provisions brought thither. This, the law of Val 
 entinian and Valens just cited very expressly mentions. 4 Moreover, 
 if we descend to the middle ages, we find innumerable examples of 
 lords, who gave away or sold the fairs established on their domains ; 
 that is, the annual revenues those fairs produced. La Thomassiere 
 relates, in his treatise on the local customs of Berry and Loris, that 
 Geoffrey the Noble, Viscount of Bourges, gave, in 1012, two fairs 
 on his domains to the monks of St. Ambrose. 5 
 
 By force of time these boroughs of ancient France grew and be 
 came free : their lords accorded to them, little by little, the right 
 of governing themselves, and the peasants who inhabited them, once 
 subject to poll tax and bodily service, after having become proprie 
 tors of the lands, on which their fathers were slaves and they were 
 serfs, now are the equals of their ancient masters, and send repre 
 sentatives to the king, who is the master of their masters. 
 
 1 Vir prsetorius Solers a senatu petiit ut sibi instituere in agris suis nundinas per- 
 mittetur. Contradixerunt Vicentinorum legati. (Plin., lib. v., epist. iv.) 
 
 2 Nundinis impetratis a principe. (Digest., lib. 1., tit. xi.) 
 
 3 ... Nullum in mercatibus atque nundinis ex negociatorum mercibus con- 
 veniant . . . vel sub pnetextu privati debiti aliquam ibidem concurrentibus moles- 
 tiam possint inferre. (Cod. Justin., lib. iv., tit. lx., leg I.) 
 
 4 ... Vel in venalitiis aut locorum temporali qusestu et commodo privata exac- 
 tione sectentur. (Cod. Justin., lib. iv., tit. lx., leg. I.) 
 
 5 Dono etiam ex mea proprietate duas nundinas ; unam scilicet in festivitate S. 
 Petri de mense Junio ; alteram in natale S. Ambrosii, et unamquamque per Sep- 
 tenos dies totideraque noctes. (La Thomas. Cout. Locales, ch. xxx.) 
 
IQ8 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 CHAPTER XI*. 
 
 THE TRADES UNIONS OF ANTIQUITY THEIR FORMATION. 
 
 WE have now the slaves set free ; some in the commune, as 
 burghers ; others under the feudal system, as peasants. 
 
 What will they become ? 
 
 Some will labor, economize, amass, and become, in the commune, 
 the body of artisans and merchants ; under the feudal system, the 
 class of small proprietors, farmers, and day-laborers. 
 
 Others, betrayed by physical and moral forces, by sickness, by 
 revolutions, by the thousand disappointments, which attend man at 
 every turn of his life, will not labor, will not economize, will not 
 amass, and will form the hideous mass of paupers, thieves, and pros 
 titutes. 
 
 Sometimes from this mire some pellets of gold will rise, as if to 
 show that, wherever man is, intelligence, courage, and beauty, 
 which are three gifts of God, are never entirely effaced ; and we 
 will see that the paupers are a tree which bears for fruit. poets; rob 
 bers became conquerors, and prostitutes queens. 
 
 In general, then, the emancipated slaves, whether in the commune 
 or in feudalism, divide into two branches : those who labor, and 
 those who do not labor. We must now sketch the history of both. 
 We commence with the history of those who labor. 
 
 Although beggars were not the objects of general attention and 
 sympathy, and only received a sort of organization, by the founda 
 tion of establishments of public charity, about the beginning of the 
 fourth century, we must not thence conclude that the number, more 
 or less considerable, of laborers, produced by the emancipation of 
 slaves, waited until that epoch to receive their organization through 
 the trades unions. The creation of trades unions was anterior, by 
 at least a thousand years, to the creation of houses of refuge. The 
 reason of this fact is very simple. It is clear that the first emanci 
 pated slaves having necessarily become laborers, in order to live, 
 these laborers were only transformed into beggars when the ex 
 penses of the family, the inadequacy of compensation, the suspen- 
 
 L K/t 
 
 X 
 \ v>JU 
 
 ~ * 
 
 - fcu. ILl, 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 199 
 
 sion of industry or other analogous causes, rendered the wages 
 of labor insufficient. In historic order, then, laborers naturally pre 
 cede beggars; which explains why establishments of public charity 
 only come a long time after the trades unions, of which they are in 
 some sort auxiliary, since the only resource of the laborer, in time 
 of want, is to have recourse to charity, and to ask of the poorhouse 
 what the workshop refuses. We should here remark, be/ore going 
 farther, that to the number of causes, which we have already de 
 duced to explain the rarity of beggars, thieves, and public women, 
 in the times anterior to the fourth century, we should add the organ 
 ization of labor, and the system of industrial and mercantile cor 
 porations among the ancients, of which we are going to indicate 
 the formation, recount the development, and explain the fall. 
 
 The system adopted by the ancients for the organization of 
 labor would be impracticable and odious to our customs and ideas ; 
 nevertheless, it had among them, and notably in the Roman Em 
 pire, the inappreciable advantage of changing every laborer into 
 a public functionary, in attaching him and his indissolubly to the 
 trade, which he had chosen, and of guaranteeing to him and his 
 always all the necessaries, and sometimes all the commodities of 
 life. It was by means of this provident organization that the labor 
 ing classes of antiquity so energetically resisted the causes of disso 
 lution, abasement, and misery, which oppress the laboring classes 
 of modern times, and were more than a thousand years in being 
 transformed, in part, into beggars, thieves, and prostitutes. 
 
 Corporations or trades unions for we will use these two terms 
 indifferently, although the latter is more particularly applicable to 
 the corporations formed in the middle ages ; the corporations, of 
 all times and of all countries, having a common nature, differing 
 but little in form, and not at all in their object corporations or 
 trades unions existed among the Jews since the time of Solomon ; 
 among the Greeks from the time of Theseus, and among the Ro 
 mans from the time of Numa. 
 
 We would remark and the principles above established jus 
 tify us that the Jewish trades unions go back even to the time 
 of Joshua, since we have established that there were communes in 
 Syria at that epoch. Now there is this connection between com 
 munes and trades unions, that communes were the association of 
 
2OO HISTORY OF THE 
 
 freed men with a view to government, and trades unions were the 
 association of freedmen with a view to industry or commerce. 
 
 Communes, therefore, never existed without trades unions ; first, 
 because their elements are the same ; and next, because the freed 
 men, not being originally landed proprietors, were forced to be 
 come artisans or merchants. Wherever, therefore, we find a com 
 mune, we may be certain of the existence of a trades union. More 
 than that, we have a hundred examples of communes, which were 
 formed with a trades union already existing, and whose municipal 
 charter was nothing but a statute law for a commercial corporation. 
 The commune of Paris is an example. 1 We are therefore authorized 
 to date the Jewish trades unions as far back as Joshua, because we 
 have shown the establishment of communes in Syria at the epoch 
 of the egress of the Israelites from the desert. 
 
 The Jewish trades unions are seen in the different corps of work 
 men employed to build the temple of Solomon, of which Flavius 
 Josephus, in the eighth book of his history, gives abundant indica 
 tions. 2 The Greek trades unions, which bore the name of fellow 
 ships, tVatpf Ja, are clearly indicated by Plutarch in what he has writ 
 ten of the division of the citizens of Athens made by Theseus, 3 and 
 
 1 We will hereafter show how the commune of Paris had, as the germ of its 
 formation, a company or union of watermen, making part of the general organ 
 ization of the trades of the empire, under the name of Nautcz Parisiaci. 
 
 2 What Flavius Josephus relates of the works executed at different times at 
 Jerusalem, in building, rebuilding, and repairing the temple, leaves no doubt that 
 the workmen employed, both Jews and Sidonians, were organized in trades 
 unions. Besides, every scintilla of doubt is removed by the following passage, 
 which clearly speaks of the hierarchy, which prevailed among the workmen, and 
 of the thirty-two hundred masters, who had forty thousand masons employed on 
 the walls of the temple. Hanv 6 SK ruv napoiKuv oii$ Aow(5/f /raraAcAoura, . . . rtiv it 
 \aronovvrwv d<fni*<{ pvpiot TOVTMV 6 eniparai rpt^iAioi *ai rpiariaioi. (Flavii Josephi, Ant. 
 Jud., lib. vii,, cap. ii.) 
 
 3 Plutarch thus expresses himself in the Life of Theseus, on the separa 
 tion made by the founder of Athens of the nobility and the corps of artisans : 
 
 " Ov pfiv draKTOv, ov&i ftt^iy^ivr^v ircpittdev vno TrAr/floiif eirixvdevrof dwpi rov ysi/o/^i/r;!/ rqv (5r?/io- 
 upariav dAAa wpwroj anoKpivaf X w P t Eu7rarp5aj xai r<J/iopoi){ xai A^iovpyoiif, Kwarpictaij 
 yiftixrKttv TO. Sua, Kai rraps\eiv apxovras arro^ovj, /cat vo^wv thtJaoxaAouy civai." ^Plutarch, 
 Theseus, ch. xxv.) 
 
 A little above, he mentions a feast, which was held in honor of the pilots, which 
 establishes the existence of confraternities among the Athenian workmen. This 
 feast was called KvSipvriota. " Mapn-pei <5e rovrotf fipwa Navaidoov *ai 4>aia/co{ tiaa^Evov 
 0rwj <t>a\npoi npof rd) rou X P<"J ispai, /cut rqv ioprriv TO. KuScpvriaia <prioiv etcelvots rtXsiodai," 
 (Plutarch, Theseus, cap. xvii.) 
 
 Moreover, if the text of Plutarch could leave any doubt as to the fact of the 
 Athenian trades unions, a fragment of Gaius on the Twelve Tables, preserved in 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 2OI 
 
 the Roman trades unions were, if not instituted, at least regulated 
 by Numa, according to Dionysius of Halicarnassus, and all who 
 have written on Roman antiquities. 1 
 
 It would not be easy to reconstruct the Jewish trades unions 
 established in different cities, as Jerusalem, Samaria, Bethsura, Jer 
 icho, Tarshish, Sephoris,(0) and others; first, because we have very 
 few documents on the interior history of the Jews, and next because 
 a great number of the laws of their interior administration were 
 preserved only by tradition, like the customs of France, of which 
 no general digest was made until the time of Charles V. ; and lastly, 
 because Flavius Josephus cites, in the i yth chapter, book xvi. , of his 
 Ancient History of the Jews, a law r in relation to the paternal power, 2 
 which is not found in the Bible; whence we are authorized to 
 believe that the Sacred Scriptures do not contain a complete collec 
 tion of the Hebrew institutions down to the Christian era. The 
 documents relative to the Greek trades unions are a little more 
 numerous, and although of all the ancient legislation of the Greeks 
 there remain only the few fragments contained in the compilations 
 of John Meursius and Samuel Petit, 3 it would not be impossible, 
 
 the Digest, says that the law on the corps of craftsmen would seem to have been 
 borrowed from the laws of Solon on the same matter ; and below Gaius cites the 
 very text of the laws of Solon, in which it is decreed that the members of the 
 crafts may organize themselves int trades unions respecting the laws of the 
 state. See the passage of Gaius and the text of Solon : " Sodales sunt qui 
 eiusdem collegii sunt; quam Grteci eraiptiav vocant. His autem potestatem facit 
 lex pactionem quam velint sibi ferre, dum ne quid ex publica lege corrumpant. 
 Sed fuze lex- videtur ex lege Solonis translata esse ; nam illuc ita est: " "Lav 6s (Wo f , 
 ; 0paropj, fj lepcji dpyia>i>, fi vaurai, fj ovvanoi, i) oporatpoi^ 17 S/auajrcH, 7 ini \iav oixoftevoi, 
 rj elf ifjuroptav. Ori av TOVTWV (5<a<5wi/rtti ^poj dAArjAouj, xvptov etvac, iav pi airayopevari 
 ^/xdffi a ypa/iuara." (Digest, lib. xlvii., tit. xxii., leg. 4.) 
 
 1 Plutarch, in his Life of Numa, does not limit himself to saying that this king 
 regulated the constitution of the Roman trades unions, but names the corps of 
 craftsmen, who made part of them. See what he says : " TCJJ/ <Se dAAcji/ avrov 
 
 tfoAim^arui rj Kara rt^i/aj havopr) TOD rrAfjflouj ^aAtara Saw^a^eraj." And a little farther 
 Oil: " Hi> Se f) 6iavofjirt Kara raj re\.vag, avAr/rwi/, xpwo\;<5cdi/, rfirroi/toi/, /?a0a> , a/turoro^cjf, 
 
 aKvroieil/uv, xaA/cewi , /cepa/iewy." (Plutarch, Numa, cap. xvii.) 
 
 (a) Probably Sardis. See Dictionary of the Bible, by Dr. William Smith: 
 " Sardis was a commercial mart of importance; the art of dyeing wool is said by 
 Pliny to have been invented there ; and at any rate, Sardis was the entrepot of 
 the dyed woollen manufactures. Sardis recovered the privilege of municipal gov 
 ernment upon its surrender to Alexander the Great. 
 
 2 This is the law mentioned by Herod the Great in the assembly held at 
 Beryta, giving to fathers an absolute right of life and death over their children. 
 We have already spoken of this law in our third chapter. 
 
 3 Joannis Meursii Themis Attica, 1685, in 4:0. Samuel Petit, Leges Atticae, 
 1635, in folio. 
 
 14 
 
202 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 with an attentive reading of their comedians, orators, and historians, 
 to reproduce nearly all the essential features of the trades unions of 
 Athens or of Argos. We have not thought it necessary to under 
 take this labor; first, because we can fall b!ick upon the Roman 
 trades unions, in relation to which the evidences abound, and next, 
 because the trades unions of all antiquity, we might almost say of 
 all times, are very nearly cast in the same mould. 
 
 Plutarch relates in the Life of Numa, that this prince established at 
 Rome the corps of craftsmen. 1 In the mouth of ancient chroniclers, 
 who rarely criticized the facts they reported, such a fact should 
 signify that Numa made some regulations relative to the confrater 
 nities and fellowships, which already existed at Rome, just as King 
 John regulated the different corps of craftsmen, which existed in his 
 time at Paris. In fact, it would be difficult to believe that, Rome 
 having formed a species of commune from the day of its foundation, 
 
 1 We do not know whether it is necessary that we should here give an opinion 
 on the modern theories applied to the origin of Roman history, which consider 
 all the royal period, which precedes the Twelve Tables, as a long myth, in which 
 Romulus, Numa, Tullus Hostilius, and the other kings were symbols, and not 
 men who really existed. This theory, imagined by the late Niebuhr and im 
 ported into France by M. Michelet, derives from the authority of these two 
 names, eminent for historic learning, a solidity, which is proof against a mere 
 note. We limit ourselves to saying of this theory what is necessary to show that 
 it is not without premeditation that we have not accepted it. 
 
 In our opinion, to explain the origin of Rome by supposing that the kings of 
 Rome were but symbols, is to create difficulties ten times greater than to follow 
 the beaten track and suppose that these kings really existed. It is well under 
 stood that we content ourselves with expressing our opinion, without pretending 
 to justify it, which would carry us too far from our subject. We would only re 
 mark that Niebuhr, who applied himself principally to the history of the Etrus 
 can antiquities, may have had his reasons for belittling as much as possible all 
 nationalities except that, of which he was the renovator and apologist. More 
 over, without entering fully into the discussion, it is well to observe that Plutarch, 
 writing, as he says in the Life of Theseus, on the faith of a considerable number 
 of very ancient chronicles, was much nearer to Romulus and to Numa than we 
 are to Charlemagne, and that the idea never occurred to us to take Charlemagne 
 for a myth. Finally, to see only abstractions and allegories in the (to us) very real 
 and plastic rudiments of ancient histories, is to fall into the same idea (it seems 
 to us) which suggested to Dupuis his famous explanation of Christianity by the 
 solar mythology. 
 
 Nevertheless, we accord full liberty to those, who have an opinion made up on 
 these matters. We accept the scientific worth of Niebuhr with too much sincerity 
 to suppose that we had refuted him in a few lines, and we have personally known 
 too much of the strength of mind and immense acquirements of M. Michelet npt 
 to recognize that his excellent book would at least require another. 
 
 But we are convinced that the royal period of Roman history, excepting some 
 details introduced by the chroniclers, was a reality and not a symbol, and we 
 cite the acts of Romulus, Numa, Tarquin, and the other kings as of persons as 
 real as Dagobert, Charlemagne, and Hugh Capet. 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 2O3 
 
 the emancipated, and consequently industrial and commercial, class 
 should have waited until the time of Numa to create an association, 
 that is to say, to fix the rule of their daily labor and transactions. 
 However that may have been, it is under King Numa that the 
 Roman trades unions enter into history. 
 
 From that epoch the Roman corporations passed through three 
 successive periods, each of which marked them with a particular 
 stamp. The first period commenced with King Numa, and ended 
 near about the time of the Emperor Vespasian ; the second com 
 menced with Vespasian, and ended near about the time of the Em 
 peror Constantine; the third commenced with Constantine, and 
 ended with the empire. 
 
 The first period comprises the formation of the trades unions. 
 That formation was spontaneous. Workmen of the same craft, 
 traders in the same line of business, masons with masons, watermen 
 with watermen, came together, united, agreed upon certain fixed 
 points to regulate their relations, elected certain of them to judge 
 the cases and apply the accepted rules. Such were the first trades 
 unions. And there could be as many of them as there were trades. 
 
 It appears that the number of those established at Rome under the 
 kings was considerable, and also that their regulations were some 
 times from a point of view so circumscribed, that they conflicted with 
 the general spirit of the public laws. Then the control of the govern 
 ment commenced over the trades unions, and they entered upon a 
 new period, on which it will not be useless to give some explanations. 
 
 We have mentioned above, and the fragment of Gaius proves, 
 that the Twelve Tables prescribed that the trades unions should 
 conform to the general laws of the state ; and the fragment of Solon 
 establishes that a like regulation was applied to the Athenian trades 
 unions, which shows that the corps of craftsmen have had, in every 
 country, nearly the same destiny. We will show, when we come to 
 treat of the trades unions of the middle ages, that after having 
 commenced by the good will of the workmen and merchants them 
 selves, they have equally ended by receiving their institution from 
 the good will of kings. 
 
 To comprehend well this new situation of the trades unions under 
 the republic, that is to say, at an epoch when the liberty of industry 
 ought, it seems, to have been enlarged instead of being repressed, 
 we must take into account some facts, which explain how the restric- 
 
204 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 tions applied to their primitive liberty were nevertheless more favor 
 able than hurtful to the unions. 
 
 At whose service could the workmen of Rome place themselves? 
 Was it in the service of rich individuals ? Never. The rich each 
 possessed a great number of slaves, 1 of nearly all professions, by 
 whom they had their work done. There were capitalists, who bought 
 children of ten to twelve years of age, had them brought up and 
 taught different professions, and reimbursed themselves for their ad 
 vances by the product of their daily hire, when they were grown 
 up and instructed. Thus people went to them to hire a slave tailor, 
 shoemaker, musician, mason, grammarian, dancing-master, or phi 
 losopher ; and these, who returned to the capitalist in the evening, 
 brought back to him the price of their day s labor. Thus Crassus 
 maintained, for profit by hiring them, readers, scribes, goldsmiths, 
 silversmiths, stewards, housekeepers, and carvers. 2 This is true of 
 all the people of antiquity, the Greeks as well as the Romans. For 
 example, we find in the treatise of Xenophon on the Revenues of 
 Attica the most circumstantial details as to the hirers of slaves, and 
 as to the profit of their industry. Xenophon cites, among others, 
 one named Nicias, who had a thousand slaves, whom he hired to a 
 contractor for working mines, for an obolus a day per head. 8 
 
 1 Among the ancients, when they wanted to know a man s fortune, they asked 
 him how many working slaves he had ; that is, how many exercising a profession, 
 whose wages constituted a fixed income fpr the master. Socrates having at 
 Athens called to see a pretty freedwoman, called Theodota, holding the position 
 of what we call in Paris a kept-woman, asked her, in admiration of the luxury 
 of her house and her numerous domestics, if she had many slave workmen. 
 (Xenophon, Memorabilia, lib. iii., cap. xi., g 4.) 
 
 2 Plutarch, M. Crassus, cap. ii. 
 
 3 Xenophon, De Vectegal., cap. iv., \\ 14, 15. 
 
 It results clearly from two passages of the same treatise that the senate, or 
 rather the state, bought a great number of slaves, who were made to labor in their 
 different professions, either on hire to individuals, or in the cultivation of lands, 
 which they (the senate or state) took on lease; as, for example, in the cultivation 
 of the lands of the clergy, in keeping their houses, or in receiving the offerings, 
 alms, or rent for seats in the pagan temples. 
 
 $$ 23, 24 of the same book prove that the state bought slaves to draw a rev 
 enue from their labor, and 19 establishes that the state took the lands of the 
 pagan clergy on lease. In a preceding and subsequent passage, Xenophon pro 
 poses to the Athenians to create a sort of bank, the eapital of which, consisting 
 of slaves, should be applied to the development of private industry for a certain 
 %>nsideration. (a) Finally, as to the small receipts of the temples, for example, 
 from the rent of seats, we limit ourselves to citing from among other authorities 
 this passage of Tertullian. " Exigitis mercedem pro solo templi, pro aditu sacri ; 
 non licet deos nosce gratis: venales sunt." (Tertul. Apologet., cap. xiii.) 
 
 (a) Did General Howard get his ideas of the administration of the Freedmen s Bureau, from 
 Xenophon s Treatise on the Revenues of Attica? 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 2O5 
 
 So it was among the Romans. Thus Cato the elder had a number 
 of slave workmen, according to Plutarch. He even lent money to 
 his own slaves, with which to buy others still young, to whom they 
 taught trades, and resold at a great profit, in which Cato partici 
 pated. 1 
 
 Crassus also had a battalion of five hundred slaves, of all trades 
 connected with architecture. When he learned that a house was 
 on fire, he hastened to offer to buy it. It is easy to comprehend that 
 at such a moment the price would be greatly diminished. The pur 
 chase concluded, Crassus set his five hundred slaves to work, who 
 put out the fire and repaired the house. It was thus that he became 
 the owner of an entire quarter of Rome. 2 
 
 It was not, then, to the rich that working-men united in trades 
 unions could offer their labor. Was it to the poor? But even 
 among these, the trades unions were met by the competition of the 
 hirers of slaves. And such competition ! As we have already said, 
 the competition of such capitalists as Crassus, who often repeated 
 it was his favorite saying that no man could boast of being rich 
 without having the means of keeping in pay an army of 40,000 
 men. 8 
 
 There remained only the government, which was the true patron 
 of the trades unions, and the works undertaken by it formed the 
 only permanent workshop where labor could gain its daily wages. 
 
 On its side, the government needed always a number and variety 
 of workmen sufficient to execute its works, and how great were the 
 works executed by the Roman government ! How many and such 
 temples ! So many and such aqueducts ! So many and such 
 bridges ! Here the numerous workmen of Cato, the five hundred 
 of Crassus could do nothing ; corporations, associations of work 
 ing-men, were needed ; and it was because of being always their 
 patrons and employers, that the senate and the emperors interfered 
 to legislate for them. The law of the Twelve Tables, which or 
 dains that every corporation shall conform to the general laws of 
 the state, is then in reality the first privilege established in favor of 
 the laboring classes already regularly organized at that epoch ; since 
 it to a certain extent created a monopoly in their favor, prevented 
 
 1 Plutarch, Marcus Cato, cap. xxi. 2 Plutarch, M. Crassus, cap. ii. 
 
 3 Plutarch, M. Crassus, cap. ii. 
 
2O6 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 interference and loss to industry by prohibiting an unrestrained 
 competition, and enriched all the existing trades unions at the ex 
 pense of all those, who could not organize into unions. 
 
 From the establishment of the republic to its fall, the Roman 
 government never ceased to interfere by legislation with the trades 
 unions, to consolidate them, to simplify them, above all to render 
 them in a measure sole collectors of the public revenues, and to make 
 them the instruments and interior organs of the administrative life. 
 See, in few words, how the trades unions drew near to the state, and 
 ended by becoming an integrant part of it. 
 
 As the republic extended her conquests, she successively increased 
 her public domains and her armies ; that is to say, her revenues and 
 expenditures. For a government, which had neither our centraliza 
 tion, nor our hierarchy of functionaries, nor our rapid means of 
 transportation, nor our banks, nor our system of credit, which im 
 provises in twenty-four hours as many contractors as needed, it was 
 very difficult to regulate and collect the revenues, not only from the 
 Roman citizens and the conquered provinces, but principally from 
 the immense and innumerable possessions belonging to the public 
 domain, and from the extensive lands of the pagan clergy, which 
 had to be let out on leases more or less long. 
 
 The taxes under the Roman Empire had not the unity and sim 
 plicity of modern states. To obtain an idea of them, we must go 
 back to the taxes of every kind that existed in the middle ages. But 
 it may be said that the Roman taxes were of two great classes. 
 The first comprised the taxes assessed on persons and paid in 
 money ; the second the taxes paid in kind by the farmers of the 
 public domain. The taxes in money were collected under the em 
 perors by the praetorian prefects, with the aid of inferior officers, 
 and were applied to feeding and paying the troops, as Zosimus re 
 lates in what he says of Constantine ; l the taxes in kind were ordi 
 narily received by farmers-general and by the trades unions, as is 
 proved by the laws on master butchers and pork butchers, which we 
 will cite below. 
 
 The history of the possessions of the pagan clergy would be very 
 curious and ample. We are forced to leave it for the volume in 
 
 1 Zosim. Hist. Rom., lib. ii., in Constantin. See also a law of Valentinian 
 cited in note 3 of page 209. 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 2O/ 
 
 which we will treat of the history of the noble classes.. Meanwhile 
 we limit ourselves to saying that the lands of the clergy were en- 
 feoffed, or, which comes to the same thing, let out on long leases, 
 and the rents, paid in kind, were generally received by the trades 
 unions; for example, by the decurions, who formed a veritable 
 union, and who had the right of farming out the lands of the public 
 domain and of the temples, at least from the end of the fourth cen 
 tury, as is proved by a law of Arcadius and Honorius of the first of 
 December, 400. l A passage of the treatise of Xenophon on the 
 Revenues of Attica proves that the property of the pagan clergy 
 was farmed out in the same way among the Greeks. 2 
 
 Add to this the care of transporting to Rome the public revenues, 
 or of having them at certain points for the support of the armies, 
 that of provisioning the city, that of having ready in the most dis 
 tant and desert localities those legions of marvellous workmen, who 
 have covered Spain, Gaul, Germany, England, Greece, Asia Minor, 
 Egypt, Syria, and the north of Africa, the whole known universe, 
 with indestructible monuments. 
 
 It was by the aid of the trades unions that the government or 
 ganized its administrative service, its distribution of military forces, 
 and the development of its architectural splendor. There were 
 trades unions charged with the collection of the revenues ; others 
 that supplied Rome with provisions ; others that fed it ; others that 
 took care of the edifices ; others that clothed the soldiers ; others 
 that armed them ; others that supplied the interior and domestic 
 wants of a city full of riches and devoted to all kinds of pleasures. 
 The trades unions then were the framework of bone that supported 
 this great Roman body. It was by them that the senate and the 
 emperors acted after having spoken ; it was by them that so many 
 different provinces, nations, tongues, and religions were held to 
 gether ; it was by them that the material acts conceived by the 
 sovereign people were put into operation ; finally, it was they that 
 executed all those minute details of daily labor, for which we have 
 
 . . et reipublicse loca . . . vel ea quse de jure templorum aut per diver- 
 sos petita, aut aeternabili domui fuerint congregata, vel civitatum territoriis ambiun- 
 tur, sub perpetua conductione, salvo dumtaxat canone, quem sub examine habitae 
 discussionis constitit adscriptum, penes municipes, collegiatos, corporatos urbium 
 singularum conlocata permaneant. (Cod. Theod., lib. x., tit. iii., leg. 5.) 
 
 8 ... MiaQovvrai yovvKal Tenivr), Kai upa. (Xenophon, De Vectigal., cap. iv., \ 19.) 
 
2O8 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 that crowd of contractors, private workshops, and free laborers, 
 who are the active part of modern states, but were completely un 
 known to the empires of antiquity. 
 
 The Roman trades unions were naturally of two sorts, although 
 at bottom they had the same regulations, the same privileges, the 
 same duties, and the same object. They were divided, or may be 
 divided, into commercial and industrial unions. In the law they 
 bear the name of colleges, collegia, or of corporations, corpus. A 
 law of Honorius and Arcadius, of the year 412, calls the mem 
 bers of the trades unions indifferently collegiati or corporaii* 
 
 The principal commercial corporations of the empire were the 
 sailors union, navicularii ; that of the bakers, pistores ; butchers, 
 suarii ; limeburners, calcis coctores ; weavers, linteones ; tailors, 
 gynaceiarii ; the shell-fish gatherers and silk-dyers, murileguli ; car 
 riers, bastagarii ; wine merchants, vini susceptores ; lumbermen, 
 dendrophori ; and a crowd of others, not omitting the respectable 
 corps of sworn measurers of grain at the warehouses of the port of 
 Ostia, mensores portuenses. 2 
 
 We must now give an idea of the manner in which all these cor 
 porations worked and were connected. We will take, for example, 
 the bakers and butchers. 
 
 The port of Ostia was the great entrepot of Rome. Thither the 
 corporation of watermen were required to bring the revenues of the 
 lands of the public domain, which were immense. Almost always 
 the revenues of the domain were in kind, which would prove that 
 the lands were held under leases by the farmers, who paid half the 
 product, or a third, according to their fertility. Moreover, we are 
 authorized to believe that each commercial union, as we have said, 
 collected the tax in kind, which appertained to its specialty ; that 
 is to say, the bakers received from the lands of the domain the rent 
 in grain ; the wine merchants the rent in wine ; and so of the rest. 
 The fact is that the butchers, by agents, collected the rents in hogs 
 
 1 Collegiatos, et vituarios, et nemesiacos, signiferos, cantabrarios, et singularum 
 urbium corporatos. (Cod. Theod., lib. xiv., tit. vii., leg. 2.) 
 
 2 Navicularii, Cod. Theod., lib. xiii., tit. v. Pistores, lib. xiv., tit. iii. 
 Suarii, ibid., tit. iv. Calcis coctores, ibid., tit. vi. Linteones, lib. x., tit. xx., 
 leg. 6, 8, 9, 16, et passim. Gynaeceiarii, ibid., leg. 2, 3, 7, et passim. Murile 
 guli, ibid., leg. 5, 12, et passim. Bastagarii, ibid., leg. 4, II. Vini susceptores, 
 lib. xiv., tit. iv., leg. 4. Dendrophori, lib. xiv., tit. vii., leg. I. Mensores 
 portuenses, lib. xiv., tit. iv., leg. 9. 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 209 
 
 and cattle from the farmers of certain provinces, as in Lucania, 
 Campania, Brutium, and Samnium. We find this much in detail in 
 a law of Constantine of the year 326, l in a constitution of Julian of 
 the year 363, 2 and especially in a law of Valentinian and Marcian 
 of the year 45 2. 3 
 
 The sailors union, then, for a fixed charge for freight, transported 
 the revenues in kind to the warehouses of the port of Ostia. 4 The 
 bakers union, located at Rome, became in a measure responsible 
 for the grain as soon as it was in the warehouses. 5 They had it 
 measured before admitting it into the warehouses by the experts of 
 the measurers union, 6 and they had it transported to Rome by 
 another union of the coasters of the Tiber, distinct from the great 
 union of navicularii, and called corpus caudtcarium, as appears from 
 a law of Honorius of the year 41 7. T 
 
 The caudicarii, on arriving at Rome, distributed the grain among 
 
 1 Ea praetia, quae in Campania per singulos annos reperiuntur, suariis urbis Romae 
 debent solvi, ita ut periculo suariorum populo porcinae species adfatim praebealur. 
 (Cod. Theod., lib. xiv., tit. iv., leg. 3.) 
 
 2 ... Lucanus possessor et Bruttius, quos longae subvectionis damna quatiebant, 
 possint, si velint, speciem moderatam . . . dissolvere. (Cod. Theod., lib. xiv., tit. 
 iv., leg. 4, ^ 2.) 
 
 3 Nee ante quidquam de Lucania Samnioque provinciis area praetoriana depos- 
 cat, quam suariis exigentibus debitum omne solvatur. (Cod. Theod., leg. novell. 
 Theod. lib., tit. xxix.) 
 
 4 Ex quocumque Hispanice littore portum urbis Romae navicularii navis intra- 
 verit. (Cod. Theod., lib. xiii., tit. v., leg. 4.) Patronos horreorum portuensium. 
 (Cod. Theod., lib. xiv., tit. xxiii., leg. I.) 
 
 Cassiodorus reports at length the instructions given by the emperor to the pre 
 fect of subsistence, to the end that he should oversee the bakers. We read as 
 follows : ... Si querela panis, ut assolet, concitetur, tu promissor ubertatis sedi- 
 tiones civicas momentanea satisfactione dissolvis. ... In fraudulentos distringe; 
 panis pondera sequus examinator intende; sollicitius auro pensetur. (Cassiodor. 
 Variar., lib. vi., formul. xviii.) 
 
 5 Haay ,f dpxalov Kara ryv ncyiarrjv Pwfirjv OIKOI Tra/^eyEfct?, v otj 6 rrj no\fi Xopiyovpt- 
 
 vovs aprof eyivsro. (Socrat. Hist. Ecclesiast., lib. v., cap. 8.) 
 
 6 Ad excludendas fraudes . . .portuensium mensorum. (Cod. Theod., lib. xiv., 
 tit. iv., leg. 9.) 
 
 7 Qui navem Tiberinam habere fuerit ostensus, onus reipublicae necessarium ag- 
 noscat. (Cod. Theod., lib. xiv., tit. xxi., leg. I.) 
 
 Besides, these boatmen of the Tiber, nautce Tiberni, were identically the same 
 as those designated in law 9, title 4, of lib. xiv., and in law 2, title 3, of the 
 same book, under the name of caudicarii, as is established by this passage from 
 Seneca : " Et naves nunc quoque, quse ex antiqua consuetudine per Tiberim corn- 
 meatus subvehunt, caudicarice vocantur. (Seneca, De Brevit. Vit., cap. 13.) 
 
 On the other hand, Varro thus explains the signification of caudicaritis : Quod 
 antiqui plures tabulas conjunctas codices dicelnnt, a quo in Tiberi naves codica~ 
 rias appellamus. (Varro apud Nonium, cap. xiii., num. 12.) 
 
2IO HISTORY OF THE 
 
 the bakeries, which were situated very nearly one in each quarter, 
 that is to say, to the number of fourteen for the whole city. 1 These 
 bakeries, which had a separate accountability and were directed by 
 three master bakers, of whom one filled the office of dean 2 for five 
 years, and all were elected, were so many members and branches 
 of the Roman bakery. The grain was then ground in hand-mills, 3 
 and the bread baked there, 4 and sold for the consumption of all. It 
 appears by a law of Honorius, of the year 398, that the custom was 
 to make bread of three qualities. 5 
 
 The butchers at Rome were divided into two unions, that of the 
 pork butchers, suarii, and that of the mutton and beef butchers, 
 pecuarii. Butcher s meat was never used except by slaves and poor 
 people. The rich ate fish, poultry, and fat venison. Pork, as we 
 have said, was used exclusively for slaves. The beef and mutton 
 butchers union declined very much, and a law of Honorius of the 
 year 419 reunited them to their fortunate rivals, the pork butchers 
 union. 6 The butchers were charged with going personally into the 
 stock-raising provinces to collect the taxes in kind from the Roman 
 citizens, and the rents, which were also in kind, of the lands of the 
 public domain, which were either enfeoffed or leased out. A law 
 of Constantine, of the year 326, nevertheless shows that the pro 
 prietors or tenants had the option of paying the tax in money. 1 
 
 1 Septem cohortes opportunis locis constituit (Caesar), ut binas regiones urbis 
 unaquseque cohors tueatur. (Cod. Justin., lib. i., tit. xv., leg. 3, in proem.) 
 
 2 These master bakers, who administered the branch bakeries, are designated by 
 the name of patroni pistorum, in laws 2, 7, and 12 of tit. in., book xiv., of the Theo- 
 dosian Code. Law 7, in reference to the ftean, says : Post quinquennii tempus 
 emensum, unus prior e patronis pistorum otio donetur. 
 
 3 Cum servis, molis. (Cod. Theod., lib. xiv., tit. iii., leg. 7.) 
 
 *Annona in pane cocto domibus exhibenda. (Cod, Theod., lib. xiv., tit. xvi., 
 leg. 2.) 
 
 5 Horace mentions bread, which he calls second quality : 
 
 Vivit siliquis et pane secundo. (Horat. Epis., lib. ii., epis. I., v. 123.) 
 
 It remains to be ascertained whether this was better than that which Suetonius 
 calls black bread. Panem sordidum oblatum aspernatus est. (Suet. Tranq., Tib. 
 Claud. Nero, cap. xlviii.) 
 
 Galen mentions four kinds of bread ; the first, which he calls enXtyi/tn??, of the 
 finest flour; the second, ff>5aXrjj, made of shorts; the third, ffuy/co^Kmicoj, of 
 unbolted flour ; the fourth, pwrapoj, that is to say black, of which one variety, the 
 most inferior, was called 6 aproj mruptaj, bran bread. 
 
 6 Suariis pecuarii jungantur. (Cod. Theod., lib. xiv., tit. iv., leg. 10.) 
 
 T In arbitrio suo possessor habeat, ne suario pecuniam solvat ; quod ideo per- 
 missutn est ne in sestimando porcorum pondere licentia suariis prsebeatur. (Cod. 
 Theod., lib. xiv., tit. iv., leg. 2.) 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 211 
 
 Generally, as we have said, they paid in kind, and the rent of a 
 forest or of a heath was fixed at so many pounds of pork. The 
 animals were then weighed before delivery to the butchers, 1 and, 
 the law adds, after having passed a night without food. A law of 
 Julian, of the year 363, to obviate the fluctuations in the price of 
 animals, ordains that they shall be appraised at least in Campania ; 
 that the butchers shall receive the taxes or revenues in money, and 
 that they should buy the hogs wherever they wished, as the union 
 might find to their advantage. 2 When purchased, the hogs were 
 taken to Rome, killed, cut up, and sold in the different quarters of 
 the city, exactly as the bakers did with the bread. 
 
 The interior organization of the Roman trades unions appears to 
 have been very simple. Those of the same trade, for example the 
 bakers, who were scattered throughout the empire, were divided 
 into groups in the different provinces and cities. A law of Hono- 
 rius and Theodosius fixes the maximum of each of these local unions 
 at 563 members. 3 Every five years these members elected a dean 
 and two assessors. We will see hereafter that Pliny the younger 
 asked of Trajan permission to establish a union of 150 members. 
 
 Each of these unions elected annually officers, who bore the name 
 of patrons. This is seen specially in the imperial laws for bakers, 4 
 boatmen of the Tiber, and measurers of grain at the port of Ostia. 5 
 These patrons were also called syndics in all the unions generally, 6 
 and there were at least four for each local union. A law of Hono- 
 
 1 Pondus porcorum trutinae examine, non oculorum libertate quaeratur . . . ani 
 mal vero a possessore tradendum, ob digeriem, prius unius noctistantum jejunitate 
 vacuetur. (Cod. Theod., lib. xiv., tit. iv., leg. 4.) 
 
 2 Per singulos itaque annos juxta praetia quae reperiuntur in publica conversa- 
 tione, per Campaniam habitentes pecuniam pro singulis libris porcinae praecipian- 
 tur exsolvere ; ita ut, non ad praetia quae in urbe Roma reperiuntur, sed quae 
 apud Campanos in publicis ruribus habentur, nummariae exactionis facultas dene- 
 getur. (Cod. Theod., lib. xiv., tit. iv., leg. 3.) 
 
 3 Cessante omni ambitione, omni licentia, quingentorum sexaginta trium col- 
 legiatorum numerus maneat, nullique his addendi mutandive, vel in defuncti 
 locum substituendi pateat copia, itaut judicio tuae sedis (Pnef. Pret.) sub ipsorum 
 presentia corporatorum, in eorum locum quos humani subtraxerint casus, ex eodem 
 quo illi fuerant, corpore, subrogentur; nulli alii corporatorum praeter dictum 
 numerum per patrocinia immunitate concessa. (Cod. Just., lib. iv., tit. Ixiii., leg. 5.) 
 
 *Unus prior e patronis pistorum. (Cod Theod., lib. xiv., tit. iii., leg. 7.) 
 
 5 Ad excludendas patronorum fraudes. (Cod. Theod., lib. xiv., tit. iv., leg. 9.) 
 
 6 In communi totius corporis causa, syndico ordinato. (Cod. Theod., lib. xiv., tit, 
 ii., leg. 42.) 
 
212 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 rius and Theodosius, of the year 41 7, 1 speaks of the three first pa 
 trons, which must be understood without prejudice to the dean, of 
 whom we are about to speak. One of these patrons or syndics was 
 named for five years, by the whole entire corporation, administra 
 tor-general of the interests of the society, 2 who bore the title of 
 prior, and he had charge of all the property, movable and immov 
 able. 3 All the trades unions were organized after this general 
 plan. 
 
 The industrial unions, in relation to which the documents are not 
 always so clear nor so abundant, were formed after the same model. 
 A law of Constantine of the year 337 mentions thirty-five of them. 
 There were others, which are mentioned by authors, and also in 
 later laws. Behold the thirty-five mentioned in the law of Constan 
 tine, some of which it is not easy to recognize, either because the 
 texts have been altered, or because their specialties have perished 
 in the wreck of ancient civilization ! 
 
 There were unions of the following trades : architects, architect! ; 
 carvers in plaster, laqttearii ; a kind of roofers, of whom Tertullian 
 speaks in his treatise on idolatry, and whom he, like Constantine, 
 calls albarii /* carpenters, tignarii ; doctors, medici ; lapidaries, 
 lapidarii ; chasers in silver, argentarii ; masons, structores ; veteri 
 narians, mulo medici ; stonecutters, quadratarii ; furbishers, barbari- 
 carii ; a union, which Cujas believes to have been that of the 
 pavers, and whose name, probably corrupted, is in the law of Con 
 stantine scasore s ; painters, pictores ; sculptors, sculp f ores ; pearl- 
 dressers, diatritarii ; joiners, intestinarii ; statuaries, statuarii ; de 
 corative painters, musivarii ; gravers on copper, cerarii ; black 
 smiths, ferrarii ; marble-cutters, marmorarii ; gilders, deauratores ; 
 founders, fusores ; dyers in purple, blatiarii; pavers -in mosaic, tes- 
 sellarii ; goldsmiths, aurifices ; looking-glass makers, spec ularii ; 
 
 1 ... Decernimus ne in singulis tres primes patronos corporum singulorum. 
 (Cod. Theod., lib. xiv., tit. iv., leg. 9.) 
 
 2 Unus e patronis totius consensu corporis eligatur, qui per quinquennium cus- 
 todiam . . . suscipiat. (Cod. Theod., lib. xiv., tit. iv., leg. 9.) 
 
 3 Post quinquennii tempus emensum, unus prior e patronis . . . ei qui sequitur, 
 officinam cum animalibus, servis, molis, fundis dotalibus, pistrinorum postremo 
 omnem enthecam tradat atque consignet. (Cod. Theod., lib. xiv., tit. iii., leg. 7.) 
 
 4 Scit albarius tector et tecta sarsire, et tectoria inducere, et cisternam Hare, et 
 cimatia distendere, et multa alia ornamenta praeter simulacra parietibus inscris- 
 pare. (Tertul. de Idol., cap. viii.) 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 
 
 wheelwrights, carpettfarii ; water-carriers, aqua libratores ; glaziers, 
 vitriarii ; workers in ivory, eburarii ; fullers, fullones ; potters, 
 figuli ; plumbers, plumbarii ; furriers, pelliones}- 
 
 The law of Constantine only mentions these trades unions, al 
 though there were many others. It suffices to say that every pro 
 fession had its laws ; that there was a fortune-tellers union, men 
 tioned in a law of Honorius and Arcadius of the year 412, under the 
 name of corpus nemesiacorum? and that the same emperors did not 
 disdain to occupy themselves with regulations for the venerable mas- 
 ter-banner-bearers-at-feasts, 3 and with their numerous varieties, from 
 the signifen, who were the genus, to the cantabrarii, who were the 
 species. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 ANCIENT TRADES UNIONS THEIR DEVELOPMENT. 
 
 TO comprehend fully the revolution, which took place in the 
 trades unions toward the commencement of the fourth cen 
 tury, it is necessary to retrace our steps, and elucidate a fact, which 
 we have only intimated : we speak of the passage of the trades 
 unions from the free to the obligatory state. 
 
 The point of departure of the trades unions is clearly character 
 ized in the law of Solon, on the Greek fraternities, which has been 
 preserved in the Basilicon, and in the Digest, and which we have 
 already cited from the latter compilation.* By the terms of that 
 law all working-men, all merchants, all of the same industry or 
 trade, had the right to unite, organize, and form a society, provided 
 that the public laws did not forbid it j 5 or, in other words, provided 
 
 1 Cod. Theod. de Excusationib. artific., lib. xiii., tit. iv., leg. 2.) 
 
 2 Nemesiaci, a dea Nemesi, quse eadem est cum bona Fortuna. (Cod. Theod. 
 Notul. Gothof. ad leg. 2, tit. vii., lib. xiv.) 
 
 3 Signiferi, . . . qui scilicet signa, et in his deorum, ferebant in pompis, festis, 
 ludicris gentilitiis. (Ibid.) 
 
 * See note 3, page 200. 
 
 6 Ea/ //>) 7rayopy<nj Srjfjioaia rrpay/uara, according to the Basilicon (vide Cujac., obser- 
 vat., lib. vii., cap. xxx. in fine; or idv /^>j drrayopewn/ (5r?^offia ypa/i^ara, accordingto the 
 Digest. (Vide Digest., lib. xlvii., tit. xxii., leg. 4.) 
 
214 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 that the association formed did not infringe the common law. We 
 have elsewhere shown that the Roman law of the Twelve Tables on 
 corporations contained the same provisions as the Greek law, so much 
 so that one appeared to Gaius to be the translation of the other. 
 
 Thus the first thing to be established relative to trades unions, 
 Greek or Roman, is that they commenced by being free, by having 
 the right of the initiative in their formation, in conformity to the 
 law. This is what we call their point of departure. 
 
 History proves that the Roman unions preserved this right of 
 initiative first under the kings, then under the consular government, 
 and lastly under the imperial government, nearly up to the time of 
 Trajan. 
 
 During this period of more than seven centuries, counting from 
 Numa, unions were formed, subject to be suppressed when they vio 
 lated the general regulations of the state ; but it is very clear that 
 those, which were destroyed during this interval as illegal, were 
 created without authorization, since an authorization would have 
 rendered them legal. Besides, it is not less clear that there could be 
 no clandestine unions, since the effect of every union was to confer 
 privileges, and, consequently, to produce civil effects. 
 
 The first act of reform, which modified the Roman unions, was 
 that of Tarquin the Proud. This king made a general revision of 
 them, maintained those of Numa, and dissolved some of the others. 1 
 It appears that when these purgations had been made, fraud recom 
 menced, and that it was necessary at long intervals to proceed to 
 new revisions. But it was not until nearly four and a half centuries 
 after Tarquin the Proud that we find another purgation of the unions. 
 It took place, according to a senatus consultum reported -by Barnaby 
 Brisson, 2 under the consulate of L. Csecilius Creticus and Q. Mar- 
 tius Rex ; that is to say, according to the consular registers, sixty- 
 six years before the Christian era. We find another, eleven years 
 afterward, in the consulate of P. Lentulus Spinther and Q. Caeci- 
 lius Metellus Nepos, which is mentioned by Cicero in a letter to 
 Quintus, his brother. 8 
 
 1 Dion. Halicarn., lib. iv., cap. xliii. 
 
 2 Barnabe Brisson. Selectee antiquitatis juris, lib. i., cap. xiv. 
 
 3 Eodem die senatus - consultum factus est, ut sodalitates decuriatique dis- 
 cederent, lexque de iis ferretur, ut qui non discessissent, ea poena, quae est de vi, 
 tenerentur. (Cic. Epist. ad Quint. Frat., lib. ii., epist. 3.) 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 21$ 
 
 Under the emperors the reforms of the unions were very numer 
 ous. Caesar made one, 1 Augustus another, 2 Nero a third. 3 We can 
 see by the texts of the authors that these three, like the previous 
 reforms, were undertaken with a view of bringing back anarchical 
 associations within the general spirit of the Roman law. 
 
 After Nero, we find no reforms in the unions. Maximin * plun 
 dered them, but did not reform them. Zeno forbade monopolies 
 and clandestine coalitions, but he did not reform them. 5 There is 
 for this change a very simple reason, which is this : 
 
 Between Nero and Trajan, nearly thirty years, there was a revo 
 lution in the unions, which consisted in taking away from them the 
 initiative of their formation, and subjecting them to a previous 
 authorization. We readily conceive that thereafter there could be 
 no more illegal unions, since none existed except on condition of 
 having been authorized. 
 
 Under Nero this revolution had not taken place, since this em 
 peror reformed some unions. Under Trajan it had, since Pliny 
 asked permission of him to establish a union of blacksmiths in Ni- 
 comedia, which that emperor refused. 6 
 
 All that we find new respecting the unions before Constantine is, 
 toward the end of the second century, some edicts of Severus, 
 authorizing slaves to organize in fraternities with the consent of 
 their masters ; but on condition of having a curator, who should act 
 for them, and of not meeting oftener than once a month ; 7 and, at 
 
 1 Cuncta collegia, praster antiquitus constituta, distraxit. (Suetonius Tranq., C. 
 Jul. Caesar, cap. xlii.) 
 
 2 ... Collegia, proeter antiqua et ligitima, dissolvit. (Suetonius Tranq., C. Jul. 
 Caesar. Octav., cap. xxxii.) 
 
 3 ... Collegiaque, quae contra leges instituerant, dissoluta. (Corn. Tacitus, An- 
 nal., lib. xiv., cap. xvii.) 
 
 4 Zosim. Hist. Rom., lib. i., in Maximin. 
 
 5 Jubemus, ne quis . . . monopolium audeat exercere ; neve quis illicitis habitis 
 conventionibus, conjuret aut paciscatur, ut species diversorum corporum negotia- 
 tionis, non minoris quam inter se statuerint, venundentur. (Cod. Just., lib. iv., 
 tit. lix., leg. unica.) 
 
 6 ... Tu, domine, dispice, an instituendum putes collegium fabrorum, duntaxat 
 hominum CL ; ego attendam ne quis, nisi faber, accipiatur, neve jure concesso in 
 aliud utatur. (C. Plin. Epist., lib. x., epist. xxxiv.) 
 
 Trajan refused in these terms : Tibi quidem secundum exempla complurium in 
 mentem venit posse collegium fabrorum apud Nicomedenses constitui ; sed memi- 
 nerimus provinciam istam et praecipue eas civitates ab ejusmodi factionibus esse 
 vexatas. (Ibid., epist. xxxv.) 
 
 7 Sed permittitur tenuioribus stipem menstruam conferre, dum tamen semel in 
 
2l6 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 the commencement of the third century, an edict of Alexander, 
 creating in certain unions, under the name of defender, an officer, 
 who already existed in most of them under the name of syndic?- 
 
 With Constantine commenced, as we have said, a new era for the 
 unions. It was then that their bonds were tightened ; that a kind of 
 fatality weighed upon those, who composed them, and that they be 
 came a necessary body, according to the language of the Roman 
 laws. 2 
 
 At the point, to which we have now brought them, they had a 
 strong and complete organization, formed by the laboring, indus 
 trial, and commercial classes, for the benefit of the government. 
 We must now show them, constituting a normal, permanent, and 
 hierarchical association, sanctioned by the government for the profit 
 of the laboring, industrial, and commercial classes, up to the mo 
 ment, when causes, arising outside of their organization, nature, 
 laws, and object, made them parties to, and responsible for, all the 
 misfortunes of the empire, its disorders, its enslavement, and its fall. 
 
 It was toward the commencement of the fourth century, as we 
 have said, that this change took place in the institution of the trades 
 unions, which was truly an entire revolution. Until then the dif 
 ferent corps of craftsmen had been absolutely under the direction 
 of, and dependent on, the government. In Africa they were sub 
 ject to the jurisdiction of the vicar of the province ; 3 in Italy, of the 
 prefect of subsistence, or of the prefect of Rome ; * in the East, of 
 the proconsul, or other dignitaries of the palace. 5 They were, as 
 to their duties, subject entirely to the discretion of the emperors. 
 The bakers union was required to furnish bread to the cities ; the 
 sailors and wagoners to furnish transportation ; the masons to fur- 
 
 mense coeant, ne sub pnetextu hujusmodi illicitum collegium coeat. Quod non 
 tantum in urbe, &ed et in Italia et in provinciis, locum habere, Divus quoque 
 Severus rescripsit. (Digest., lib. xlvii., tit. xxi., leg. I., in proem.) 
 
 Servos quoque licet in collegio tenuiorum recipi volentibus dominis, ut cura- 
 tores horum corporum sciant, ne invito aut ignorante domino in collegium tenui 
 orum reciperent. (Digest., lib. xlvii., tit. xxi., leg. 3, 2.) 
 
 1 Lamprid. in Alexand. 
 
 2 Et quoniam necessarium corpus fovendum est. (Cod. Theod., lib. xiv., tit. iii. 
 leg. 2.) 
 
 3 See Cod. Theod., lib. xiii., tit. v.. leg 36, namcularh. 
 
 4 See Cod. Theod., lib. xiii., tit. v.. leg. 2, as to the navicularii ; as to the 
 unions generally, ibid., lib. xiv., tit. ii., leg. I. 
 
 5 See Cod. Theod., lib. x., tit. xix., leg. 2, and tit. xx., leg. II. 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 2I/ 
 
 nish a sufficient number of hands for the public works ; in a word, 
 the corps of craftsmen were strictly instruments of the administra 
 tion, and in many respects even the administration itself. But, at 
 least, the different members of these corps were perfectly at liberty 
 to enter or leave them, to pass from one to the other at will, and 
 in all cases to keep their patrimony entirely free, separate, and per 
 sonal, carrying it with them into any union, with which they might 
 affiliate, and with power to will, give away, or sell it. This is 
 expressly stated in a law of Constantine of the year 319, relative to 
 the bakers union. 1 
 
 Well ! forty-five years later, in 364, the right, which members of 
 the unions had to sell, give away, or bequeath their patrimony, like 
 other citizens, was taken from them by a law of Valentinian II. , 
 and of Valens, addressed to Symmachus, prefect of Rome. 2 This 
 law only permitted gifts to sons and grandsons ; but even this favor 
 was not of long duration ; for a new law of Valentinian, of the year 
 369, forbids absolutely the alienation of the patrimony of members 
 of the unions. 8 
 
 Thus, toward the middle of the fourth century, the position of 
 the members of all the unions was entirely changed. The unions 
 held to the government the same relations ; but the individuals, who 
 composed them, contracted new and unheard-of obligations. In 
 fact, from this epoch no member of a union jcould leave it and pass 
 to another under any excuse whatever. This is declared, for all the 
 unions generally, in a novel of Valentinian, of the year 445, which 
 ordains that all those, who had quitted a union, should be brought 
 back to it, although they had become soldiers, or even clergymen 
 up to the grade of deacon ; * and we find this established for sailors, 
 
 1 Cunctis pistoribus intimari oportet quod si quis forte possessiones suas ideo 
 putaverit in alios transferendas, ut postea se, rebus in abdito conlocatis, minus 
 idoneum adseveret. (Cod. Theod., lib. xiv., tit. iii., leg I.) 
 
 2 Prsedia rustica vel urbana, quae possident privato jure pistores, nee senatorem, 
 nee officialem comparare permittimus (contractu pari cum aliis non interdicto), 
 quippe mercantes ad venditoris omcium vocabantur. ... In donationibus vero 
 filii excepti sunt et nepotes. (Cod. Theod., lib. xiv., tit. iii., leg. 3.) 
 
 3 ... Sciat corpori obnoxium vendere et alienare non posse, sed in sua causa 
 et pistorum nomine ac jure residere. (Cod. Theod., lib. xiv., tit. iii., leg. 13.) 
 
 4 ... Oportet revocari, sive etiam in clericorum numero reperitur, usque ad 
 diaconis locum. (Cod. Theod., leg. novel, lib., tit. xxvi.) 
 
 15 
 
2l8 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 especially in a law of Valentinian and Valens, of the year 365;* 
 for bakers, by another law of Valentinian and Valens, of the same 
 year ; 2 for butchers, by a law of Arcadius an$ Honorius, of the year 
 408 ; * for tailors, by a law of Theodosius and Valentinian, of the 
 year 426 ; * and so of all the other unions. From the middle, then, 
 of the fourth century, that is, at least from the year 364, the general 
 institution of the trades of the empire became like the orders in the 
 Church ; it stamped them with a character, so that death itself could 
 not loosen their bonds ; and the son or legatee of a working-man, 
 the former for having taken his name, the latter for having taken his 
 estate, were forced to choose the same trade, and enter into the 
 same fraternity. 5 
 
 Perhaps it would be interesting to trace the successive encroach 
 ments of the trades unions upon the persons, the families, and the 
 property of those, who composed them. First, we have seen, and 
 this is the point of departure, every member of a union indissolu- 
 bly attached to it till death, so that neither flight, nor the mili 
 tary, nor the clerical, character, nor anything else, could withdraw 
 them from it. Then, the children and grand-children were forced 
 to adopt the profession of the father and grandfather ; to enter into 
 their union, and fulfil its duties. This is decreed by a law of Valen 
 tinian and Valens, of the year 364, relative to bakers, 6 and by a law 
 of Valentinian, Theodosius, and Arcadius, of the year 389, relative 
 to butchers. 7 
 
 After the sons and grandsons came the sons-in-law. They too 
 
 1 Quisquis ex naviculariorum corpora, defugiens solita munia, ad honores inde- 
 bitos venit, in corporis sui consortia revertatur. (Cod. Theod., lib. xiii., tit. v., 
 leg. II.) 
 
 2 ... Ne illud quidem cuiquam concedi oportet, ut e officina ad aliam possit 
 transitum facere. (Cod. Theod., lib. xiv., tit. iii., leg. 8.) 
 
 3 Quicumque de suariorum corpore originariam functionem . . . declinasse nos- 
 cuntur . . . ad munus pristinum revocentur. (Cod. Theod., lib. xiv., tit. iv., leg. 6.) 
 
 4 Si quis de corpore gyneceiariorum . . . voluerit de suo collegio liberari . . . 
 universam generis sui prosapiam . . . obnoxiam largitionibus sacris futuram esse 
 non dubitet. (Cod. Theod., lib. x., tit. xx., leg. 16.) 
 
 5 This absolute subjection of craftsmen to the service of their union explains 
 this passage of Herodotus on the Egyptians, so often thought strange, in which he 
 says that sons were required to follow the profession of their fathers: . . . naif irapa 
 Tarpdf sieKOficvo^. (Herodot., lib. ii., cap. 166. ) 
 
 8 Filios pistorum . . . post emensum vicesimum annum setatis, paterni muneris 
 necessitatem subire cogantur. (Cod. Theod., lib. xiv., tit. iii., leg. 5.) 
 
 7 ... Consanguineos quoque eorum (suariorum) . . . functionibus jubeas ad- 
 jungi, plenum et sequitatis et juris est. (Cod. Theod., lib. xiv., tit. iv., leg. 5.) 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 219 
 
 were attached, they and their posterity, fatally to the trades union 
 of their fathers-in-law by a law of Constantine II., of the year 355, 
 relative to bakers. 1 After the sons-in-law came all the descendants 
 generally, who were claimed by the union of their ancestors ; as is 
 provided by a law of Valentinian and Valens, of the year 365, rela 
 tive to bakers. 2 After the descendants came all, who were named 
 in the will of a member of a union ; as was sanctioned by a law of 
 Valentinian, Theodosius, and Arcadius, of the year 390, relative to 
 sailors.* In fine, and this is the extreme point, to which the spirit 
 of absorption was carried, the trades unions imperatively claimed 
 all, who, by whatever title, whether by gift or purchase, were found 
 in possession of property, that had belonged to a member of the 
 union, and &pro rata of the property ; which was established by a 
 law of Constantius, of the year 319, relative to sailors, 4 by a law of 
 Valentinian and Valens, of the year 397, relative to butchers, 6 and 
 by a law of Valentinian and Valens, of the year 364, relative to 
 bakers. 6 
 
 All these persons, who were seized by the trades union son, 
 grandson, son-in-law, descendant, heir, possessor of property, which 
 had belonged to a member of the union were forced, as we have 
 said, to take a place in the union. Whether they had become 
 soldiers by deceiving the military tribune, or clergymen by deceiv 
 ing the bishop, the novel of Valentinian II., of the year 445, 7 
 returned them to the union ; and if they fled from the duties of their 
 
 1 Si quis pistoris filiam suo conjugio credideritesse sociandam, pistrini consortio 
 teneatur obnoxius. (Cod. Theod., lib xiv., tit. iii., leg. 2.) 
 
 2 Prsedia rustica . . . quse possident private jure pistores . . . nee officialem com- 
 parare permittimus. . . . Filii vero excepti sunt . . . eodem loco positis omnibus 
 qui qualibet proximitate junguntur, quibus ideo non dempsimus beneficium largi- 
 tatis, quia et paneficii necessitatem suscipere successiones jure coguntur. (Cod. 
 Theod., lib. xiv., tit. iii., leg. 3.) 
 
 3 Si, cum obierint (navicularii), sobolem non relinquent, quique ille in eorum 
 facultatibus qualibet ratione successerit, auctoris sui munus agnoscet. (Cod. 
 Theod., lib. xiii., tit. v., leg. 19.) 
 
 4 ... Si quis patrimonium naviculario muneri obnoxium possidet, licet altioris 
 sit dignitatis, nihil ei honoris privilegia, in hac parte dumtaxat opitulentur ; sed, 
 sive pro solido, sive pro portione, huic muneri teneantur. (Cod. Theod., lib. xiii., 
 tit. v., leg. 3.) 
 
 5 ... Non minus habeatur obnoxius quem possessio tenet, quam quem successio 
 generis adstringit. (Cod. Theod., lib. xiv., tit. iv., leg. 7.) 
 
 6 ... Quippe mercantes ad venditoris officium vocabuntur, super hac emptione 
 P. F. annonse testatiore deposita. (Cod. Theod., lib. xiv., tit. iii., leg. 3.) 
 
 7 See note 4, page 217. 
 
22O HISTORY OF THE 
 
 condition, the governors of the provinces were required to arrest 
 and send them to Rome, in obedience to a law of Honorius and 
 Theodosius of the year 39 1, 1 and another Jaw of Honorius and 
 Arcadius of the year 41 2. 2 
 
 This rigor of the trades unions was only relaxed in one single 
 case. When a member of a union had become a priest, he could 
 break the tie, which bound him to the union, by surrendering to it 
 his patrimony, according to a law of Arcadius and Honorius of the 
 year 408, relative to butchers. 3 
 
 All, but priests, had to live and die in the union, unless they fur 
 nished substitutes, who were acceptable; that is to say, equal in 
 fortune. This exception is provided for in a law of Constantine, 
 of the year 324, relative to butchers, 4 and in a law of Valentinian 
 and Valens, of the year 364, relative to bakers. 5 
 
 We have said that this revolution, which entirely changed the 
 nature of the trades unions, and made them obligatory instead of 
 voluntary, took place toward the commencement of the fourth cen 
 tury. This date, however, must not be taken rigorously ; because 
 moral revolutions neither commence nor end at precise moments of 
 history. All that we can say is, that the most ancient law on this 
 point is that of Constantius, of the year 319, relative to those in 
 possession of property, which had belonged to members of the 
 unions. 
 
 At first sight, it must appear to us of modern times, accustomed 
 to the liberty of the professions and trades, that there was a very 
 hard necessity in this absolute obligation to live and die in a trade, 
 without the possibility of quitting it or going into another ; and 
 especially, that that was a very subtle and odious tyranny, which 
 
 1 ... Cura autem rectorum provinciarum corporati urbis Romse, qui in pere- 
 grina transgress! sunt, redire cogantur; ut servire possint functionibus, quas im- 
 posuit antiqua solennitas. (Cod. Justin., lib. xi., tit. xiv., leg. unica.) 
 
 2 This law was a reproduction of the exact terms of the former. (Cod. Theod., 
 lib. xiv., tit. ii., leg. 4.) 
 
 3 ... Eos etiam qui ad clericatus se privilegia contulerunt, aut agnoscere oportet 
 propriam functionem, aut ei corpori, quod declinant, proprii patrimonii facere 
 cessionem. (Cod. Theod., lib. xiv., tit. iv., leg. 8.) 
 
 * . . . De duobus alterum eligant, aut retineant bona quse suariae functioni de- 
 stricta sunt, ipsique suario teneantur obsequio, aut idoneos quos volunt, nominent. 
 (Cod. Theod., lib. xiv., tit. iv., leg. I.) 
 
 6 ... Quod si fuerint cupidi dignitatis, in tantam paneficii substantiam idoneos 
 de suis subrogare cogantur, quantum ipsi exhibuere pistores. (Cod. Theod., lib. 
 xiv., tit. iii., leg. 4.) 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 221 
 
 threw around the working, industrial, and commercial classes so 
 many snares, into which the imprudent might fall, either by mar 
 rying the daughters of working-men, or by buying their property, 
 or by receiving, by testamentary gift, ever so small a part of the 
 property of one of them. Nevertheless, if we go back to their times, 
 places, and ideas, and seek for the compensations, which the work 
 ing classes found in the trades unions, we will recognize that such 
 an institution was for them, after all, a great good. 
 
 First, by the side of this necessity of remaining in an union all 
 their lives, the working-men had a guarantee of never wanting their 
 wages ; of being subsisted and supported always and under all cir 
 cumstances out of the social funds of the union. Now, this seems to 
 us a great advantage ; a position, in which many working-men would 
 perhaps to-day be most happy to find themselves. To be entirely 
 free is without doubt much ; but this freedom really profits only 
 those, who possess the activity, industry, and patience to make it 
 available ; while there are many people of moderate ability, and 
 these, are the great majority, who derive no benefit from this free 
 dom so precious to others ; who succumb in the contests of competi 
 tion, and who, crushed by the necessity of taking care of themselves, 
 never succeed in doing so, and remain always a prey to the wants 
 of the day, and have to seek by beggary from the poor-house 
 sometimes by crime instigated by misery the necessary supple 
 ment to the product of their free labor, that they may not die of 
 hunger. 
 
 We have spoken of the social funds of the unions. These con 
 sisted of immense domains, inalienable and constantly added to, 
 which served for the support of the members, as the property of the 
 monasteries in the middle ages served for the support of the monks. 
 
 The sources of the wealth of the unions were various : the first 
 and most important consisted in an endowment granted to them by 
 the government. If we suppose that there was a similitude of 
 development and of fortune among all the unions, we would be 
 tempted to believe that this patrimonial endowment was very an 
 cient; for we find that from the time of Numa the state granted one 
 to the priests union. 1 However, it is certain that these endowments, 
 
 1 Plutarch relates in many places in the Life of Numa, that this king instituted 
 the college of pontiffs, and some other priests unions. But he only speaks ex 
 pressly of the endowment made to the temple of the Muses. 
 
222 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 which are formally stated and defined only in the laws of the end 
 of the fourth century, existed under the first emperors ; for we read 
 in Zosimus that Maximin confiscated them. 1 
 
 The first law, which expressly mentions tfte endowment of the 
 Roman trades unions, is that of Valentinian and Valens, of the year 
 364, relative to bakers, which speaks of their endowment fund? A 
 second law of the same emperors, of the year 369, says expressly, 
 in naming the endowment, that it had been attached to the unions 
 since their origin; 8 and a third law, of Arcadius and Honorius, 
 relative to the same union, again mentions their endowment, speci 
 fies that it was in lands, and adds that it was originally granted as 
 a guarantee and encouragement.* 
 
 The endowment of the unions consisted of real estate. If any 
 doubt could remain after the law of Arcadius and Honorius, which 
 we have just cited, it would be completely removed by a novel of 
 Theodosius, of the year 440, relative to limeburners, in which their 
 endowment is expressly designated under the name of cespes ; that 
 is to say, land. 5 This novel is elsewhere fortified and explained by 
 a law of Constantius, of the year 359, in which it is said that the 
 endowment of the limeburners ought to produce annually a certain 
 quantity of wine and three hundred oxen. 6 The novel of Theodosius 
 also mentions two other endowments of land, belonging to two other 
 trades unions ; but the text, evidently altered, 7 does not permit us 
 to know exactly which they were. Godfrey thinks that one had 
 charge of the aqueducts, and the other of the sewers of Rome. 8 
 
 The second source of the wealth of the trades unions was the 
 
 1 Zosim. Hist. Rom., lib. i., in Maximin. 
 
 8 ... Officinam cum servis, molis, fundis dotalibus . . . tradat. (Cod. Theod., 
 lib. xiv., tit. iii., leg. 7.) 
 
 3 Non ea sola pistrini sunt, . . . quae in originem adscripta corporis dotis nomen 
 . . . retentant. (Cod. Theod., lib. xiv., tit. iii., leg. 13.) 
 
 4 Pistores urbis aeternae, praetermissa veteri consuetudine, fundis vel praediis ad 
 nihilum redactis, quae eorum corporis solatia certa prsehebant. (Cod. Theod., lib. 
 xiv., tit. iii., leg. 19.) 
 
 5 ... Cespes calcarius. (Cod. Theod., leg. novellar. lib. Theod. novell. 43.) 
 
 6 ... Coctoribus calcis per ternas vehes singulae amphorae vini praebeantur . . . 
 vectuarios etiam . . . trecentos boves prsecipimus dari. (Cod. Theod., lib. xiv., 
 tit. vi., leg. i.) 
 
 7 ... Cespes formensis, aetrinsis. 
 
 8 Cespitem formensem existimat (Gothofredus) esse possessionem per quam 
 formae, sive aqueductus transeunt. Cespitem aeriensem (sive aetrinsem) cloa- 
 cario, sive tributo, quod cloacarum purgandarum causa infertur. (Cod. Theod. ; 
 notul. ad novell. Theodos., 43.) 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 223 
 
 profits from the state and from individuals. It is certain that the 
 trades unions undertook the works of the government and of indi 
 viduals ; but by a law of Valentinian, of the year 382, relative to 
 limeburners, the works and wants of the state took precedence of 
 all others. 1 
 
 The third source of the wealth of the unions was the inheritances 
 of their members, who died intestate, on which it is proper to make 
 one remark. The property of each member of a union was of two 
 kinds. First, the member had his proportional part in the endow 
 ment fund of the association ; and this part the association managed. 
 He had his share of the income, but not the capital. Second, he 
 had his patrimony, his peculium, his personal fortune. Of this 
 second portion of the fortunes of their members, the trades unions 
 indirectly got possession under the law of Valentinian II. and of 
 Valens, of the year 364, which we have cited; by forcing all, who 
 possessed them, to enter into their association ; and they seized it 
 entirely by the novel of Theodosius and Valentinian, of the year 
 438, which declared every union the universal legatee of its mem 
 bers dying intestate. 2 
 
 Moreover, once in the hands of the unions, their wealth never 
 passed from them. Their property was inalienable, as was that of 
 every industrial, municipal, or religious corporation, by virtue of 
 the principles we have established in the tenth chapter of this work. 
 The inalienability of the property of the trades unions is estab 
 lished by a great number of laws ; among others, by a law of Val 
 entinian and Valens, of the month of June, 365, 3 and by a law of 
 Valentinian, Valens, and Gratian, of April, 372.* The property of 
 the Roman trades unions, therefore, was so constituted that it could 
 always increase and never diminish. 
 
 Finally, the Roman trades unions were, in regard to their social 
 
 1 Quisquis ex his (calcibus) nihil accipiat, nisi quod cunctis moenibus fabrica- 
 tionique Romans superfluere ac redundare constiterit. (Cod. Theod., lib. xiv., tit. 
 vi., leg. 4.) 
 
 2 Ut quisquis fabricensium sine liberis, vel legitimo haerede decesserit non con- 
 dito testamento, ejus bona cujusque summae sint. (Cod. Theod., leg. novellar. 
 lib. Theodos. novell. 13.) 
 
 3 Patrimonia naviculariorum, quse, quolibet genere, in extraneorum dominia 
 demigrarunt, in corporis sui jus proprietatemque remeent. (Cod. Theod., lib. 
 xiii., tit. vi., leg. 2.) 
 
 * Fundi omnes, ad naviculariorum dominium pertinentes, et ad aliorum jura 
 translati . . . reddantur dominis. (Cod. Theod., lib. xiii., tit. vi., leg. 6.) 
 
224 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 endowment, like so many tontines, in which the last survivors pro 
 fited by the spoils of those, who died first. It is easy to conceive 
 how these endowments, being inalienable, never diminishing and 
 always accumulating, ended by acquiring an immense development. 
 Thus the property of the laboring and industrial unions, in Roman 
 history, may be compared with the wealth of ecclesiastical corpora 
 tions in modern history. This property, accumulating from man to 
 man, from century to century, increased prodigiously in the lapse 
 of years. But as certain religious orders were richer than others, 
 so some of the Roman trades unions eclipsed their rivals by the 
 display of their strength and grandeur. For example, it may be 
 said that the sailors union under the empire was what the order of 
 St. Benedict were in Christianity, 1 and the former has furnished as 
 many senators and knights as the latter has illustrious abbes, cardi 
 nals and popes. 
 
 Notwithstanding the appearance of excessive tyranny in the stat 
 utes, relative to the Roman trades unions, we can nevertheless 
 easily conceive why the members of the unions were well satisfied 
 with them. It was always for the ultimate advantage of the unions 
 that these rigorous laws were instituted. Who profits by the mem 
 bers of a fraternity not being allowed to quit it ? The fraternity, 
 which thus is always and uniformly recruited with skilled men. Who 
 profits by requiring the son, grandson, all the descendants, to fol 
 low the profession of their ancestor? The fraternity, which is thus 
 composed of permanent families of workmen or artists, in which the 
 traditions of industry or art are perpetuated from age to age, and 
 which acquire, by the lapse of time, a generic eminence, of which 
 they are proud ; a sort of dynasty of labor, like the Aides, the 
 Etiennes, and some others in the history of the free industry of 
 modern times. Finally, who profits by the return to the union of 
 the estates of intestate members ? The fraternity, whose wealth is 
 increased, and who are thus enabled at the same time to extend 
 their operations, ameliorate the condition of their members, and 
 provide for the chances of the future. 
 
 1 The sailors and bakers unions were the most powerful of the empire. The 
 bakers furnished many senators. (Optio concessa est his, qui e pistoribus facti 
 sunt senatores. Cod. Theod., lib. xiv., tit. iii., leg. 4.) A law of Valentinian and 
 Valens, of the year 371, and another of Gratian, of the year 379, show that a 
 great number of sailors were made senators and knights. (Cod. Theod., lib. xiii., 
 tit. x., leg. 14, 15.) 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 225 
 
 Now, if the result of these rigorous laws was to the profit of the 
 trades unions, was it not an advantage to those, who composed 
 them ? Does not the monk rejoice in the prosperity of the con 
 vent ? Well, just as the best and most active portion of Europe, in 
 the sixth century, pressed into the cloisters, which, like the Roman 
 unions, they could not leave ; where they lost their civil rights, and 
 could neither give, nor sell, nor bequeath, nor receive by way of 
 gift or legacy; so, as long as the good times of the trades unions 
 lasted, they did not want proselytes, who were ready to give to 
 them their own bodies, and the bodies of all their posterity. 
 
 This was, we say, so long as the good times of the trades unions 
 lasted; for there came a time, when their prosperity declined; when 
 their glory disappeared ; when it was necessary to bring back their 
 fugitive members by force, as appears from the laws of Honorius 
 and Arcadius, of the year 412, and the novel of Theodosius and 
 Valentinian, of the year 445 ; when, to complete their reproach, 
 it was necessary to seek recruits among the Jews and Samaritans, as 
 appears from the law of Gratian, Valentinian, and Theodosius, of 
 the year 390.* But these misfortunes belonged to an order of facts, 
 foreign, as we have said, to the nature and object of the trades 
 unions, and of which we must make the lamentable recital. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 ANCIENT TRADES UNIONS THEIR FALL. 
 
 AT the commencement of the fourth century, the Roman trades 
 unions had long been secretly laboring under a malady, which 
 was to ruin them at a later period. 
 
 Generally it is with peoples as with men, who are not aware of 
 their disease until its progress has undermined their organization. 
 It was very nearly under the reign of Constantine that the internal 
 
 1 Judaeorum corpus ac Samaritanorum ad naviculariam functionem non jure 
 vocari cognoscitur . . . inopes, vilibusque commerciis occupati naviculariae trans- 
 lationis munus obire non debent. (Cod. Theod., lib. xiii., tit. v., leg. 18.) 
 
226 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 disease of the trades unions began to make itself felt by all that 
 series of coercive and tyrannical laws, which we have mentioned, 
 and which prove that the unions no longer attracted, as they once 
 did, the laboring, industrial, and commercial "classes; since it was 
 necessary to strengthen them with recruits from without, by all sorts 
 of legislative contrivances, and to oppose multiplied and arbitrary 
 obstacles to the withdrawal of those, who no longer found any ad 
 vantages in the community of the fraternities. Now, more than fifty 
 reigns had passed by since the first blow was struck at the prosperity 
 of the unions; and their decay, always increasing, was the work of 
 the emperors, and dates, if not from the first years of Augustus, at 
 least from the disorganizing and destructive reign of Caligula. The 
 causes of the gradual decay of this great institution should be studied 
 one by one, and related separately. 
 
 We have already explained how the unions were, properly speak 
 ing, the administrative corps of the Roman Empire. The public 
 revenues were not derived, as among modern peoples, from an 
 impost regularly distributed; they consisted, in the greater and 
 better part, of the rents of the public domain. This domain, known 
 in the law by the name of reipublica loca, was leased to individuals, 
 who paid an annual rent, generally in kind ; this rent, which was a 
 veritable feudal service, bore, like the feudal services of the middle 
 ages, the name of canon. When it was in grain, it was called 
 canon frumentarius ; and so of the rest. 1 Now, it was in the ware 
 houses of the trades unions that these rents in kind were received 
 annually. We have already seen that the butchers union collected 
 the rents in hogs in Brutium and Samnitim. The bakers received 
 the rents in grain, which the wagoners and sailors unions deposited 
 in the warehouses of the port of Ostia. The wine-measurers union 
 received the rents of the vineyards ; and, all together, they took 
 care of, manipulated, and disposed of for consumption, all these raw 
 materials, which came crude into their hands. 
 
 Well ! the unions were responsible for the revenues of the empire, 
 of which they had the administration ; and when the annual rents 
 of the domain were insufficient for the consumption, the govern 
 ment seized upon their property. 
 
 J De canone frumentario. (Cod. Theod., lib. xiv., tit. xv.) 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 22/ 
 
 Here we have, in two words, the explanation of many things, 
 until now somewhat obscure. Here we find the reason for all those 
 laws, which declared the property of the unions inalienable ; which 
 required the descendants of members of a union to remain in it for 
 ever; which ordained that whoever received any portion of the 
 private fortune of a member of a trades union, either by legacy or 
 purchase, or even as marriage dowry, should contribute to the ex 
 penses of the union, pro rata, for that portion. The government, 
 which had need of certain revenues, thus accumulated the guaran 
 tees it wanted in the trades unions ; so that, if its resources were 
 deficient on one hand, it was always certain of finding them else 
 where. 
 
 Unhappily those resources were, to the detriment of the unions, 
 often deficient, from causes both natural and frequent. Vessels 
 loaded with provisions were wrecked. Now, the sailors union was 
 responsible for all wrecks, at least up to the time of Claudius, who, 
 as related by Suetonius, placed the losses to account of the govern 
 ment. 1 Subsequent laws, for three centuries and among others a 
 law of Valentinian, Valens, and Gratian, of the year 372, in rela 
 tion to the sailors union prove that the regulation of Claudius 
 did not remain unrestricted, and that the republic only became 
 responsible for wrecks and losses by sea, when it was clearly proved 
 that there was no fault of the agents of the company. 2 
 
 Again, sterile years doubtless were no more rare in the times of 
 the Roman emperors than now. If we refer to the testimony of 
 history, we find that they were even more frequent. That is easily 
 conceived, when we consider the progress of agriculture and metal 
 lurgy in two thousand years, and their want of artificial means of 
 contending most advantageously against the sterility of the times 
 and the disorder of the seasons. Thus, under Claudius, there was 
 a violent tumult at Rome, caused by the want of breadstuffs, which 
 forced him to grant to the sailors union the indemnity just men 
 tioned. 3 Ammienus Marcellinus relates, in the fourteenth book of 
 his history, that a frightful sedition also took place under Constan- 
 tius the Second, in the year 353, because of the total want of wine ; 
 
 1 Suet. Tranquil., Tiber. Claud., cap. xxi. 
 
 2 <2Rd. Theod., lib. xiii., tit. ix., leg. I. 
 
 3 Suet. Tranquil., Tiber. Claud., cap. xxi. 
 
228 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 and it is impossible to count the passages, in St. Ambrose, Sym- 
 machus, Libanius, and even in the laws of the emperors, in which 
 it is related that the magistrates repeatedly drgve off without pity 
 the fugitive slaves and beggars, who flocked to Rome from all 
 points of the empire, when famine invaded Italy, and surprised the 
 capital of the world in the midst of the ruinous luxury, feasts, and 
 fancies of her emperors. 1 We readily conceive that, before resort 
 ing to these terrible extremes, the treasury of the unions was first 
 exhausted, and that when senators had one plate less at their tables, 
 the members of the trades unions did not dine at all. 
 
 There was a third cause, equally natural and not less frequent, 
 which was long preparing the ruin of the trades unions the bad 
 faith or insolvency of the farmers of the domain. The unions, the 
 corporati, were required to have in store each year a sufficient quan 
 tity of products ; but who was to guarantee to them that the pos 
 sessors of the public lands should faithfully perform the conditions 
 of their ancient leases ? If we refer to the successive laws for the 
 regulation of this matter, it appears that there was no kind of ruse 
 or expedient, to which the vassals and arriere vassals of the empire 
 did not resort, to avoid paying the annual rent, or to diminish the 
 amount. This became all the more easy for them to do, when the 
 lands of the domain, at least from the middle of the fourth century, 
 were enfeoffed to them in perpetuity, as appears by a law of Arca- 
 dius and Honorius, of the ist December, 400. 2 Now, when three or 
 four generations had rolled by, after the first enfeoffment, it became 
 very difficult to prevent the violation of its stipulations by the vas 
 sals for their own profit. This they in fact did, as shown by a law 
 of Gratian, Valentinian, and Theodosius, of the ist February, 383, 
 by refusing to cultivate second quality lands included in their grants, 
 and by reducing, in proportion to the lesser extent cultivated, the 
 rent payable to the treasury ; 3 that is to say, by thus subordinating 
 the revenues of the empire to the discretion of the farmers, who 
 had taken the lands of the state in vassalage. The unions, thus 
 pressed by the exigencies of the government on one side, and the 
 indolence or bad faith of the farmers on the other, used great sever 
 ity to collect the rents. 
 
 1 Cod. Theod., lib. xiv., cap. xviii., lex uuica. 
 
 a Cod. Theod., lib. x. } tit. iii., leg. 5. 3 Cod. Theod., lib. x., tit. iii., leg. 4. 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 229 
 
 Plutarch relates, in the Life of Lucullus, that after the war with 
 Tigranes, who had ravaged Asia Minor, the Roman collectors sold 
 at the market-place the marriageable daughters of the farmers, who 
 had not paid their rents ; l and without speaking of other passages 
 in the homilies of St. Basil, or in the letters of Libanius, which 
 bear witness to the same severity, see the terrible recital, in St. 
 Jerome s Life of Paphnuca, by a poor woman, whose husband and 
 children had been carried off: "I had a husband," she said, 
 "whom the tax-collectors had often hung, whipped, tortured, and 
 imprisoned. We had three sons, whom they have taken from us, 
 and sold for the same debt. " 2 If any one should think that there 
 must be some exaggeration, (0) in what these writers and holy per- 
 
 1 See Plutarch s Life of Lucullus. 2 See St. Jerome s Life of Paphnuca. 
 
 (a) If any one should find it difficult to believe that such things could be done, 
 in the days of St. Jerome, in the dawn of Christianity, let him read the testimony 
 in the pending impeachment trial of Governor Holden, of North Carolina : 
 
 " Lucien H. Murray, being duly sworn, testified : I live in Alamance County, 
 and am a merchant ; on the 27th of July last I was arrested by Colonel Bergen, 
 and carried to his camp. That night he came to my tent with a light, touched 
 me on the foot, and asked, Is that you, Murray ? I told him it was. He told 
 me to get up and go with him. I asked him to wait until I could put on my 
 shoes. He replied : No, you won t have any use for shoes long. After I had 
 gone out with him, he told me to confess, or he would blow my heart out. I said 
 I knew nothing to confess. Said he knew a way to make me tell ; carried me a 
 short distance, and put a rope around my neck, tied my hands, and threw the 
 rope over a limb. There were four soldiers with him. He asked me again to 
 confess. I said I knew nothing. He pulled me up, then let me down, and com 
 manded me to confess. I knew nothing to confess. He then pulled me up 
 twice more, the third time letting me stay until I became unconsciotis, I don t 
 know how long I was kept up. When / came to, I was sitting by a tree, and the 
 men were rubbing me. He then put the pistol to my breast, and told me if I did 
 not confess he would kill me. I again told him I knew nothing. He then said 
 to the sergeant, Hang him to that limb, and let him hang until 8 in the morn 
 ing; then bury him under this tree? I said, If you hang me until I am dead, 
 your time will come in three days, if not before. After this I was ordered back 
 to camp, and told not to speak of this, and if I did not confess by 10 o clock 
 to-morrow night I would be hung. I was finally released by Judge Brooks, of 
 the United States District Court, and no charge was made against me. 
 
 " William Patton being sworn, testified : I was arrested by Bergen in July last ; 
 he asked me about the murder of Outlaw ; I told him I knew nothing about it ; 
 he then put a pistol to my breast, and said if I did not tell all about it he would 
 
 r* nv 
 
 It 
 
 LA CH-7T I- 
 
 . L . 
 
23O HISTORY OF THE 
 
 sons said, he can verify the scrupulous exactness of their testimony 
 by reference to two official acts on the subject ; viz., a law of Theo- 
 
 blow my brains out ; I again said I knew nothing about it ; he then called for a 
 rope, saying he would hang me if I did not tell ; a rope was handed him by a 
 fioldier ; he put it around my neck, and, followed by a guard, carried me out to 
 the woods, threw the rope over a limb, and pulled me up, not quite off the 
 ground, but enough to choke me ; let me down, and told me to confess ; pulled 
 me up again, and went through the same process three times, after which he 
 started back to camp with me ; on the way I fainted ; when I came to, he and the 
 guard were standing around me cursing violently ; Bergen then told the men to 
 take me to camp, and said he would make me tell all about it ; he took the rope 
 off my neck, tied it around my wrists, tied me to a box nearby, and left me there 
 all night. 
 
 " It must be remembered that similar outrages as those detailed above were 
 inflicted upon others, and that they were all, after an imprisonment of five weeks, 
 released upon writs of habeas corpus by a Federal judge, without any charge 
 whatever being preferred against them. 
 
 " Among the witnesses examined yesterday was the Hon. John Kerr, of Cas- 
 well County. Judge Kerr is decidedly one of the ablest men in this State, and 
 one of the most eloquent orators in America. He has always been very promi 
 nent in the politics of this State. Was a member of the United States Congress 
 twenty years ago ; was the Whig candidate for Governor in 1852, and afterward 
 wore the judicial ermine with honor to the judiciary. Yet this gentleman was 
 one of Holden s many victims ; was torn from his family, closely incarcerated by 
 a drunken soldiery or rabble for five weeks, insulted day after day, threatened 
 with death, and finally released with not a single charge preferred against him. 
 The probate judge of Caswell County testified that Kirk took forcible possession 
 of his office, scattered, lost, and destroyed bushels of his official papers and 
 records, and a letter from Holden was read justifying Kirk s conduct. It has 
 been also proven that Kirk told his prisoners that his orders were, if an attempt 
 at rescue was made, to shoot down the prisoners, burn up the town, and put to 
 death the women and children. " 
 
 Now, these events occurred in the iQth century of the Christian era, only a 
 few short months ago; and the purpose of this "gentle persuasion," was to 
 continue Governor Holden in power, under the assumed name of Republi 
 canism, that he and those acting with him might collect taxes, ad libitum, 
 from the people of North Carolina. So the world, after all, has not changed 
 much in nineteen centuries. See the testimony of the Rev. J. B. Smith, before 
 the committee of investigation on Southern outrages, February 17, 1871. The 
 Rev. Mr. Smith is a Northern man, who went to North Carolina, at the suggestion 
 of General O. O. Howard, to establish a normal school for the education of ne 
 groes. He says : 
 
 " I asked a leading member of the House of Representatives of North Caro- 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 23! 
 
 dosius the Great, dated at Milan, in March, 39 1, 1 and a novel of 
 Valentinian the Second, dated at Rome, February, 45 i. 2 
 
 Nevertheless, in spite of wrecks, in spite of the famine of barren 
 years, in spite of the poverty or bad faith of the farmers, the Roman 
 unions would perhaps have been industrious and rich enough to 
 supply all the wants of the empire, without serious injury to their 
 own interests, if a new cause, more powerful than all the others, had 
 not fatally hurried on their ruin. That cause was the unbounded 
 luxury of the emperors. 
 
 We moderns have no idea of the incredible extravagance of these 
 masters of the world. They had the wealth of Europe, Asia and 
 Africa in their hands, and certainly they made that fact well known. 
 We have had in France some royal spendthrifts for example, 
 Francis I. and Louis XIV. It is doubtful whether Caligula would 
 have found the first enough of a good liver to take part in his gay- 
 eties, and the whole fortune of the latter would not have sufficed to 
 pay the board and wages of Nero s lackeys. 
 
 It is truly a "History of a Thousand and One Nights, that of the 
 first Roman emperors for example, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero. 
 On a banter made to him, Caligula constructed a bridge over the sea 
 from the port of Baia to the mole of Puteoli. This bridge was 3,600 
 paces long ; it was paved, and had the width of the Appian Way. 5 
 He, with all his courtiers, made on it a triumphal procession for 
 two successive days. The first day he rode a horse caparisoned 
 
 lina, knowing him to be a man of principle, How could you vote for the Shoff- 
 ner bill, to empower the Governor of the State to declare at will a county to be 
 in insurrection, if none existed ? the word insurrection being a well-defined 
 term. He said, Oh! we passed such a law, but it will never be executed. 
 Said I, Then why did you pass it ? * Now, doctor, said he, * it is necessary to 
 hold this State as Republican for three or four years longer, and the passage of 
 that bill was necessary to enable us to hold it. " 
 
 The Rev. Mr. Smith also testified that, in conversation with him, Governor 
 Holden said that, " in his opinion, General Grant would hold the government of 
 the United States, no matter what the election was in 1872; that he (Governor 
 Holden) desired him to be emperor, and his son to succeed him as emperor." 
 Governor Holden also told Mr. Smith, that he, Holden, had 80,000 negroes of 
 the loyal leagues, whom he could and would arm to accomplish his wishes. 
 
 ^od. Theod., lib. iii., tit. iii., lex unica. 
 
 *Cod. Theod., leg. novel. D. Valentin., tit. xi. 
 
 3 Suet. Tranquil., C. Ccesar Caligula, cap. xxvi. 
 
232 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 with magnificent housings, himself clothed in an imperial robe of 
 cloth of gold, and armed cap-a-pie. His courtiers came after him, 
 clothed in like apparel. The second day he appeared in the dress 
 of a charioteer of the circus, in a chariot drawn by magnificent 
 horses, followed by the equipages of his courtiers and all the prae 
 torian guard. This bridge was constructed for these two prome 
 nades only, and the imperial caprice let it fall to ruins as rapidly as 
 it had been constructed. Claudius, curious to see the bottom of Lake 
 Fucinus, to draw the water off had a canal made across a mountain, 
 3,000 paces long. 1 This fancy cost him the board and wages of 
 30,000 workmen for eleven years. But Nero left far behind all 
 these essays of power. Never did man show like profusion. When 
 he played in the evening, after supper, his wager was never less 
 than 400,000 sesterces. 2 If he wished to see a naval battle, he had 
 a lake dug, large and deep enough for the manoeuvres of two fleets. 3 
 Always clothed with silks and stuffs of the Orient, he never wore 
 the same dress twice. 4 When he fished in his ponds, he had a 
 line of purple and gold thread. 5 One year, during the feasts he 
 gave to his good city of Rome, in his character of a great artist, 
 the idea occurred to him to give a daily lottery to the people. As 
 long as the feasts lasted, he distributed a thousand tickets daily. 
 The prizes were warehouses filled with grain, complete wardrobes, 
 collections of all rare birds, gold, silver, pearls, diamonds, pic 
 tures, slaves, horses, and domesticated wild beasts. On the last day, 
 the prizes were ships, cities, and kingdoms. 6 Nero had a monkey, 
 which he dearly loved. He assigned to it a palace in Rome, a 
 castle and lands in the country, and regulated its housekeeping on 
 an analogous footing. 7 >^ 
 
 When he went to contend for the prize in the races of the Olym 
 pic games, Nero set out with his ordinary equipage ; a train of a 
 thousand chariots. The 2,000 mules, that drew him and his train, 
 were shod with silver, and his three or four thousand coachmen and 
 lackeys were clothed with the finest stuffs of Italy. A great multi 
 tude of Moorish couriers preceded him, clothed "a V Africaine, with 
 
 1 Sueton. Tranquil., C. Caesar Caligula, cap. xxvi. 
 
 1 Sueton., Nero Claud. Caesar., cap. xxiii. Ibid., cap. ix. 
 
 4 Ibid., cap. xxii. 5 Ibid., cap. xxii. 
 
 Ibid., cap. ix. Ibid., cap. xxiii. 
 
 tit 
 
 1 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 233 
 
 silk scarfs, collars, and bracelets. It was with this, his usual equip 
 age, that he came to the Olympic games. 1 He carried off the prize, 
 although he was thrown twice, 2 and afterward he returned to Rome 
 in his racing chariot, drawn by ten white horses. On his return, he 
 granted to the cities of Naples, Antium, and Alba the h^nor of a 
 visit ; he came clothed with a cloak of purple strewn with golden 
 stars ; and as conqueror in the Hieronic games, he entered Syracuse 
 by a great breach in the walls. 3 Arrived at the gates of Rome, he 
 caused to be thrown down an arcade of the grand circus, and made 
 a magnificent road across the Velabrum and the Forum to the tem 
 ple of Apollo on Mount Palatine. The road was covered with 
 saffron powder ; victims were immolated on both sides during his 
 progress ; and to the right and left, for his retinue and the people, 
 there were endless tables covered with all sorts of birds and pastry, 
 and crowned with bows of ribbons.* ^ 
 
 Alas ! it was the trades unions, which in great part paid for 
 these feasts, this profusion, these follies. They paid for the em 
 perors mistresses, eunuchs, minions, lackeys, their lions and pan 
 thers, their parrots, and their monkeys. And if we bear in 
 mind that, between Augustus and Constantine, there were fifty-two 
 emperors : that is, nearly fifty-two spendthrifts ; and that among 
 them one, Heliogabalus, dying at eighteen years, spent in one 
 day, perhaps more than all the others, in paving the court of his 
 palace with all the diamonds, all the emeralds, all the precious 
 stones of Italy, it is easy to account for the exhaustion of the em 
 pire in the fourth century, and for the tyrannical laws against the 
 trades unions, which in the end had to provide for the people and 
 the government at the same time. This explains how these tyrants, 
 these fools, these ambitious men, who passed away so quickly, car 
 ried off, each, some portion of the wealth of the world ; how the 
 most frightful vexations were resorted to to raise money ; how all 
 the statues of the gods, which were of gold, and even the penates 
 of Rome, were melted down by Nero ; 5 how the ancient subsidies 
 paid by the state to the priests and vestals were suppressed ; how, 
 in fine, to the great scandal of idolatrous devotees, the immense 
 
 Nero Claud. Caesar, cap. xxiii. 2 Ibid., cap. xvii. 
 
 3 Ibid., cap. xix. * Ibid., c. xix. 
 
 6 Ibid., cap. xxvi. 
 
 16 
 
 r - \ i 
 
 atU W-IM vt. *| jSkV^Ovvt 
 
 UA^ 
 
 . r L 
 . ^ 
 
234 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 property of the pagan clergy was confiscated and sold throughout 
 the empire, for the benefit of the public treasury ; which was the 
 subject of the doleful epistles of the prefect ^ymmachus to the Em 
 peror Valentinian the Second ! 
 
 From the middle of the fifth century, the Roman trades unions 
 were completely disorganized. All their members sought to escape, 
 by flight or voluntary exile, the ruinous burdens that weighed them 
 down. We have cited the two laws of the years 412 and 445, which 
 required the governors of provinces to seize and send back to Rome 
 the fugitive members of the unions. But when institutions can only 
 be maintained by such violence, they are truly dead. The trades 
 union, then, fell piece by piece, with the empire ; or at least they 
 detached themselves from Rome and Constantinople, which were 
 successively their centre of administration. The feeble unions dis 
 appeared altogether ; the rich ones continued to exist independ 
 ently. Of these were the bakers and sailors unions. The frag 
 ments of the latter, in all the ports of the Mediterranean and of the 
 ocean, became the nucleus of mercantile associations. Some of 
 their counting-houses, established on great rivers, became the found 
 ation of cities since become celebrated. The commune of Paris, 
 called in the charters la marchandise de I eau, originated from a 
 Roman counting-house established in the city. 1 
 
 1 This clearly appears from the history of the primitive commerce of Paris, and 
 from the following inscription found in the excavations made in 1711, under the 
 choir of Notre Dame : 
 
 Tiberio Caesare 
 
 Aug. Jovi optimo 
 
 Maximo Monumentum 
 
 NAUTVE PARISIACI 
 
 Publice posuerunt. 
 
 See dissertation of M. le Roi on the origin of the Hotel de Ville, in Felibien s 
 History of Paris. 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 235 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 BEGGARS AND HOSPITALS. 
 
 WE have already seen that slaves, once set free, divide into two 
 classes. Some accept labor, and live at their own cost. 
 Others reject labor, and live at the cost of others. The former 
 constitute the trades unions, whose history we have just given. 
 The latter produce pauperism, of which we will present a picture. 
 
 Beggars were not a social element cotemporaneous with the first 
 formation of peoples. Pauperism was only introduced as a conse 
 quence of the emancipation of slaves, and everything concurs to 
 establish that this emancipation was very recent. We find the poor 
 mentioned in the primitive poets, as Moses, Homer, and Hesiod ; 
 but in those early times they were very few in number. In fact, as 
 long as slavery existed, whether among the ancients or the moderns, 
 pauperism could not make much progress ; because all being either 
 masters or slaves, the masters had some fortune, and the slaves had 
 masters, who naturally supplied all their wants during life. It was 
 only in proportion to the emancipation of slaves that small pro 
 prietors, or working-men without capital, or laborers subject to all 
 the chances of sickness, began to exist ; and these small proprietors, 
 working-men and laborers, at the first serious difficulty, at the first 
 violent crisis, at the first grievous derangement of health, especially 
 if they had a numerous family to support, found themselves in 
 misery, and were reduced to pauperism. 
 
 Thus we see paupers increasing among the ancients in proportion 
 to the multiplication of freedmen. As, however, the emancipa 
 tions of slaves were not done systematically and in mass, but indi 
 vidually, according to the good will of the masters, and the good 
 conduct of the slaves, there was at the commencement of the Chris 
 tian era a very limited number of paupers ; so few that there was no 
 establishment of public charity. It was only in the cities that beg 
 gars were to be found ; for the reason, that there the freedmen most 
 did congregate. They were to be seen every morning collected 
 around the temples, carrying in their hands small images of the 
 
236 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 gods, and asking alms from the good pagan souls. Among them 
 were the priests of Cybele, who, in the pagan clergy, or, to speak 
 more historically, in the college of pritsts, constituted a congrega 
 tion of religious mendicants. Minutius Felix mentions them in 
 his book entitled Octavius. 1 Tertullian, in his Apology, reproaches 
 them for the effrontery, with which they prowled around the hostel- 
 ries ; 2 and Juvenal, who is very reliable in these matters, represents 
 them as lazy, and lying under the tables of the lowest pot-houses, 
 among ruffians, sailors, thieves, and fugitive slaves, butcher-boys, 
 and coffin-makers for the funeral pomps of Rome. 3 
 
 Things remained in this condition, that is to say, the poor, still 
 few in numbers, had no hospital, in which to take refuge, in the first 
 centuries of the Christian era. 4 The Christians indeed multiplied 
 alms, and fed the needy ; but they were not yet masters ; they were 
 still in the minority; they could not act publicly, collectively, 
 legally; but only individually, and separately, each for himself. On 
 their part, the pagan clergy who had immense territorial wealth, 
 derived, first, from the perpetual endowments paid by the public 
 treasury, the legal institution of which goes back from the Roman 
 empire to Numa, and, secondly, from numberless inheritances and 
 legacies never conceived the idea of organizing any system of 
 public charity ; and when, toward the end of the fourth century, 
 Symmachus addressed to Valentinian II., Theodosius, and Arca- 
 dius his two celebrated letters on paganism, which was falling to 
 ruins, 5 in which he complains so bitterly of the confiscation by the 
 emperors of the property of the priests and vestals, St. Ambrose, 
 in the first of his two replies to Symmachus, addressed to Valentin 
 ian II., contrasts the avarice of the pagan clergy, who kept their 
 riches for themselves, with the self-denial of the Christian church, 
 which, said St. Ambrose, possessed nothing of its own but its faith, 
 and whose property was the property of the poor. 6 
 
 Nevertheless it is true, that although the number of permanent 
 
 1 Minuc. Felic. Octavius, chap. 24. See also Tertullian, Apologet., chap. 42. 
 1 Tertul. Apologet., cap. xiii. 8 Juvenal, Satir. viii., v. 173-175. 
 
 4 There is no example in all antiquity of the establishment of a place of refuge 
 for the poor. Thucydides mentions in his History of the Peloponnesian War a 
 kind of hospital built near the temple of Juno, at Megara ; but this hospital, 
 although the beds were sacred to the goddess, was nothing more than a tavern. 
 (Thucydides, lib. iii., cap. Ixviii.) 
 
 5 Symmach. Epistol., lib. x., epist. liv. 
 
 6 S. Ambros. Epistol. ii., contra Symmachum. 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 237 
 
 poor, of professional beggars, was still very inconsiderable from the 
 first to the third century of the Christian era, there came terrible 
 times, when this number was frightfully increased. It was in the 
 years of famine, when the crops failed in Sicily or in Africa, and 
 when the two unions of the sailors and bakers, who had charge, the 
 first of the transportation of the breadstuffs of the empire, the 
 second of the general management of the flour and the distribution 
 of bread, were brought to a standstill, that those horrible famines 
 occurred, from which the administrative organization of modern 
 times preserves the peoples of to-day. Then all the slaves of Italy, 
 who were no longer fed by their masters, were seen hastening to 
 Rome to ask for bread. But as this increase of population was not 
 long in bringing famine on Rome herself, they expelled from the 
 city, on a given day, all these parasitical inhabitants, who went to 
 die where they could. This was the habitual mode of proceeding 
 of the administrators of the republic in times of crises : and Sym- 
 machus, who was prefect of Rome, about the year 383, wrote as 
 follows: " We fear a total want of food, even after having driven 
 off all the foreign population, who have taken refuge in Rome, and 
 whom the city feeds." l (a) 
 
 On their part, the Christians protested loudly against this cruelty 
 of the burghers of Rome, who refused to share their food with the 
 refugees. St. Ambrose, who mentions these expulsions in many 
 places of his works, strongly denounced this want of feeling. He 
 said : " Those, who drive strangers from Rome, cannot be justified. 
 It is acting inhumanly to repel any one at the moment he most 
 needs succor. Animals do not drive off animals man drives away 
 man." 2 Sometimes the pagans themselves have protested loudly 
 against the expulsion of poor strangers, when famine menaced the 
 cities. 3 
 
 Finally, it results from many writings of the third and fourth cen 
 tury, that, as soon as the charity of the Christians became well 
 known, the poor crowded round the churches. At Rome they 
 gathered around the Church of the Apostles in the Vatican. There 
 
 1 Symmach. Epistol., lib. ii., epist. 7. 
 
 () We find analogous instances in more modern history; for example, the 
 treatment of the Irish by Cromwell, and the banishment from their homes, by 
 General Sherman, of the women of Roswell Factory and Atlanta. / 
 
 2 D. Ambros. de offic. ministr., lib. ii., cap. xvii. 
 8 Cicero de offic., lib. iii., cap. xi., 47. 
 
238 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 alms were distributed to them daily, as we see in Ammienus Mar- 
 cellinus l among others, and from the poem of Prudentius against 
 Symmachus. 2 It appears that all kinds of fraud were practised by 
 these vagabonds to impose upon the compassion of the bishops. 
 St. Ambrose, in the second book of his treatise on the duties of 
 ministers, 3 thus expresses himself on this subject: "There must be 
 some limit to liberality, that it may not be useless. Priests princi 
 pally ought to use circumspection in this regard, that they may pro 
 portion the alms to the justice, and not to the urgency, of their sup 
 plications. Never was anything like the avidity of the beggars. 
 Strong men, strolling about for the mere pleasure of vagabondizing, 
 seek to absorb the aid due to the truly poor. Some feign to have 
 debts. Let this be strictly examined into. Others pretend to have 
 been robbed. Let exact information be had as to these persons, 
 etc., etc." The scandal, caused by these false beggars and their 
 frauds, went so far that the Emperor Valentinian II. made a law, 
 dated at Padua, ist July, 382, to expel from Rome all those, who 
 were not truly paupers incapable of gaining a living.* (a} 
 
 This law of Valentinian is very curious, in that it contains certain 
 and valuable data on the state of pauperism in Italy, toward the 
 end of the fourth century. Thus, we see that the greater part of the 
 beggars, who flocked to Rome, were either fugitive slaves, or serfs 
 whom agriculture could not support. 5 They rushed to Rome, which 
 was then the greatest city of the world, and in which they could 
 more easily than anywhere else escape the pursuit of their masters. 
 Valentinian exhorts the inhabitants of Rome to point out these beg 
 gars, and orders that it shall be carefully ascertained whether they 
 were able-bodied. He adjudged the slaves to those, who informed 
 upon them ; and as to the serfs of the glebe, he gave them also, and 
 by the same title, to those, who discovered them ; saving to their 
 
 1 Amm. Marcel., lib. xxvii., cap. iii., $ 5. 
 
 2 Prudent, contra Symmach., lib. i., v. 581-583. 
 
 3 D. Ambros. de offic. ministr., lib. ii., cap. xvi. 
 
 4 Cod. Theod., lib. xiv., tit. xviii., leg. I. 
 
 (a] We have modern instances of this in all the Southern cities; and espe 
 cially in Washington, where the control of all political power, given to fraudulent 
 beggars, has produced a wonderful political phenomenon for the nineteenth cen 
 tury; viz., nothing less than a voluntary surrender by the citizens of Washington 
 and Georgetown of their commune, or right of local self-government. See note 
 (a) to chapter vii. 
 
 5 Cod. Theod., lib. xiv., tit. xviii., leg. I. 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 239 
 
 seignior recourse against those, who had counselled or facilitated 
 their flight. 1 Justinian reproduced, in his eightieth novel, the law of 
 Valentinian in very nearly the same terms, but with this difference, 
 that he condemned all able-bodied beggars to the public works. 2 
 
 All this great increase of beggars took place from the third to the 
 fifth century. It seems that they took literally the character given 
 to the Christians by St. Jerome, when he called them, in his twenty- 
 sixth epistle to Pammachius, the subordinates and candidates of the 
 poor. 3 The dominant historic and social fact, during the fourth 
 century, is this vast increase of proletaries : and, after numerous fruit 
 less experiments, the creation and organization of a great system 
 of public charity, to provide for the wants of the poor, and take 
 care of the old, the sick, and abandoned infants. This provident 
 system, which has only been developed in the lapse of centuries, 
 and which is still the only palliative put in use by modern societies, 
 to cure, or rather to cover up, the sores of civilization, was created 
 by Christianity. 
 
 Seeing that antiquity in four thousand years did not emancipate 
 slaves enough to produce any considerable mass of proletaries, and 
 that in four centuries Christianity had multiplied them so, that regu 
 lar society was encumbered and disquieted by them, we might be 
 tempted to believe that Christianity had declared a war of extermina 
 tion against slavery, and that, contrary to what we have said above, 
 it proceeded by great trials of systematic emancipation. This, how 
 ever, would be an error. In general, Christianity did not touch 
 the positive laws of the society, in which it was introduced. It left 
 to Caesar what belonged to Caesar. St. Paul wrote to the slaves of 
 Ephesus that the new religion in no manner changed their duties. 4 
 
 i Cod. Theod., lib. xiv., tit. xviii., leg. I. 
 
 *Autheht. Collat. vi., tit. ix., novel. 80. 
 
 8 D. Hieron, epist. ad Pammach. xxvi. 
 
 4 It is generally said that Christianity abolished slavery, and that is true in the 
 sense that it made liberty desirable for the slaves, and human dignity a respecta 
 ble dogma for the masters; but it would be entirely wrong to believe that Chris 
 tianity ever preached against the legitimacy of slavery, or excited the slaves to 
 free themselves by violence. The following passages of St. Paul faithfully sum 
 up the doctrine of Christianity on this subject : 
 
 " Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, 
 with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ ; 
 
 " Not with eye-service, as men-pleasers ; but as the servants of Christ, doing 
 the will of God from the heart; 
 
 " With good-will doing service, as to the I,ord, and not to men." (The Epistle 
 of Paul to the Ephcsians, vi. 5-7.) 
 
240 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 Alongside of the ancient moral world, Christianity only produced 
 a new moral world, into which it admitted all, who were willing to 
 accept its conditions. It was by this attractive power that Chris 
 tianity drew to itself successively all the members of pagan society; 
 and the magnificent application, which it gave to its ideas of frater 
 nity, charity, and love, was the principal cause, which, indirectly, 
 led to so many emancipations, and created so many proletaries. 
 
 In pagan society, few slaves desired to become free, and for a very 
 simple reason. As slaves, they had from their masters all the neces 
 saries of life ; they were sure of never suffering from cold, or hun 
 ger, or thirst ; of being taken care of and well treated in old age as 
 in infancy, in sickness as in health. Free, they had to provide, not 
 only for their own wants, but also for those of their wives and chil 
 dren ; not only in the vigor of manhood, but in old age and sick 
 ness: without taking into account that, poor and feeble as they 
 would necessarily be on emerging from slavery, they would have to 
 encounter all the risks of a perpetual struggle with society, a strug 
 gle, in which even the rich and the strong often succumb. But in 
 Christian society, the slave felt very differently drawn to liberty. 
 Firstly, the Christian freedman was not repelled by the pitiless pre 
 judice of caste. Without refusing to recognize the nobility of race, 
 Christianity had no exaggerated preference for it. The apostles and 
 fathers extended the hand to the freedmen, and generally to all the 
 common people, whom the gentiles, that is to say, the nobles of 
 antiquity, had till then disdained. St. Paul wrote to the Romans 
 that "there is no respect of persons with God; " and St. Gregory 
 of Nazianza, and St. Ambrose, scattered broadcast through their 
 works the philosophical railleries of Christianity on the domination 
 of the flesh, which fell plumb on nobility, which is nothing else 
 than the tradition of power by blood. 1 The freedmen, and the 
 children of freedmen, were therefore welcome among the Chris- 
 
 1 The war of Christianity against gentility, that is to say, against the nobility 
 among the pagans, constitutes a very curious epoch in the polemics of the fathers. 
 It will naturally find its place in the second volume of this work. We confine 
 ourselves now to citing this passage of Saint Ambrose : 
 
 Quid te jactas de nobilitatis prosapia ? Soletis et canum vestrorum origines, 
 sicut divitum recensere ; soletis et equorum vestrorum nobilitatem, sicut consulum 
 predicare. Ille ex illo patre generatus est, et ilia matre editus. Sed nihil istud 
 currentem juvat. Non datur nobilitati palma, sed cursori. (D. Ambros., in lib. 
 de Nabucha Izraelita, cap. iii.) 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 24! 
 
 tians ; all the degrees of clerical ordination were open to them ; 
 they could become deacons, priests, bishops ; that is to say, they 
 could leap over the interval, among the ancients immense and im 
 passable, that separated extreme humility from extreme glory. 1 
 
 Thus, Christian slaves becoming freedmen were sure of having no 
 moral prejudice against them, and of having all religious prejudices 
 for them ; of not being repelled as plebeians, and of being aided 
 as Christians. Therefore, they hastened to be free, and so impru 
 dently, and in such numbers, that, having become suddenly their 
 own masters, and responsible for their own welfare, the greater 
 number were soon overtaken by improvidence and misery ; misery 
 unheard of before ; a frightful misery, of which the reminiscences 
 of the fourth century present a picture full of horror. 
 
 It was this mass of proletaries, created by Christianity, that gave 
 birth to establishments of charity. The first document relative to 
 their history is of the year 315.* It was a law of the Emperor Con- 
 stantine relative to Italy. It provides that, to assist poor families, 
 who gave away, hired, sold, exposed, or killed their children, for 
 want of means to feed them, the necessary aid to provide for their 
 support should be granted annually from the public treasury. A 
 second law, of the year 321, facilitates and encourages legacies and 
 gifts to churches, whose wealth was the property of the poor ; 3 and 
 a third law, of the year 322, renews for the province of Africa what 
 that of 315 had already sanctioned for Italy. 4 A law of Valentinian 
 and Valens, of the year 368, established a sort of maximum in the 
 price of food and merchandise ; to the end, says the law, that the 
 poor may be able to purchase necessaries. 5 We see, by a law of 
 Arcadius and Honorius, of the year 396, that this maximum was 
 fixed in the provinces by an officer, called discussor;* and a law of 
 Valentinian, Valens, and Gratian, of the year 369, makes known that 
 the principal functions of the discusser consisted in visiting the 
 provinces periodically, to collect the balances of taxes, or remit 
 
 1 We have shown, in many places, what an ineffaceable stigma slavery among 
 the ancients impressed on a man and all his race, and what scandal there was at 
 Rome, when Ventidius Bassus, who had been a hostler, was made augur. In 
 Christianity, however, the original stain disappeared completely, and nothing is 
 more common than to find slaves become bishops. 
 
 2 Cod. Theod., lib. xi., tit. xxvii., leg. 4. 3 Cod. Justin., lib. i., tit. ii., leg. r. 
 
 4 Cod. Theod., lib. xi., tit. xxviii., leg. 2. 5 Cod. Justin., lib. i., tit. iv., leg. r. 
 
 6 Cod. Justin., lib. i., tit. ix., leg. 9. 
 
242 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 them ; that is to say, to do very nearly what in the ancient financial 
 system of France was done by the controleurs et receveurs des restes. 1 
 
 At the commencement of the sixth century we first find hospitals 
 and houses of refuge. A law of Justinian of the year 528 contains, 
 very much at length, regulations for their management. There were 
 houses for travellers, under the name of xenones ; for the sick, 
 under the name of nosocomia ; for the poor, under the name of 
 ptocotrophia ; for orphans, under the name of orphanotrophia ; for 
 foundlings, under the name of brephotrophia? Another law, of 
 the year 530, mentions houses for the aged, under the name of c ^- 
 rontocomia, and for sick laborers, under the name of paranomaria? 
 A subsequent law provides for a xeno, that is, an hospital, in every 
 city.* Another law of the same year, modifying that, which de 
 clared legacies to uncertain persons void, provided that legacies for 
 the poor should be valid, and turned over to the hospital of the city 
 where the testator died. 5 Two other laws of the Justinian code give 
 the same direction to gifts or devises made in favor of Jesus Christ, 6 
 and all sorts of legacies given to the martyrs, prophets, and angels. 7 
 Finally, a law of the emperors Valentinian and Martian decreed 
 that the public treasury should pay annually to the churches a sum 
 for feeding and keeping the poor. 8 This law, which is the counter 
 part of the two ordinances of Constantine, of the years 318 and 
 322, and which, with those of Justinian, completes the regulations 
 for hospitals, was of the year 454. 
 
 By this series of laws Christianity verified the language of St. 
 Ambrose about the goods of the church; that they were the patri 
 mony of the poor. It accepted the legacy of misery and nun, 
 which the ancient world left to it ; it gave a real value to the en 
 franchisement of slaves, by admitting them even to the highest 
 grades of the sacerdotal hierarchy ; and for those, in whose hands 
 liberty was barren, and who were dying of hunger, in spite of their 
 rights as citizens, it created asylums always open to want, old age, 
 and sickness ; giving thus to some bread for the soul, to others bread 
 for the body, according to their need. 
 
 ^od. Theod., lib. xi., tit. xxvi., leg. I, 2. 
 
 2 Cod. Justin., lib. i., tit. iii., leg. 42, $ 6. 
 
 3 Cod. Justin., lib. i., tit. iii., leg. 49, $3. * Ibid., lib. i., tit. iii., leg. 49, $ 6. 
 5 Ibid., lib. i., tit. ii., leg. 26, in proem. * Lib. i., tit. ii., leg. 26, g i. 
 
 T Li!>. i., tit. ii., leg. 15. 8 Lib. i., tit. ii., leg. 12. 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 243 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 LITERARY SLAVES. 
 
 IN following the slave races through the vicissitudes of their for 
 tune, we have seen them leaving the bosom of the noble family, 
 in which they were absorbed, to reach by emancipation the com 
 munal association. Once become burghers, the children of the old 
 slaves were distributed among the industrial fraternities ; for the 
 commune only regulated their civil interests. The trades unions 
 regulated their labor. 
 
 When the slave races entered the commune and the trades 
 unions, they had just been freed. Landed property, therefore, was 
 to them almost unknown ; for besides that their means were very 
 limited, the ownership of land presupposed certain seignorial quali 
 fications, which they did not possess. Labor, manual labor, ap 
 plied to the trades, to the arts, to small traffic, thus became the 
 necessary condition of the infant burghers. 
 
 Now, labor does not suffice for all the world. Labor is like land ; 
 its returns are proportioned to what is given to it. He, who brings 
 to his work the most activity and intelligence, is also the one, who 
 derives most profit from it. The inequality of physical, intellec 
 tual, and moral faculties, therefore, produced inequality of condition 
 among the freedmen, become burghers and members of trades 
 unions. Some prospered, others failed. Some had children, who 
 found themselves rich ; others had children, who found themselves 
 beggars. We have seen that the numbers of beggars increased by 
 the multiplicity of emancipations ; for the greater the number to be 
 fed by manual labor, the more there will be left without bread. 
 
 But, whether the freedmen found in labor the means of living, 
 or want of work forced them to beggary, it may be said that the 
 slave races produced two great classes of men resigned to their con 
 dition, viz., the laboring burghers, and the beggars. Both, con 
 fined to their position of freedmen, happy or unhappy, never 
 dreamed of looking higher or farther. To work well, or to beg 
 well, such was the principal effort of each day. And as to the 
 
244 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 superiorities of every kind of the noble races over them ; superior 
 ity of intelligence, of grace, of command ; they saw them without 
 envy, because they were so far above them, orthey accepted them 
 without hatred, because they were so formidable. 
 
 Well ! from the bosom of these same slave races, men arose, of 
 noble souls and bold spirit, to whom nothing seemed too high or 
 too great ; who found their chains light enough to be carried with 
 ease, or broken without effort ; who felt or believed they had a 
 nature above the nature of their fellows, and who would not be 
 content with the rank, in which God had placed them; who, seeing 
 the authority conferred by intelligence, grace, and strength, deter 
 mined that they too would become intelligent, gracious, and strong ; 
 and who, forgetting their low origin, ennobled themselves by a pro 
 found faith in their destiny. 
 
 Thus there arose, among the ancients, from amidst the slaves, 
 legions of poets, of courtesans, and of bandits ; poets as illustrious 
 as Terence, courtesans beautiful as Aspasia, bandits formidable as 
 Spartacus ; all produced by that moral courage, of which we have 
 just spoken triple protest of strong and proud souls, who seemed 
 to say to God that he had made a mistake, and who, subject to the 
 noble races by the accident of birth, subjugated them by mind, 
 beauty, or terror. 
 
 ^ Poetry, prostitution, and brigandage, among the slaves of the 
 ancients, were then facts of the same historic nature, and of the 
 same social signification. 
 
 The literature of the slaves is one of the most curious nooks of 
 antiquity. It has special characteristics, which constitute it, give it 
 a form of its own, and make it a domain apart. Thus, the slave is 
 an artist, who does not work indifferently at all kinds of labor. He 
 has not, and does not seek to have, any but a certain order of ideas, 
 which he prefers, for which he is most apt, and in which he loves 
 to shut himself up. For example, the slave never touches politics, 
 law, or history; all ideas, which he leaves to his masters; but he ex 
 cels in philosophy, in poetry, grammar, rhetoric ; in all things that 
 can be done in a corner, and which only require reflection, com 
 pilation, and meditation. 
 
 The literary studies of the slaves among the ancients were a 
 natural result and logical consequence of their servitude. Their 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 245 
 
 masters sought to make the most profit out of their capacities. They 
 sent to the fields those, who had only muscular strength ; they ap 
 plied to domestic uses those, who manifested facility, elegance, and 
 docility ; and when they discovered in them intellectual aptitude, 
 they had them educated with great care, either to derive some day 
 an income from their talents, or a profit by their sale. Literary 
 and artist slaves were of great value. Suetonius mentions Lutatius 
 Daphnis, a slave grammarian, who was bought by Quintus Catulus 
 for 200,000 Roman sesterces, and Lucius Appuleius, also a slave 
 grammarian, whom the knight Calvinus hired from his master for 
 40,000 sesterces per annum. 1 Talented slaves were therefore a great 
 fortune for their masters, and their education was pushed to the 
 extreme of refinement, (a) The custom of the ancients to be served 
 entirely by slaves, caused the latter to be divided into classes, ac- 
 
 1 Suetonius de illust. gramm., cap. iii. 
 
 (#) These talented slaves, poets, grammarians, and rhetoricians, were not of 
 the race of Ham negroes but descendants of Shem and Japhet, of the same 
 blood as their masters. Quaere : Does this account for the fact that, since the 
 day when the pious and benevolent Christian priest, Las Casas, first suggested the 
 substitution of African, or negro, for American Indian slave- laborers, down to the 
 present hour, no owner of negro slaves has ever discovered sufficient intellectual 
 aptitude in any one of them, to induce the experiment of education, with a view 
 to profit, either by hire or sale ? 
 
 In France, the two Dumas, father and son, novelists, would seem to confirm 
 the views of our author. 
 
 With us, Fred Douglass, who has been prominent in POLITICS at the North, 
 would seem to contradict his theory. 
 
 The philosophic historian should not overlook the fact that the two Dumas in 
 France, and Fred Douglass in America, were all more white than black. All 
 have manifested decided intellectual aptitude, very superior talents, in a certain 
 order of ideas. The phenomenon of Fred Douglass s prominence in Northern 
 politics is easily explained. He was forced into that prominence against his 
 nature, and almost against his own will, by those who sought, by abolishing 
 negro slavery, to divorce Southern capital from Northern labor, and thereby to 
 reduce the wages of a working-man in the North below the cost of feeding and 
 clothing a negro, and to enlist capital at the South, as well as at the North, in 
 support of a system of legislation, that would make labor cheap and living dear. 
 
 But surely those are short-sighted politicians, utterly undeserving the name of 
 statesmen, who permit themselves to believe that 35,000,000 of the Caucasian 
 race will long permit them to use 4,000,000 of ignorant negro freedmen, as voters, 
 to enforce such a system of legislation, y^ 
 
 \ tfct 
 
 ( 
 
246 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 cording to their employment. There were in every grand seignior s 
 house, independently of the slaves of low estate, slave overseers, 
 slave huntsmen, slave singers, slave musicians, and buffoons, who 
 played comedies during meals ; finally, slave poets, grammarians, 
 and rhetoricians, to educate the children. 1 Plutarch and Xenophon 
 testify that throughout Greece and Italy education was entirely 
 turned over to slaves. Cato the elder had many intrusted with the 
 education of his children, 2 and Xenophon, in his treatise on the 
 Republic of Sparta, regrets that in Greece, where they boasted of 
 educating children best, they always gave them slaves for preceptors. 3 
 
 It was in consequence of these educational functions that the 
 slaves, among the ancients, monopolized all that may be called the 
 meditative arts ; that is to say, all that, like grammar, poetry, and 
 philosophy, may be studied in private and in the silence of thought. 
 
 Grammar was considered by the ancients a great and beautiful 
 art, comprising not only what we call philosophy, but also a multi 
 tude of facts and ideas properly belonging to history, philosophy, 
 poetry, and the divine science of augury. We can judge what their 
 books of grammar were by the treatises of Varro, the Saturnales of 
 Macrobius, and the Floridas of Apuleius, all works of great interest, 
 but which never had among the ancients the reputation of some 
 other treatises on grammar ; as, for example, those of the gram 
 marian Didymus, whom Plutarch frequently cites. 
 
 The study of grammar, as, indeed, the study of all the arts that 
 have made the West illustrious, had its origin in Greece. The Greeks 
 distinguished the grammarians * from the grammaiists, as we distin 
 guish quacks from physicians. Between the second and third Punic 
 war, one Crates Mallotes, says Suetonius, was sent as ambassador 
 to Rome by Attalus. One day, in passing through a street on Mount 
 Palatine, he fell into a sewer and broke his thigh-bone. During 
 his ministry, or rather during his convalescence, he had at his house 
 literary reunions. 5 Ennius and Livius Andronicus, who were poets 
 and rhetoricians, half Greek, and recently deceased, had also held 
 these philological exercises. The example of Crates decided the 
 public taste, and grammar was the fashion at Rome. 
 
 1 Plutarch, Paulus /Emilius, cap. vi. 2 Plutarch, Cato, cap. xx. 
 
 3 Xenophon de repub. Lacedsem., cap. ii. 
 
 4 Sueton. de illust. gramm., cap. iv. 5 Ibid., cap. ii. 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 247 
 
 After that, grammarians abounded. There were sometimes more 
 than twenty celebrated schools open at Rome at the same time. 1 
 The grammatic frenzy reached the provinces. Masters of renown 
 established themselves there. Suetonius mentions, among others, 
 Octavius Teucer, Siscennius lacchus, and Appius Chares, who went 
 into Cisalpine Gaul, and there taught to such an advanced age, that 
 they became blind, and were carried to their schools in a litter. 2 
 
 All these professors of grammar were slaves or freedmen ; for 
 their masters sometimes preferred to leave to their intelligent slaves 
 the free control of their industry, and to emancipate them on con 
 dition of their paying a certain sum, and without prejudice to the 
 patron s right to succeed to the estate of the client. Thus, in the 
 war against Tigranes, the grammarian Tyrannion having been taken 
 prisoner and made a slave, Murena asked him of Lucullus, obtained, 
 and set him free. 3 
 
 Suetonius has given a long list of these slave or emancipated 
 grammarians. He mentions, as one of the first who acquired some 
 celebrity, Suevius Nicanor, who was also a satiric poet. 4 Next, An- 
 tonius Gnipho, a Gaul, born free, but exposed in his infancy, and 
 emancipated by the person who found and raised him. He had his 
 first school in the palace of Julius Caesar, and afterward opened 
 one in his own house. This school was attended by the most illus 
 trious -youths. 5 Cicero attended it, even during his prsetorship. 
 Antonio Gnipho gave lessons in grammar every day, and declaimed 
 on market days. These declamations were, in prose, what the im 
 provisations of the Italians, French, and Germans, which we have 
 witnessed of late years, were in verse ; that is, an amplification in 
 places of resort, more or less public, on a given subject. 
 
 In the time of Antonius Gnipho, and for some time after him, 
 Atteius, the philologian, an Athenian and a freedman, lived at 
 Rome in great reputation. He was intimate with Sallust and Asi- 
 nius Pollion, and composed for the former an abridgment of Ro 
 man history. 6 It appears from the remarks of Pollion on the 
 writings of Sallust, that Atteius scattered through the books of the 
 latter that antique terminology, which has often been objected to. 7 
 
 1 Sueton. de illust. gramm. cap. iii. 2 Ibid., cap. iii. 3 Plutarch, Lucullus. 
 4 Sueton. de illust. gramm., cap. v. 5 Sueton. de illust. gramm., cap. vii. 
 6 Ibid., cap. x. * Ibid., cap. x. 
 
248 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 Valerius Cato and Cornelius Epicadus were also very nearly cotem- 
 poraneous with Antonius Gnipho. The first was a grammarian and 
 professor of poetry. Cornelius Epicadus was ^ freedman of Sylla, 1 
 who made him herald of the college of augurs. On the death of 
 Sylla, he finished the memoirs, which the dictator had left imper 
 fect. Staberius Eros, bought at the market-place, and shown naked 
 on the selling-block, and afterward freed by his master, was the 
 preceptor of Brutus and Cassius. 2 Lenseus, the freedman of Pom- 
 pey, 3 and the companion of all his wars, had his school in the Ca- 
 rini, that noble suburb of Rome, where were the temples of Juno 
 and of Terra, and where Pompey, Cicero, and a great number of 
 rich and illustrious nobles had their hotels. 
 
 Quintus Csecilius Epirota, with three names like a gentleman, 
 freedman of the knight Atticus, the friend of Cicero, had some 
 thing of the fate of Abelard.* Intrusted with the education of the 
 daughter of Atticus, he fell in love with her, and the expression 
 used by Suetonius on this matter does not forbid us to suppose that 
 he was favorably listened to by his scholar. 5 The intrigue being 
 discovered, the preceptor was discharged, and the young girl mar 
 ried to Marcus Agrippa. From the house of Atticus, his patron, 
 Quintus Csecilius Epirota passed into that of Cornelius Gallus. The 
 grammarian lived with him in the strictest friendship, and in the 
 struggle, which Cornelius Gallus had to sustain with Augustus a 
 fatal struggle, which brought his head to the scaffold his intimacy 
 with the freedman became the subject of the most serious charge. 
 Deprived of this second patron, Quintus Caecilius Epirota opened a 
 school. He received very few pupils, and only very young ones, 
 which caused the poet Domitius Marsus to give him the name of 
 "nurse to sucking poets." 6 To the last, Quintus Caecilius Epirota 
 manifested the moral characteristics, which had begun the misfor 
 tunes of his life. He was the first, who gave lessons on Latin sub 
 jects. While the other grammarians recognized the Greek only 
 as the language of learning and literature, he dared to scandalize his 
 auditors by reading Virgil and other cotemporaneous poets. 7 
 
 1 Sueton. de illust. gramm., cap. xi. 
 
 2 Ibid., cap. xi. See also Pliny, Hist. Natur., lib. xxxv., cap. Iviii. 
 Ibid., cap. xv. * Ibid., cap. xv. 5 Sueton., cap. xv. 
 6 Ibid., cap. xv. 7 Ibid., cap. xv. 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 249 
 
 Alongside of grammarians like Caecilius Epirota, Rome had 
 others of less brilliant but more peaceable fortune, such as Ver- 
 rius Flaccus, Scribonius Aphrodisius, Caius Julius Hyginus, and 
 Caius Melissus. 
 
 Verrius Flaccus l established public debates, in which he gave the 
 victor, as a prize, some rare book. Augustus chose him as precep 
 tor of his nephews, and he had his school at first in the palace, 
 afterward in Catiline s hotel, which was part of the palace. Scri 
 bonius Aphrodisius, 2 freedman of Scribonia, first wife of Augustus, 
 and the cotemporary of Verrius, left a treatise on orthography. 
 Caius Julius Hyginus, 3 a freedman of Augustus and friend of Ovid, 
 was the emperor s librarian, which did not prevent his giving les 
 sons. Caius Melissus, 4 exposed in infancy, saved and given to 
 Maecenas, and by Maecenas to Augustus, was made by the emperor 
 librarian of the portico of Octavia. 
 
 Finally, we have to speak of Quintus Remmius Palemon, who 
 was a curious type of the slave artist, disdainfully revolting against 
 his condition. Palemon commenced as the slave of a weaver.* 
 Then he accompanied his master s son to the schools, and learned 
 belles-lettres by stealth. Fortified by study and freed, he became, 
 under Tiberius and Claudius, the most celebrated grammarian of 
 Rome. Full of faults and vices, nevertheless he captivated the 
 sternest minds by the inexpressible attraction of his speech and the 
 surprising retentiveness of his memory. At need, too, he wrote good 
 verses. Bold, conceited, and arrogant, he affected the greatest con 
 tempt for the learned Marcus Terentius Varro, and carried the 
 elastic vulgarity of abusive latinity to its utmost stretch, by telling 
 him that he was nothing but a hog. 5 He pretended that Virgil had 
 clearly predicted him, in his third eclogue by making Palemon 
 the judge of the verses of Menalchus and Dametas as the one, 
 whose opinions on all matters of poetry posterity would accept ; 6 and 
 he related, with an exquisite fatuity, how the robbers, who had cap 
 tured and wished to hold him for ransom, let him go with the 
 greatest deference, 7 out of respect to the celebrity of his name. 
 
 Bold as a knight, Quintus Remmius Palemon was voluptuous as 
 
 1 Sueton., cap. xvii. 2 Ibid., cap. xix. 3 Ibid , cap. xx. 
 
 4 Ibid., cap. xxi. 5 Ibid., cap. xxiii. 6 Ibid., cap. xxiii. 
 
 7 Ibid., cap. xxiii. 
 
25O HISTORY OF THE 
 
 a Sybarite. He took an exorbitant number of baths each day, and 
 his domestic luxury absorbed not only the income from his school, 
 but his whole estate. His excessive fondness for gallantry ended 
 by ruining him, and he spent in gayeties the income of his broker s 
 warehouses, and even that of his vineyards, which he had himself 
 planted, and which yielded him, according to Suetonius, 365 am 
 phorae of wine. 1 
 
 Rhetoric, although near akin to grammar, was nevertheless so far 
 separated from it, as to require men of different condition. Nearly 
 all the grammarians were slaves. On the contrary, very few slaves 
 became rhetoricians. For this essential difference, there were sim 
 ple and natural reasons, which may here be given. 
 
 Grammar was an art for youth, rhetoric for manhood. 2 The 
 former taught the principles of spoken and written language. The 
 latter taught the practice of speech. Rhetoric, therefore, belonged 
 directly to politics, by senatorial or tribunitial orations, and to juris 
 prudence, by the pleadings before the praetor. 
 
 Now, never, in any country of the world, have slaves applied 
 themselves to the study of politics, or law, which belong exclusively 
 to free men. Although shut up in a circle of generalities by the 
 conditions of all public instruction, and, therefore, sustained by 
 mere commonplaces, rhetoric requires a knowledge of law, and 
 this, we say, it is that raises it above the sphere of slaves. Pompey, 
 Cicero, Julius Caesar, Brutus, and Cassius might well go to learn 
 the rules of good speaking of Greece in the schools of grammarians 
 like Marcus Antonius Gnipho or Staberius Eros ; but what could 
 slaves teach those great men on the law of the Twelve Tables, the 
 science of augury, which was part of the law, or on the affairs of the 
 republic ? An orator, in his speeches, had always either the senate 
 to convince or the judges to win over. Now, a miserable slave, de 
 prived of all civil or domestic personality, was not qualified even 
 to speak of matters so far above him as were judicial and political 
 affairs. 
 
 There were, therefore, among the ancients, and especially in 
 Italy, hardly any examples of orators among the slaves or freedmen. 
 
 It was, also, for the same reason that history with the ancients 
 was never written by slaves. The ancients had no idea of what we 
 1 Sueton. de illust. gramm., cap. xxiii. 7 Ibid., cap. iv. 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 2$I 
 
 call philosophical history ; that is to say, no idea of a general re 
 cital and classification of human facts for the demonstration or justi 
 fication of a principle. It seems that they were too near the start 
 ing-point to have been able to study the tendency, and learn the 
 direction of events. They confined themselves, therefore, to writ 
 ing memoirs on very narrow topics. We have only a very small 
 part of the numberless historical works composed by the ancients ; 
 but those we have justify this opinion marvellously. The books 
 of Thucydides and Xenophon, among the Greeks, of Sallust and 
 Tacitus, among the Romans, are memoirs like those of Philippe de 
 Comines or the Marechal Blaise de Montluc ; and as to general his 
 tories, like those of Herodotus, Polybius, and Titus Livius, they are 
 general only in name ; amounting only to meagre summaries, pre 
 senting the personal views of the author, or abridging former chron 
 icles. 
 
 Among the ancients, historians generally were divided into two 
 classes : those who wrote what they had seen, and those who com 
 piled from the books of others. The former were much the most 
 numerous. Thus, military men, who, like Thucydides, Xenophon, 
 Arrian, Polybius, Pausanias, Cato, Sylla, Csesar, Hirtius, Augustus, 
 Tiberius, Claudius, King Juba, and Tacitus, had taken part in the 
 wars, or travellers, who, like Herodotus and Strabo, had visited dis 
 tant countries, ordinarily became historians. Now, slaves and freed- 
 men, who were not free to travel, were not regularly admitted into 
 the armies, and never could acquire the grade of officers, could not 
 find a place among this class of historians. 
 
 There remain the compilers, like Diodorus of Sicily, Sallust, Cor 
 nelius Nepos, Titus Livius, Plutarch, Suetonius. But the nature of 
 their work required numerous collections of memoirs, rare and 
 costly. Besides, to write history, even after another, always in 
 volves the necessity of judging men, and, consequently, of some 
 times condemning them. Now, it would have seemed intolerable 
 to the generals and statesmen of antiquity to be judged by slaves ; 
 that is to say, by men totally ignorant of the military art and the 
 science of statesmanship. 
 
 We say, then, that among the ancients, history was written ex- 
 clusively by gentlemen. We scarcely find one or two exceptions. 
 Suetonius mentions one Lucius Otacilius Pilitus, who was a slave 
 
 c 
 
 U>IAX- 
 
 ^A\rt a,ti. i& I . . L t* 
 
252 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 porter, and, as such, fastened by a chain, as we do with dogs, to his 
 master s. door. 1 His natural talent impelling, he became a distin 
 guished rhetorician, educated Pompey, and wrofe a history, in many 
 books, of the military expeditions of the Pompeys, father and son. 2 
 Suetonius mentions this fact, which he characterizes as very strange ; 
 adding, on the authority of Cornelius Nepos, that he was the first 
 slave, who undertook to write history, which up to that time had 
 been exclusively reserved to writers of noble birth. 3 
 
 Poetry and philosophy were especially the literary labor suitable 
 for slaves, because they required neither travel, nor the patient 
 study of chronicles, nor high position in the state ; and because 
 for them a little quiet corner sufficed, where the slave could medi 
 tate, until his thoughts were elevated by degrees to the imaginations 
 that make the poet, or to the reflections that make the philosopher. 
 
 We must make this general remark on the slaves, who cultivated 
 poetry at Rome, at least before the Christian era : that they were 
 nearly all Greek by birth or education, and nearly always used the 
 Greek language in their compositions. 4 We have already seen, 
 that from the time of Augustus, Q. C. Epirota introduced a great 
 novelty in citing Virgil and other cotemporaneous poets as models. 
 In the estimation of the literary men of Italy, there was but one 
 language that was learned, complete, and worthy of being used for 
 literary composilion. That was the Greek. The grammarians lec 
 tured in Greek, and quoted Greek authors. The rhetoricians de 
 claimed in Greek. The Latin was considered the national idiom, 
 it was true ; but more proper for the medical receipts of the elder 
 Cato, or for the judicial proceedings of the praetor, than for the 
 elegant creations of the poets. 
 
 From the period of which we speak, the Latin poets may be 
 divided into two classes j the comedians, and the epic and lyric 
 poets. 
 
 The comedians, as we understand them, were all those, who com 
 posed tragedies, comedies, and farces, and generally acted them ; 
 all, who composed songs and sang them in the streets; all, who wrote 
 
 1 Sueton. de clar. rhetor., cap. iii. 2 Ibid., cap. iii. 
 
 3 Ibid., cap. iii. 
 
 * The ancients generally remarked that the Syrians and Asiatic Greeks appeared 
 destined by nature for slavery. " Hie Syri et Asiatici Groecisunt levissima genera 
 hominum etservituti nata." (Tit. Liv. Hist., lib. xxxvi., cap. xvii.) 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 253 
 
 satires, and recited them on the boards in public. We may add to 
 these different kinds of comedians, buffoons, jugglers, sword-swal- 
 lowers, fortune-tellers, magicians; in fine, that eternal and universal 
 Babel of men of talent, frothing always and everywhere on the sur 
 face of the people mysterious river, flowing on a level with the 
 earth, over the slime of every nation, having no known source, fat 
 tening on the condensed clouds of the occult sciences, and having 
 two estuaries, the gallows and the hospital. 
 
 Perhaps there does not exist one piece of stage literature written 
 in Latin, that was not a translation or imitation of the Greek, and 
 on a Greek subject. Plautus and Terence have done little more 
 than translate Menander, Aristophanes, Diphilus, Philemon, De- 
 mophilus, Epicharmus the Sicilian, Eubulus, Apollodorus, Posidip- 
 pus, and the other dramatists of Greece. 1 The sale of slaves raised 
 in Sicily, the Ionian Isles, or Asia Minor, or the vicinity of the 
 Greek colonies established along the Adriatic Sea, were the two 
 sources, whence unpolished Rome derived her poetry and fine 
 language. 
 
 Plautus was the first Italian slave who wrote comedies. He trans 
 lated or imitated the Greek classics, while turning a handmill in 
 one of the establishments belonging to the bakers trade s union of 
 Rome. Three Greek philosophers, Menedemus, Asclepiades, and 
 Cleanthis, turned a mill, as he did. 2 Plautus lived in the first half 
 of the second century before the Christian era. Shortly after him 
 came Terence, the slave and freedman of the noble house of Te- 
 rentius Lucanus. Terence followed the example of Plautus, and 
 translated the stage classics of the Greeks, as he boasts in the pro 
 logue to his Andrienna. 3 The stage literature of the Romans is, in 
 fact, represented by Plautus and Terence ; although we find other 
 freedmen, who attempted it; among others, Caius Melissus, a slave 
 grammarian, who was given, as a present, to Augustus by Maecenas. 
 
 Alongside of the Greek stage literature, comedia palliata, there 
 was also at Rome a national stage literature, comedia togata, taken 
 from Italian subjects. Of this there were four kinds, one of which 
 belonged exclusively to the young nobility, who composed the Atel- 
 lanes, and acted them in society. 4 The other three were of the 
 province of the slaves. 
 
 1 Philip. Parei, de Script. M. Ace. Plant. 2 Ibid< 
 
 3 Terent. Andr., prolog., v. 17-20. *Tit. Liv. Hist., lib. vii., cap. ii. 
 
254 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 There were in ancient Italy troups of strolling comedians, under 
 the orders of a director, who bore the title of leader of theat 
 rical performances ," >1 or sometimes the title &f "emperor of the 
 actors." 2 The actors and actresses were always slaves or freedmen, 
 and their education corresponded to the part they acted. Those 
 who played in the classic comedies, or in tragedies, were generally 
 highly cultivated grammarians ; for Cicero relates that they were 
 hissed pitilessly, if they happened to make a mistake in the prosody 
 of a single syllable. 3 
 
 We comprehend that there naturally were companies of every 
 kind, according to the fortune of the director and the taste of the 
 public. All directors did not possess comedians like Ofilius Hila- 
 rus, 4 Pylades, and Bathyllus, nor tragedians like ^Esop and Ros- 
 cius. Besides, only Rome could pay for such talents as theirs. 
 Cities of the second order, and Rome herself, overflowed with 
 buffoons and mimics, who played in the open air, without brode- 
 kins or mask, and only with some fantastic dress, as in the Atellan 
 farces. 
 
 Troups of jugglers, mimics, and buffoons traversed Italy. The 
 pieces, which they played, were sometimes written and learned by 
 heart ; but more often they were reduced to some burlesque parade. 
 Suetonius mentions a freed grammarian, named Lucius Pansa, who 
 wrote pieces for the buffoons. 5 Generally, the mimics and buffoons 
 were the scum of the theatres. Their ordinary representations on 
 the boards were a mixture of dances and epigrams, obscene panto 
 mime, and moral sentences. There were cities where buffoons were 
 not admitted ; for example, Marseilles. 6 
 
 Rome produced, under the emperors, mimics of great reputation. 
 Vossius cites Publius Laberius, Publius the Syrian, Philistion of 
 Nice, Cneius Mattius, Lentulus, Marcus Marullus, and some others. T 
 The fondness of the emperors for the theatre had not a little in 
 creased the number of mimics. Caligula and Nero treated them 
 with extraordinary favor. Caligula especially carried his fondness 
 for them to frenzy. Sometimes in the intervals of the play he em- 
 
 1 Tacitus, Annal., lib. i., cap. xvi. 2 Plaut., Paenal., prolog., v. 4, 43, 44. 
 
 3 Cicero, Parad., Hi., cap. ii. 4 Pliny, Hist. Natur., lib. vii., cap. 54. 
 
 5 Sueton. de illust. gramm., cap. xviii. 6 Valer. Maxim., lib. ii., cap. vi., $ 7. 
 7 Vossius, institut. poetic., lib. ii., cap. xxxiii. 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 255 
 
 braced with transport the pantomimic Mnester. 1 One day, a knight 
 having annoyed that dancer by some noise, Caligula wrote a note, 
 and sent it at once to the knight by a centurion, with orders to 
 leave immediately for Ostia, and thence for Mauritania, to carry the 
 note to King Ptolemy. Now, the note contained literally these 
 words : " Do neither good nor harm to the bearer." 2 
 
 We know that Caligula was stabbed by Chaereas, behind the 
 scenes of the theatre, while enraptured by gazing at some young 
 Asiatic dancers of great celebrity, who were performing a dance of 
 their country. 3 
 
 Below the classic comedy, below the Atellan farce, below even 
 the pantomime of the buffoons, there was another kind of dramatic 
 poetry cultivated by slaves. This was satire sung in the streets, 
 with the accompaniment of music and gesture. Perhaps it would 
 be well to trace the connection of this dramatized satire, derived, 
 like all the Latin literature, from Greece, from the stilus, culti 
 vated by Timon Phliasius, the cotemporary of Ptolemy Philadel- 
 phus, and Xenophanes of Lesbos, down to the severe prohibition 
 of it by the law of the Twelve Tables ; for the license of the stroll 
 ing singers was carried to such extremes that it became necessary 
 to moderate their rapture by the rod.* The model of these poet- 
 comedians of the streets was Livius Andronicus, a cotemporary of 
 Ennius, and anterior to Plautus, and whom Suetonius calls a semi- 
 Greek orator. 5 Valerius Maximus relates that when the artist, who 
 had been set free by Livius Salinator, his master, had grown old, 
 he hired a boy who sang the stanzas, and a flute-player, who accom 
 panied him, and that he, broken down and blind, translated to the 
 crowd by pantomime the poem, as the singer and musician pro 
 gressed. 
 
 Finally, and this is the lowest stage of the world of slave artists, 
 there were bands of jugglers, sleight-of-hand players, fortune-tellers, 
 and magicians, who lived as they could on the curiosity of passers-by. 
 Sometimes the jugglers had sufficient reputation to be called by great 
 lords, at the end of their feasts, to amuse the guests by their repartees 
 and tricks. In the satiric poem of Petronius, Trimalchion had moun- 
 
 1 Sueton. Caligula, cap. Iv. 2 Ibid., cap. Iv. 3 Ibid., cap. Iviii. 
 
 4 Cicero de Repub., lib. iv., fragm. 33. 5 Sueton. de illust. gramm., cap. i. 
 6 Valerius Maximus, lib. ii., cap. iv., 4. 
 
256 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 tebanks, who danced on top of a ladder, and jumped through hoops 
 during his famous dinner. 1 Generally, they danced and exhibited 
 at public places, swallowing Lacedaemonian swords, to the great sat 
 isfaction of the idle. 2 The fortune-tellers had become so numerous 
 at Rome, in the time of the first emperors, that they had a union ; 3 
 and the day after Caligula was killed, magicians arrived from Egypt 
 and Syria, who were to have given in the theatre a representation 
 of hell* 
 
 Epic and lyric poetry belongs less properly to slaves than dra 
 matic poetry. Generally, the ancient Greek and Latin poets, who 
 composed poems, odes, and hymns, were men of noble houses. 
 The gnomiqueSy Theognis, Phocylides, Pythagoras, Solon, Simon- 
 ides, all belonged to more or less powerful houses. Only Callima- 
 chus, librarian to Ptolemy Philadelphus, and Tyrteus, the Athenian 
 general, commenced life as schoolmasters, which is a sign of very 
 humble extraction. At Rome, Ennius was of a great family, and 
 lived in intimate friendship with Cato the elder, and Scipio. Pacu- 
 vius, his nephew, was not less illustrious. Catullus and Lucretius, 
 Tibullus and Propertius, Gallus and Ovid were born of distin 
 guished parents. Juvenal and Perseus were gentlemen. 5 
 
 There were scarcely any others then but Horace, Virgil, and 
 Phoedrus, who were poets of the slave race. 
 
 Horace, son of a freed salt-fish-monger, 6 also belonged to the 
 slave poets by his Greek studies. Virgil, son of a poor village pot 
 ter that is to say, also born of the slave race followed the bent 
 of all his kind, learned grammar, rhetoric, medicine, mathematics, 
 which then comprehended physics and astronomy, and even juris 
 prudence, which was an exception for men of his rank, and made 
 him one of the most learned men of antiquity. Phaedrus, a slave, 
 full of the sententious (gnomiques} poets, of the study of ^sop, of 
 the Milesianisms introduced into the Latin literature by Ennius and 
 Plautus, lived at the latter end of the Greek revival, when the Latin 
 language had ceased to copy Homer and Plato, to try, with Seneca, 
 
 1 Petron. Arbit. Satir., cap. liii. 
 
 2 Plutarch relates the taunt of an Athenian to King Agis, that the swords of the 
 Lacedaemonians were so short that the mountebanks swallowed them without 
 difficulty. (Lycurgus, cap. xix.) 
 
 3 See note to page 213. 4 Sueton. Caligula, cap. Ivii. 
 5 Suet. Horat. Vita. Donat. de Virgil. Vita. 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 257 
 
 Luc an, Juvenal, Perseus, the two Plinys, and a host of others, to 
 revjve the traditions of Roman taste, interrupted since the arrival 
 of Greek rhetoricians and grammarians in Italy. 1 
 
 After grammar, the theatre and poetry, philosophy was the study 
 most liked by the slaves. There were slaves in all the notable an 
 cient schools of philosophy. Phaedon, to whom Plato dedicated 
 his treatise on the soul, was a young boy of great beauty, exposed 
 for sale at the house of a slave-merchant, who also kept a house of 
 prostitution ; and he was bought by Cebes, the disciple of Socra 
 tes. 2 The beautiful books, which he composed on the doctrine of 
 Socrates, still existed in the time of Aulus Gellius, who mentions 
 them with honor. Menippus, a slave like Phaedon, also became an 
 illustrious philosopher. He devoted himself particularly to a kind 
 of philosophical composition, under the form of satire, which he 
 called cynic, and which Varro afterward imitated. 3 These cynics 
 appear to have been satires of the same kind as the Cyclops of Euri 
 pides. Varro, in imitating them, wrote moral treatises, and gave 
 them the name of Mcnippian satires. It is not known to what 
 philosophic sect Menippus belonged. There was a slave peripa 
 tetic philosopher, named Pompylus, who belonged to the philoso 
 pher Theophrastus.* Perseus, slave of Zeno the stoic, shared the 
 doctrine of his master, and Mys, the slave of Epicurus, had no 
 other philosophy than his. Diogenes the cynic, although born 
 free, was reduced to slavery, and bought in the market at Corinth 
 by Xeniades, who made him the preceptor of his children. 5 
 
 Epictetus, of the sect of the Stoics, was one of the most cele 
 brated slaves, who cultivated philosophy. He was a Greek, like 
 all the learned slaves, and belonged to Epaphroditus, the freedman 
 of Nero. . Two verses which he composed on himself, and which 
 
 1 It was this return of Latin literature to its primitive and national traditions, 
 which gave birth to a style called " the style of the decay" The rhetoricians, 
 pedants infatuated with Greek and habituated to the classic manner of Virgil, 
 Cicero, and Horace, could not reconcile themselves to a turn of style, which did 
 not recall their consecrated models, and they treated it as barbarous; while it 
 only strengthened the language from the old and good sources of the time of the 
 republic, from which great orators, like Appius Caecus, the Gracchi, and Cato, had 
 drawn. From the time of Seneca the return to the primitive traditions of the 
 Latin language became general, and even extravagant. (Senecae Epist., lib. ad 
 Lucil., epist. cxiv.) 
 
 2 Aul. Gell., Noct. Attic., lib. ii., cap. xviii. 
 
 3 Ibid., lib. ii., cap. xviii. 4 Ibid. 5 Ibid. 
 
258 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 Aulus Gellius has preserved, show that he was deformed. 1 Under 
 Domitian, a senatus consultum having expelled the rhetoricians and 
 philosophers from Italy, Epictetus, who was, then a freedman, 
 quitted Italy, and retired to Nicopolis. 2 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 THE COURTESANS. 
 
 THE ancient courtesans, whose history we are about to sketch, 
 are not those, who were exposed in public houses. These 
 latter offer no lesson for history. They were poor girls, bought in 
 the market, naked, or nearly naked, on great tables called catasta;* 
 that purchasers, who were hard to please, could examine the offered 
 merchandise closely. 4 These catastcz were sufficiently elevated, so 
 that from the ground to the upper platform, on which were the 
 slaves, large and high closets could be constructed. On top of the 
 catastae, slaves of ordinary value were exposed, naked, their feet 
 rubbed with white chalk, 5 and a crown of holly-leaves on their 
 heads. 6 In the catastae were kept the slaves of great price, who 
 were only shown to purchasers of some importance. 7 Generally, 
 the trade of slave-dealer was connected with the profession of 
 
 1 Aul. Cell., Noct. Attic., lib. ii., cap. xviii. 2 Ibid., lib. xv., cap. xi. 
 
 3 It was commonly said of a slave that he had been " bought on the catasta 1 : 
 Staberius eros hero suo emptus de catasta. (Suet, de illus. gram., cap. xiii.) 
 
 1 Statius says that the catasta turned on a pivot, so that the slaves could be ex 
 amined by purchasers on all sides. (Stat. Sylv., lib. ii., carmen i., v. 72.) 
 
 5 Tibullus, lib. ii., eleg. iii., v. 59, 60. Pliny also mentions three slaves, who 
 afterward became celebrated, Staberius Eros the grammarian, Publius the mimic, 
 and Manilius Antiochus the astrologer, who were sold with their feet rubbed 
 with chalk. 
 
 6 Aul. Cell., Noct. Attic., lib. vii., cap. iv. A passage of Justin on Philip, King 
 of Macedon, shows that the usage was general. (Justin., lib. vii., cap. iii.) 
 
 7 Martial gives the curious details, as follows : 
 
 In septis Mamurra diu multumque vagatus 
 
 Inspexit molles pueros, oculisque comedit : 
 
 Non hos quos primas prostituere casae : 
 Sed quos arcanae servant tabulata catastae, 
 
 Et quos non populus, nee mea turba videt. 
 
 (Martial., lib. ix., epigram Ix.) 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 259 
 
 keeper of a house of debauch. Moreover, this business presupposed 
 a consummate experience in the science of the toilet, of which we 
 at this day have only a very incomplete idea. These merchants 
 had the art of making women, otherwise least calculated to charm, 
 appear young, elegant, and fresh. 1 As fairness of skin was a quality 
 much prized by the ancients, the women exposed for sale were 
 painted with a preparation of white moss, 2 which gave them a violet 
 color much prized by connoisseurs. Pliny relates that they rubbed 
 the bodies of those, who were too thin, with resin ; a proceeding 
 which was intended, he assures us, to give them the appearance of 
 strength and size. 3 Pliny and Galien mention many other details, 
 which the curious in antiquities of this kind will do well to consult ; 
 but to the recital of which the French language refuses absolutely 
 to condescend. In a word, the slave-traders possessed thoroughly 
 the art of the toilette, according to the ancient taste ; an infinite 
 mystery, in which the most skilful make mistakes, and of which we 
 can appreciate the difficulties ; we, who have proved them in the 
 art of the toilette among the moderns ; a toilette confined to dress, 
 while the other undertook to manage the body itself. 
 
 But, we repeat, these are not the courtesans, whose lives we wish 
 to recount. What could we say that is not summed up in a few 
 words ? To be exposed, as long as they were young, at the door 
 of sonie house of ill fame, dressed from morning to night in that 
 strange costume of prostitutes, which shocks by its splendid uni 
 formity all the customs of honest life ; and to wait, always wait, 
 with feigned pleasure, between two lights, which burned day and 
 night ; * such their life, until, ruined and blasted, they were sold at 
 low price for some less horrible work, which substituted fatigue of 
 body for bitterness of sentiment and thoughts of ignominy. 
 
 1 Slave-traders were called mangones. Many authors give the details of their 
 business. Pliny mentions them in some places as men, who excelled in making 
 perfumes and pomades. (Plin. Hist. Natur., lib. xii., cap. xliii.) 
 
 2 Quintil. Inst. Orat., lib. ii., cap. xv., $ 25. 
 
 Plautus says, in his comedy of the Ghosts, that old women rubbed their bodies 
 with pomades, and painted themselves with white moss, to hide their wrinkles ; 
 but that, not being expert in the art of the toilette, they heaped, one upon the 
 other, such a mixture of odors, that the result was a very questionable perfume. 
 (Plaut. Mostellar., act i., sc. iii., v. 117-121.) 
 
 3 Pliny, Hist. Natur., lib. xxiv., cap. xii. 
 
 * It is from Tertullian that we learn that the custom was to have two lighted 
 candles before the doors of houses of debauch. (Tertul. Apologet., cap. xxxv.) 
 
2(5O HISTORY OF THE 
 
 The courtesans, whose history is curious and instructive, were the 
 freedwomen; women, whose beauty made them, free, and who sub 
 jected the rich and powerful by their graces, ^s the slave gramma 
 rians or slave poets subjected them by talent. 
 
 We must first correct an error, very old and widespread, in rela 
 tion to the different women spoken of by the ancient poets. The 
 elegy-writers of the eighteenth century, as Dorat, Bertin, Parny, 
 and some others, who more or less translated or imitated the ancient 
 tlegies, have borrowed from them the various gallant speeches, 
 which they addressed to Greek and Latin women, and have ap 
 plied them to French women. Now, they have not taken notice 
 of the fact, that all the women addressed by the ancient poets were 
 freed women courtesans. 1 Yes ; all the women, to whom Horace ad 
 dressed his verses, Pyrrha, Lydia, Leuconia, Tyndaris, Glycera, 
 Chloe, Barina, Asteria, Lycea, Neobula, Chloris, Phidela, Galatea, 
 Phyllis, Phryne, Neaera, Cinara ; 2 all, of whom Catullus speaks, 
 Lesbia, Hypsithylla, Acme, Quintia, Aufilena ; 3 all whom Tibul- 
 lus mentions, Delia, Naeara, 4 were courtesans, freedwomen, freed 
 by loss of virtue, and with more or less brilliant fortune, in 
 proportion to their beauty and their talent. We will presently 
 show what splendid and incredible fortunes some of these women 
 made. Meantime we will speak of their domestic habits and daily 
 life. 
 
 Nearly all these courtesan freedwomen were Greeks. The names 
 of all we have mentioned indicate as much. Without our being 
 able to say exactly what was their costume, it is certain that at 
 Rome the sumptuary laws forbade their dressing like noble ladies. 
 Tibullus urges Delia to be chaste, notwithstanding that the law 
 would not permit her to wear bands on her hair or a long dress 
 
 1 This is proved morally by the sense of all the verses addressed to these 
 women, and literally by passages like the following : 
 
 Me libertina, neque uno 
 Contenta, Phryne macerat. 
 
 (Horat. Epod., lib., od. xiv., v. 15, 16.) 
 Grata detinuit compede Myrtale 
 Liberdna, fretis acrior tradrice. 
 
 (Horat. Carm., lib. i., od. xxxiii. 
 
 Besides, there is in the Athenaeum a passage, which admits of no reply; for it 
 is in these words: "Not only the courtesans, but all the other slave women. 1 
 (Athen. Deipn., lib. xiii , cap. vi.) 
 
 2 See odes of Horace. 3 Catullus, passim. 4 Tibullus, passim. 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 26l 
 
 with a train, 1 which was the privilege of women of noble condi 
 tion. Catullus, in a comparison of Lesbia with the mistress of For- 
 mianus, says that Lesbia had smaller feet and longer fingers, 2 which 
 indicates that she did not wear the dress of Roman dames; for that 
 dress concealed the feet and hands. 
 
 These freedwomen were very devout, or, at least, they frequented 
 the temples. Propertius complains of Cynthia that she did not 
 go there exclusively to pray. 3 It was generally at midday that 
 these dames received the fashionable world,* in a very light dress, 
 and in summer under a large silk net, 5 to keep off the flies. The 
 rich youngsters and poets joined their circle, on leaving the forum, 6 
 
 1 Sit modo casta doce ; quamvis non vitta ligatos 
 Impediat crines, nee stola longa pedes. 
 
 (Tibul., lib. i., eleg. vi., v. 67, 68.) 
 
 2 Salve, nee nimio puella naso, 
 Nee bello pede, nee nigris oculis, 
 Nee longis digitis . . . 
 
 (Catul., carm. xliii.) 
 5 Fanaque peccatis plurima causa tuis. 
 
 (Propert., lib. ii., eleg. xv., v. 10.) 
 
 4 This appears from a very coarse note from Catullus to Hypsithylla, of which 
 we will only cite one verse : 
 
 Jube ad te veniam meridiatum. 
 
 (Catull., carm. xxxii.) 
 
 5 The net, which seems to have been an importation from Greece to Rome, 
 was only used by the courtesans, who were nearly all Greeks. It was called 
 in Greek Katvunuott, from u>i/ot>, a gnat, and was Latinized into conopeum, which 
 we find in many authors, and among others Horace : 
 
 Interque signa turpe militaria 
 Sol adspicit conopeum. 
 
 (Horat., Epod. lib., od. ix.) 
 
 The use of the net by courtesans made it an object of contempt among the Ro 
 mans. Propertius gives us to understand that it was introduced into Rome by 
 the Egyptians, and he is indignant that they had sullied with it the Tarpeian 
 Rock. 
 
 Fcedaque Tarpeio conopea tendere saxo. 
 
 (Propert., lib. iii., eleg. ix., v. 45.) 
 
 Toward the end of the reign of Domitian, the net had grown into frequent 
 use at Rome. The following lines of Juvenal show that it was used to cover the 
 cradles of babies : 
 
 Ut testudineo tibi, Lentule, conopeo 
 
 Nobilis Euryalum mermillonem expriinet infans. 
 
 (Juvenal, sat. vi., v. 79, 80.) 
 
 6 It is established by much testimony that the business of the forum ended at 
 midday, and that thence the idle went to their pleasures. It is in the sense of 
 this general fact that we must understand these two verses : 
 
 Varus me meus ad suos amores 
 Visum duxerat e foro otiosum. 
 
 (Catul. carm. x.) 
 
262 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 when the business of the morning was over. The strictest decorum 
 prevailed in these visits, which the most eminent statesmen made 
 openly before all the world, to fashionable freedwomen, and there 
 was no gentleman so distinguished as not to feel flattered, when 
 one of them borrowed his carriage and livery. Catullus relates, 
 that having gone with Yarns to visit his mistress, and having said, 
 in the conversation, that he had just had made new dresses for the 
 Moors who carried his litter, she asked him bluntly to loan them 
 to her, that she might go to the temple of Serapis. 1 
 
 With the freedwomen the day was devoted to society, the even 
 ing to gallantry. At dusk the rich and idle youngsters started out. 
 When the courtesans were considered easy of access, or had compro 
 mised themselves, their visitors observed no ceremony in making a 
 noise at their doors, or rattling their window-shutters. 2 But when 
 they had acquired some consideration by their talent or by their 
 dignity, they came, humbly and respectfully, to sing romances 
 under their windows. Horace has preserved a refrain of one of 
 these romances, which was sung for Lydia in her youth, which is a 
 very proper and touching compliment. 3 Sometimes, lovers did not 
 confine themselves to simply singing romances, but brought with 
 them bands of musicians, to regale the hard-hearted beauty with a 
 serenade. Thus Horace recommends to Asteria not to show her 
 self at the window in the evening, when the plaintive flutes begin 
 
 1 Quaeso, inquit, mihi, mi Catulle, paulum 
 
 Istos commoda; nam volo ad Serapim 
 * Deferri. (Catul., Carm. x.) 
 
 Parcius junctas quatiunt fenestras 
 Ictibus crebris juvenes protervi, 
 Nee tibi somnos adimunt . . . 
 
 (Herat., Carm., lib. i., od. xxv.) 
 
 3 The two following verses appear to us to have been evidently the refrain of 
 a romance sung to Lydia in her youth : 
 
 Me tuo longas pereunte noctes, 
 Lydia, dormis. 
 
 (Horat., Carm., lib. i., od. xxv.) 
 
 This fact seems to us clearly established ; first, because Horace says to Lydia, 
 grown old, that she no longer heard these words as formerly, audis minus et 
 minus jam ; next, because he said, in a note to Asteria, that they called her 
 cruel to the sound of music, which could only be in a song : 
 Et te saepe vocanti 
 Duram difficilis mane. 
 
 (Horat., Carm., lib. iii., od. vii.) 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 263 
 
 to be heard in the streets. 1 Not unfrequently two or three sere 
 nades, intended for the same woman, came together at the same 
 time under the same window, and the gallants bravely drew their 
 swords, or ordered their people to make place for them with their 
 daggers. Propertius, writing to Delia, who had gone to pass the 
 summer at Tibur, congratulates her that she is no longer exposed 
 to having her sleep broken by the nightly brawls of her followers 
 under her windows. 2 
 
 The domestic life of the courtesans depended on the position they 
 had made for themselves, and the relations they had formed. The 
 richer ones had sumptuous houses, numerous servants, and a costly 
 retinue ; 3 the greater number owned slaves ; the less fortunate hired 
 them. What every courtesan, rich or poor, wished to have was a 
 mother. We have already said that they were freedwomen, con 
 sequently born in slavery, and without parents. What principally 
 distinguished a courtesan from other women was having no family ; 
 and this was precisely why they attached so much importance to 
 making one for themselves, though incomplete, illusory, and pre 
 tended. They could not dream of having a father. A father was 
 completely impossible in their position. So they fell back upon a 
 mother. 
 
 The mother of a courtesan was not she, who gave birth to her ; 
 but a woman, who gave her a rank. To have a mother, that was as 
 much as to say, that they were not mere foundlings ; that they were 
 entitled to some consideration. It brought them nearer to the 
 women of society. Gentlemen displayed their titles; courtesans 
 displayed their mothers. 
 
 For ordinary courtesans the mother was an old woman, who had 
 served her time as a courtesan, with an ambiguous look and familiar 
 smile. For rich courtesans the mother was a kind of domestic 
 
 1 The serenades given to women under their windows are very clearly referred 
 to in these verses : 
 
 Prima nocte domum claude ; neque in vias 
 Sub cantu quaeruloe despice tibiae. 
 
 (Horat., Carm., lib. iii., od. vii.) 
 2 Nulla neque ante tuas orietur rixa fenestras 
 Nee tibi clamatse somnus amarus erit. 
 
 (Propert., lib. ii., eleg. xv., v. 5, 6.) 
 
 8 For example, the house and retinue of Theodota were magnificent. See note 
 on this subject to page 204. 
 
264 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 fetich, pompously dressed, idle, a part of the stationary furniture 
 of the room where visitors were received. 1 Zenophon relates that 
 Socrates one day visiting Theodota, a young courtesan of Athens, 
 then much the fashion, she insisted on presenting him to her mother, 2 
 who was splendidly dressed, and surrounded by a swarm of servants 
 in attendance on her. 
 
 We readily conceive that the women of ancient days, like those 
 of to-day, were fruitful in a thousand devices to enhance their 
 beauty, or supply the want of it. In elegant houses, 3 the walls of 
 the chambers were hung with tapestry, and the floors, laid in mo 
 saic, were covered with Babylonian carpets.* As to the dress of 
 the courtesans, it would be very difficult to reproduce it exactly ; 
 because, the fashion changing, both in Greece and Italy, we should 
 be exposed, by insufficiency of data, to mix up the styles of dif 
 ferent epochs. We can only indicate the general features. 
 
 1 Tibullus draws a picture of Delia s mother, who was a model of the genus : 
 
 Non ego te propter parco tibi, sed tua mater 
 
 Me movet, atque iras aurea vincit anus. 
 Haec mihi te addacit tenebris, multoque timore 
 
 Conjungit nostras clam taciturna manus. 
 Hac foribusque manet noctu me affixa, proculque 
 
 Cognoscit strepitus, me veniente, pedum. 
 Vive diu mihi, dulcis anus. . . . 
 
 (Tibul., lib. i., eleg. vi., v. 57-63.) 
 
 2 Xenophon. Memorab., lib. iii., cap. xi., $4. 
 
 3 The use of hangings for the walls was general in the houses of the rich of 
 antiquity, and many examples can be cited. Thus, when the assassins sent by 
 Lysander had set fire to the house of Alcibiades, they tried to put it out by smother 
 ing it with coverlets and the tapestry hangings. (Plut. Alcibiades.) The use of 
 hangings came from the East. Tertullian thus speaks of the Medes and Parthians : 
 " Sed et parietes Tyriis et Hyacinthinis, et illis regiis veils, quse vos operos reso- 
 Itita transfiguratis, pro pictura abutuntur." (Tertul. de cult, femin., cap. viit.) 
 
 * We find carpets used throughout the East from the earliest times. Homer 
 mentions them often. To cite but one example, see Odys., lib. x., v. 12. These 
 carpets were of fine wool, as is proved by this passage from Pliny: " Est et hirlx 
 (lanoe) pilo crasso in tapetis antiquissima gratia: jam certe priscos ius usos, 
 Homerus auctor est." (Plin. Hist. Natur., lib. viii., cap. Ixxiii.) PJautus, in his 
 comedy of PseuJolus, mentions tapestiy of Alexandria, on which animals were 
 represented : 
 
 Neque Alexandrina belluata conchyliata tapetia. 
 
 (Plant., Pseud., act i., sc. ii., v. 14.) 
 And in his comedy of Stychus, the tapestry of Babylon : 
 
 Turn Babylonica peristromata, consutaque tapetia. 
 
 (Plaut., Stych., act ii., sc. iii., v. 53.) 
 
 The height of magnificence was carpets of purple. Martial mentions them thus: 
 Stragula purpureis lucent villosa tapetis ; 
 Quid prodest, si te congelat uxor anus ? 
 
 (Mart., lib. xiv.,epigr. cxlvii.) 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 265 
 
 First, we must not accept, as the costume of Greek and Roman 
 women, the ridiculous dress put upon the stage in France since 
 fifty years. This dress, designed after antique statues and cameos, 
 is altogether imaginary, and was invented by the artists. Never 
 would the most shameless woman have the impudence to appear in 
 public, in Athens or at Rome, in that state of nudity, which does 
 very well in statues, but of which a woman of the Lupercal would 
 be ashamed. We repeat, the costume of ancient statues is conven 
 tional, 1 and the moderns have made a mistake in taking the rules of 
 architecture and sculpture for the rules of domestic life. Nor were 
 the statues of the pagan deities exposed naked in the temples. They 
 were always dressed more or less magnificently, 2 and their hands 
 and faces were painted flesh-color. At Rome, on the same day that 
 the censors entered upon their offices, the usage was to repaint all 
 the statues in the city. 3 
 
 Ancient women, both Greek and Roman, had a passion for 
 bright colors, pearls, precious stones, and tinsel. They stained 
 their hair of a ruddy blond color, which made it look like gold. 4 
 Nearly all painted their faces. 5 They painted their eyebrows and 
 lashes, prolonging them by encircling their eyes with two rings of 
 purple. 6 Saint Cyprian reproached them for thus giving themselves 
 the eyes of the serpent. 7 The headdress differed with the young 
 and old. The young wore nothing on their heads, the old wore 
 
 1 One very simple reflection will suffice to show that the ancient costumes pre 
 served by medals, cameos, and statues were fanciful, and never had any real 
 existence. For example, scarcely any cameo represents a Greek or Roman man 
 with his hat, or a Greek or Roman woman with a covering for the head ; and 
 besides that it is not only logical to believe that the ancients did not go out in the 
 rain with heads uncovered, it is positively established by numerous texts that the 
 women had coverings for the head, and the men hats. Moreover, why should 
 ancient sculptors have represented their models in their real costume, when 
 modern sculptors take great care to leave off the cravat, and frequently the shirt, 
 of those whom they portray. Scarcely any painter puts a hat on his portraits. 
 Must it then be inferred, a thousand years hence, that hats are not worn ? 
 
 2 Instance the saying of the soldier, who carried off the cloak of cloth of gold 
 from the statue of Jupiter at Ephesus, that it was too hot for summer, and too 
 cold for winter. 
 
 3 Plin., Hist. Natur., lib. xxxiv., cap. ix. 
 * D. Cyprian, de habit, virgin., p. 179. 
 5 Tertul. de virgin, veland., cap. xii. 
 
 6 D. Cyprian, de habit, virgin., p. 177. Another passage of St. Cyprian gives 
 other details relative to eyebrows and lashes, showing that the women some 
 times dyed them with a black powder. (D. Cyprian, de lapsis, p. 191.) 
 
 7 D. Cyprian, de habit, virgin., p. 178. 
 
 18 
 
266 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 always veils. 1 Young courtesans wore neither coif nor veil. More 
 over, the courtesans were nearly all Greeks,, and retained every 
 where something of the fashion of their country. They wore the 
 hair curled and frizzled, standing up on the head like a pyramid of 
 many stories, very like the style of the end of the eighteenth cen 
 tury, minus the powder, (a) It is also probable that % they wore 
 wigs. 2 The necks of elegant women were covered with pearls and 
 diamonds, according to their fortunes. 3 
 
 Their robes would require so many details, because of numerous 
 changes, that we must limit ourselves to a few general indications. 4 
 
 1 This clearly appears from many passages of Tertullian, and notably from that, 
 in which he says that the pagans were accustomed to veil their women from the 
 day of marriage, and when conducting them to their husbands. Tertullian 
 approves the custom by saying that the girl thus becomes a wife in spirit before 
 becoming so corporeally. (Tertul. de virgin, veland., cap. xi.) 
 
 (a) The author s account of the costume of the Greek and Roman women of 
 easy virtue is so exact a description of the fashionable style of this day, that, if 
 his book had not been published many years since, he might be suspected of 
 making a war, disguised or open, upon the present fashions. But it is curious, 
 and worthy of serious thought, to note the close analogies, political and civil, 
 social and domestic, between the present condition of things in the United States, 
 and the condition of things that marked the rapid decline and fall of the great 
 Roman Empire. Nearly all the fifty-two tyrant and spendthrift emperors between 
 Augustus and Constantine owed their power to play " such fantastic tricks " to the 
 " Grand Army " of the Roman Empire. To-day we have a " Grand Army of the 
 Republic," a great political machine, the real designs of which (to use M. 
 Guizot s language) are centred in a few minds, while the greater part of those 
 engaged in executing its work have no conception of them. General, now Sena 
 tor Logan, of Illinois, is its Grand Commander; and as Constantine owes much 
 of his fame to his having moved the seat of empire of the Old World from Rome 
 to Constantinople, and thereby accelerated the decay of Roman greatness into 
 precipitate ruin, so Grand-Commander Logan has conceived the idea of moving 
 the seat of empire of the New World from the city of Washington, to establish 
 elsewhere a great metropolis, to be called, probably, Logansport. At the same 
 time, our great and fashionable ladies have gone back to the styles and fashions 
 of dress of Greek and Roman freedwomen of easy virtue in the times of the 
 decline and fall.^ 
 
 2 The iron with which the courtesans frizzled their hair was called calamistrum. 
 Varro describes it thus : " Calamistrum, quod his calefactis in cinere capillus orna- 
 tur." The slave, who used this iron for dressing his mistress s head, was called 
 cinerarius, because he heated it in the ashes. (Varro, de ling. Lat., lib. v., cap. 129.) 
 
 3 D. Cyprian, de lapsis, p. 191. 
 
 * We take, or rather we continue to take, from the Latin fathers of the second 
 
 O\VA 
 
 \\^\ fY>xoXMLX- 21*. -jr*^ vvwj Wv UVM (xn/vwlw.. 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 26/ 
 
 At Rome, only noble women had the right to wear a long robe 
 with a train, which was called stola. 1 This robe, fastened at the 
 waist with a clasp of emeralds, was open in front, and showed a 
 petticoat of a different color. The courtesans did not wear the 
 stola. They wore short robes, descending only to the feet. When 
 they were rich, this robe was of silk or wool, with figures of gold. 2 
 When they were limited in fortune, the robe was of cotton. 3 The 
 most celebrated woollens were those of Miletus and Selga in Asia 
 Minor, of Altino and Terentum in Italy, and of Grenada in Spain.* 
 The black wools of Grenada were used without dyeing, and the 
 scarlet wools of Grenada never faded. 
 
 All the elegant women of antiquity wore stockings, or rather 
 drawers coming down close over the feet. At home they wore 
 white satin shoes, 5 or rather slippers, 6 embroidered with pearls. 7 
 Abroad they wore galoshes or pattens, with wooden soles, the up 
 per part of purple cloth, embroidered with gold. 8 It was in fact a 
 rule, in Greek costume, never to wear purple without gold. 9 They 
 also wore abroad boots of Venice 10 leather, which came so high 
 up toward the knee, as to dispense with stockings, which was very 
 elegant. 
 
 and third century, and principally from St. Cyprian and Tertullian, the details of 
 the domestic life of the freedwomen. We should remark that the passages of 
 their books, which we cite, are strictly applicable to our subject, because, in 
 censuring the different details of this elaborate dress, they strove to turn Chris 
 tian women from it, as being excessive, and only used by courtesans. This is 
 what the fathers say repeatedly ; but we limit ourselves to transcribing these 
 words of St. Cyprian : " Fugiant castse virgines et pudicae incertaruna cultus, 
 habitus impudicarum, lupanarium insignia, ornamenta meretricum." (D. Cyprian, 
 de habit, virgin., p. 177.) 
 
 1 Tertul. de pall., cap. iv. 
 
 2 D. Cyprian, de habit, virgin., p. 177. De lapsis, p. 191. 
 
 3 Tertullian speaks of trees, which the Indians spun, which clearly designates 
 cotton. "Si at) initio rerum et Milesii oves tonderent, Seres arbores nerent." 
 (Tertul. de cult, feminar., lib. i., cap. i.) 
 
 * Tertul. de pall., cap. iii. 
 
 6 Pes malus in nivea semper coletur aluta. 
 
 (Ovid, de arte amandi, lib. iii.) 
 Aut mulleolum inducit calceum. 
 
 (Tertul. de pall., cap. iv.) 
 
 6 The use of pearls for embroidering shoes came from the East. The Roman 
 ladies, who saw them for the first time on the Parthians, were astonished at such 
 magnificence, says Tertullian. (De cult, feminar., lib. i., cap. vii.) 
 
 7 Tertullian says that the Roman ladies, to be more free, threw aside the pat 
 tens. " Crepidulam ejeravere." (Tertul. de pall., cap. iv.) 
 
 8 Tertul. de idolatr., cap. viii. 9 Tertul., de pall., cap. iv. 10 Ibid., cap. v. 
 
268 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 Such very nearly and generally, with earrings set with precious 
 stones, 1 with many chains around the neck, anci many rings on the 
 ringers, was the costume of the elegant courtesans of Rome or 
 Athens. We have already seen that they never lost a chance of 
 appearing in a carriage, as this brought them nearer to the customs 
 of noble women. 2 
 
 As to the care of the person, it was extreme. The bath was for 
 all, men and women, an every-day affair. What does not suit our 
 ideas, not only the courtesans, but ladies of society, and even young 
 girls, went to the public baths, and appeared in the water before all 
 the world, which would be incredible, if we did not read it in St. 
 Cyprian. 3 It is true that the bath was part of the hygienic rules of 
 the ancients. They bathed as regularly as they ate, and the univer 
 sality of the custom removed all malicious ideas. Independently 
 of the baths of the city, they bathed in summer in the Tiber. It 
 appears that respectable people used the river as a matter of prefer 
 ence. A good swimmer was at Rome a notable man with the 
 women. Horace cites a lover of Lydia, whose passion made him 
 forget his baths in the Tiber ; 4 and he advises Asteria to turn a deaf 
 ear to the proposals of a knight, although he was the best swimmer 
 of the republic. 5 Suetonius, after recounting at great length the 
 dexterity of Caligula in many exercises, stops short to make this 
 singular reflection: " It was always a matter of surprise that this 
 prince did not know how to swim." 6 
 
 1 Tertullian reproaches Alexander for having had his ears pierced like a 
 woman. (Ibid., cap. iv.) As to chains and other jewelry the testimony is abun 
 dant. (D. Cyprian, de lapsis, p. 177.) 
 
 2 We have mentioned above that Catullus was obliged to lend his litter to the 
 mistress of Varus. Tertullian censures the noble ladies of his time for giving up 
 theirs to appear in the streets on foot. (De pall., cap. iv.) 
 
 3 D. Cyprian, de habit, virgin., p. 179. Spartian, in his Life of Adrian, says 
 that that emperor ordained that the baths of the two sexes should be separate. 
 Julius Capitolinus reports that M. Antoninus did the same. Ovid has pointed out 
 the inconvenience of mixed baths in this verse : 
 
 Celant furtivos balnea mixta jocos. 
 
 (Ovid de arte amandi, lib. iii.) 
 * Cur timet flavum Tiberim tangere ? 
 
 (Horat, Carm., lib. i., od. viii., v. 8.) 
 6 Nee quisquam citus oeque 
 Tusco denatat alveo. 
 
 (Horat., Carm., lib. iii., od. vii., v. 27, 28.) 
 
 Atque hie tam docilis ad caetera, natare nesciit. (Sueton. Tranquil., C. Csesar, 
 Caligula, cap. liv.) 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 269 
 
 During the bath, the women, who prided themselves on their 
 elegance, had themselves rubbed with perfumed soap. It appears 
 that the consumption of soap by some of them was considerable ; 
 for Demetrius Poliorcetes, having gained a pitched battle against 
 Menelas, brother of Ptolemy, during the long wars of the succes 
 sors of Alexander, imposed upon the Athenians, who had surren 
 dered at discretion, a fine of two hundred and fifty talents to buy 
 soap * for the fair Lamia, his mistress, whom he had found among 
 the baggage of the conquered. After the soap came precious oint 
 ments, with which the coquettes had their bodies rubbed to make 
 the skin soft and fragrant, 2 and their custom was during the heat of 
 the day to powder their bodies with an astringent powder, which 
 possessed the double advantage of drying the skin, and giving to 
 the flesh firmness without being hard, and elasticity without being 
 soft. 8 
 
 It is easy to believe that the living of a Greek or Roman courte 
 san of some celebrity cost very dear; and also that it was generally 
 paid for by some one person. According to the expression of one 
 of them, this was called having a friend, and being under obligation 
 to him.* Moreover, the sons of wealthy families, who were bold 
 enough to approach them, generally left in their hands the better 
 part of their fortunes. 5 Catullus, in speaking of Lesbia, with whom 
 he had a quarrel, uses an expression, the energy of which requires 
 no comment. He says that she peeled the magnanimous posterity 
 of Remus. 6 
 
 This brings us to speak of the twenty-three odes, addressed to 
 courtesans, which are found in the works of Horace. The poet, 
 
 1 Plutarch, Demetrius, cap. xxvii. 
 2 Tertul. de virgin, veland., cap. xii. 
 3 Plutarch. Sympos., lib. i., quest, vi. 
 
 * This was the reply of Theodota to Socrates in their interview. See note to 
 page 204. 
 
 5 Horace speaks in these terms of the kind of terror, with which the beauty of 
 Barina inspired the wealthy families : 
 
 Te suis matres metuunt juvencis 
 Te senes parci, miserasque nuper 
 Virgines nuptse, tua ne retardet 
 Aura maritos. 
 
 (Horat, Carm., lib. ii., od. viii., v. 21-24.) 
 6 Nunc in quadriviis et angiportis 
 Glubit magnanimos Remi nepotis. 
 
 (Catul , Carm. Iviii.) 
 
2/O HISTORY OF THE 
 
 who was not very rich, used his verses, as far as he could, as money. 
 Unfortunately, the fair freedwomen, whom he has immortalized, 
 bore a slight resemblance to Chrysala, anddidn t live on fine 
 speeches ; with one exception, however, who seems never to have 
 asked Horace for anything but verses. See also with what grati 
 tude he speaks of her ! In an ode to Lycea, he blames her for hav 
 ing grown so old, while Cinara died in the flower of youth. 1 In an 
 ode to Venus, he speaks with rapture of the reign of the good Ci 
 nara. 2 These eulogies are very touching, until we find an explana 
 tion of them in his epistle to his gardener, where he recalls with 
 satisfaction his having in former times pleased the rapacious Cinara, 
 without having had to pay for it. s 
 
 It remains for us to speak of the political part which these cour 
 tesans played in Greece and Italy. 
 
 There were two courtesans who enjoyed immense political power 
 at Athens and Rome : Aspasia, mistress of Pericles, and Praecia, 
 mistress of Cethegus. Some others, as Thargelia, Theodota, Ti- 
 mandra, Lais, and Flora, although of less elevated position, never 
 theless deserve mention, for the relations they had with the most 
 eminent men of their times. 
 
 Thargelia was an Ionian, mistress of King Xerxes, who gained 
 him many partisans among the cities of Greece. 4 Theodota, of 
 whom we have already spoken, was a beautiful woman, whom So 
 crates went to see, on the strength of her reputation, and who re 
 turned his visit. 5 The history of Timandra is connected with the 
 exile and tragic end of Alcibiades. When he was for the last time 
 banished by the Athenians, he retired to one of his castles in Phry- 
 gia. Timandra followed him. There Lysander, who feared his 
 return, had v him assassinated. Timandra, assisted by her slaves, 
 took the body, washed the stains that covered it, wrapped and 
 
 1 ... Cinarae breves 
 Annos fata dederunt, 
 Servatura diu parem 
 Cornicis vetulaa temporibus Lyceae. 
 
 (Horat., Carm., lib. iv., od. xiii., v. 22-25.) 
 8 Qualis eram bonae 
 
 Sub regno Cinarae. (Ibid., od. i., v. 2, 3.) 
 8 Quern sis immunem Cinarae placuisse rapaci. 
 
 (Horat. Epist., lib. i., epist. xiv., v. 33.) 
 4 Plutarch, Pericles, cap. xxiv. 6 Xenophon, Memorab., lib. iii., cap. xi. 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 2/1 
 
 buried it in the finest cloths she had. 1 Lais, the Corinthian, was 
 her daughter. 2 Flora was the favorite of Pompey. Geminius, a 
 noble Roman and friend of Pompey, having long followed her up, 
 she replied to him one day, to get rid of him, that she belonged 
 to Pompey, and must have his permission to listen to Geminius, 
 believing that Pompey, \vho loved her, and whom she loved, 
 would not consent. Pompey, solicited by Geminius, and relying 
 on Flora s love, gave his consent, under the belief that it would 
 amount to nothing. From levity or vexation, Flora listened to 
 Geminius. Pompey, indignant, never saw or spoke to her again ; 
 and Flora, overwhelmed with regret and despair, attempted to kill 
 herself. 3 Flora was of such majestic beauty, that Csecilius Metellus, 
 who ornamented the temple of Castor and Pollux with pictures, 
 placed her portrait there.* 
 
 Aspasia was the most celebrated courtesan of antiquity. She was 
 of Miletus. 5 * Her wit and beauty gave her so high a position at 
 Athens, that she managed all the affairs of Greece. She received 
 at her house all the philosophers and poets of her time, and her 
 visitors even took their wives to see her a strange thing to believe, 
 since we know that she kept a house of debauch. 6 Socrates went 
 often to see her, and Plato writes, in his dialogue entitled Menexe- 
 nus, that many Athenians of distinction went to learn good lan 
 guage from her. 7 Pericles excused himself for seeing her every day, 
 because she guided him in managing the affairs of Greece. The 
 general belief was that he loved her passionately. 8 The comedies 
 of that day called her the new Omphale and the new Dejanira, 3 
 and all believed that it was Aspasia who persuaded Pericles to make 
 war against the Samnians, in aid of the inhabitants of Miletus. 
 
 Praecia was at Rome in the time of Pompey, Lucullus, and Cethe- 
 gus, what Aspasia was at Athens in the time of Pericles. She took 
 care to have no relations except with eminent men, and to use her 
 influence for the benefit of those whom she distinguished with her 
 favor. 10 She was openly the mistress of Cethegus, who then man 
 aged the affairs of the republic, and all the young men of any 
 
 1 Plutarch, Alcibiades, cap. xxxix. * Ibid. 
 
 3 Plutarch, Pompey, cap. ii. 4 Ibid. 
 
 5 Plutarch, Pericles, cap. xxiv. 6 Ibid. 
 
 7 Plato, Menexen. 8 Plutarch, Pericles, cap. xxiv. 
 
 9 Ibid. 10 Plutarch, Lucullus, cap. vi. 
 
2/2 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 ambition or aspirations made assiduous court to her, as one who 
 could make or unmake them. Lucullus, who wanted the government 
 of Sicily, and the command in the war against Mithridates, succeeded 
 in winning her by his wit, and, above all, by the magnificence of his 
 presents. 1 Praecia praised him to Cethegus; Cethegus praised him to 
 the whole city, and Lucullus had the government he desired, (a) 
 
 1 Plutarch, Lucullus, ch. iv. 
 
 (a) Poeta nascitur, orator fit. Horace was a born poet, and his "rhythmic 
 money " passed as current coin even with the " rapacious Cinara." Many of our 
 Radical high officials, legislative and executive, are not born poets, nor could any 
 amount of study and preparation Jit them for oratory. But native shrewdness, or 
 the high culture of New England civilization, has (for some of them) supplied the 
 lack of poesy and oratory, and made their official position and influence pass as 
 current with the fair and frail portion of the Government machinery at Washing 
 ton, as Horace s verses did with Cinara. 
 
 The system of employing female clerks in the Government offices at Washing 
 ton, originating during the Civil War, doubtless sprang from the purest and loftiest 
 sentiments. Certain it is, that in their distress, consequent upon the loss of their 
 natural protectors, it has afforded relief to some of the best, purest, and noblest 
 women of the land women who would adorn any society, and of whom any 
 country might be proud. 
 
 The use was noble ; the abuse infamous. 
 
 But it was not long before Radical ingenuity discovered in that system a way 
 of transferring Lesbia s peeling process from themselves to that gentleman with 
 full pockets, who is known to the people of the United States as Uncle Sam." 
 
 As prominent in this business, the concurrent testimony of the scandal-mongers 
 of the metropolis, and of the young bloods, who have encountered his rivalry, 
 points to a New England legislator, whose boast is that his virility has not been 
 impaired by age or strong drink. 
 
 The following verses would not entitle their author to rank among the poets 
 with Horace. But they are not unworthy of notice in a history of the working 
 and burgher classes. For, they secured for their author a lucrative and import 
 ant office, involving the responsibility of the expenditure of a very large amount 
 of the taxes paid into the treasury of " Uncle Sam " by the working and burgher 
 classes. Moreover, they illustrate a phase of governmental administration under 
 the Radical regime, as worthy of the notice of history as Proecia s influence in 
 securing for Lucullus the government of Sicily and the command of the war 
 against Mithridates. 
 
 It happened thus : 
 
 At a period of the late Civil War, when business was paralyzed, the writer found 
 himself in debt, with mortgages hanging over his property, and likely soon to be 
 foreclosed, unless, by some lucky chance, he could raise the money to meet his 
 maturing obligations. He went to Washington, called on President Lincoln, 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 2/3 
 
 and told him of his difficulties. In a moment of care and irritation, Mr. Lincoln 
 gruffly said, " Do you expect me to take cognizance of every man s mortgages in 
 the United States ? " Soon, however, recovering his customary good-humor, he 
 told his visitor to go and consult his member of Congress, decide upon what he 
 wanted, and then he, Mr. Lincoln, would do what he could to aid him. 
 
 He called upon his member of Congress, who said : " What female influence 
 can you bring to bear ? " He replied : " What has that to do with this matter ? " 
 The answer was, " Everything. Now-a-days, offices, contracts, honors, all are 
 controlled and disposed of by and through the women." 
 
 Despairing of success through any of the Praecias of the period, the poet went 
 sadly back to his home in New England. There his good genius inspired the 
 following verses, copies of which he sent back to Washington. By return mail 
 Jie was notified that, if he would not publish them, he could have anything he 
 wanted. He got what he wanted, and was enabled to pay off his mortgages. 
 
 " My friend, if you will just take a look 
 Between the leaves of the great and good Book, 
 You will find that a woman, Delilah by name, 
 Played oft" on old Samson a terrible game. 
 She bothered and teased, and then she did cry, 
 Tell rne now truly where your strength doth lie. 
 At length the old fool, I vow and declare, 
 Told his Delilah that it lay in his hair. 
 Old Samson then, his Delilah to please, 
 Laid his head down upon her two knees. 
 He there fell asleep, among petties and frocks, 
 And in that condition she cut oft" his locks. 
 The old man awakes, and finds out at length 
 That by a pretty woman he was shorn of his strength. 
 The next thing in order took him by surprise ; 
 For she called in the Philistines, who put out his eyes. 
 So honest old Abe took the President s chair, 
 With two good eyes, and a nice head of hair. 
 His Delilah played with him poor pussy and cat, 
 Till he was bald as an eagle, and blind as a bat. 
 To Congress, too, we have sent of the best, 
 From the North and the East, the South and the West : 
 They ve played with their Delilahs the ass and the goose, 1 
 Till the hair on their heads is getting quite loose. 
 The cabinet officers, too, take a nap, 
 Each one with his head in his Delilah s lap j 
 With eyes upturned to her beauty so fair, 
 While she keeps a-clipping away at his hair." 
 
 The above is but a fragment of the mortgage-lifting verses ; my informant who 
 
2/4 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 furnished me with them, himself a Radical and. an office-holder, not being able to 
 remember the other lines, or to obtain a copy. He also gave me some details of 
 the private and official profligacy prevailing at Washington during the war; and 
 especially in the Interior Department under Secretaries Harlan and Usher. If 
 only a small part of what he narrated was true, the picture is appalling to the 
 working and burgher classes, who pay the taxes, which now go to the support of 
 the men (and their MISTRESSES) who seek to unify the United States of 
 America into one nation, as the Roman Empire was unified under Caligula, 
 Claudius, and Nero. (See Senator Wilson s article on unification, and Father 
 Hecker s reply in the Catholic World for April, 1871.) 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 THE BANDITS. 
 
 THE pirates and bandits of antiquity were runaway slaves, in 
 open war with their masters. It is well, before sketching 
 their history, to correct some false ideas, which our morals might 
 suggest as to the cause of these escapes. 
 
 It would be a great mistake to believe that the ancients had the 
 notion of the equality of men, and that this notion was constantly 
 impelling the slaves toward liberty. With the exception of the 
 Essenes, who were a schismatic sect among the Jews, and whose 
 basis of association was the dogma of equality, all antiquity re 
 mained completely strangers to the notion of human equality until 
 the coming of Christianity ; and when Jesus Christ announced it as 
 a part of his doctrine, he uttered a sentiment, for his times, rash 
 and factious ; in opposition to all the adopted moral creeds, and 
 which was calculated to offend, and did offend the pagans. 
 
 The two philosophers and the poet, who most powerfully in 
 fluenced the ancient world, Homer, Plato, and Aristotle, were 
 unanimous in considering men as naturally divided into two classes: 
 .those who were born to command, and those who were born to 
 obey the masters and the slaves. Homer says, in so many words, 
 that God gave slaves only half a soul. 1 In his treatise on law, 
 Plato cites and relies on this testimony of Homer. In the dialogue 
 entitled Alcibiades, he makes Socrates ask this question : " Is it in 
 
 1 See page 125. 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 2/5 
 
 the nobility, or in the common people, that we find the better na 
 ture? " to which he makes Alcibiades reply : " Beyond question, in 
 the nobility." * Aristotle, for his part, presents the question of the 
 inequality of the races with remarkable clearness and candor. 
 " Among all created beings," he says, in his treatise on politics, 
 "some are born to obey, and others to command." 2 Farther on 
 he says, "Nature itself has marked with different characters the 
 gentlemen and the slaves. 3 
 
 Pagan antiquity had no other ideas on this subject. Cato the 
 elder, whose slaves always boasted that he was a good master, sold 
 them when they were old and broken down, which caused Plutarch 
 to say, that he would never have the hard-heartedness to abandon 
 an ox or a slave, who had labored and worked for him, to the end 
 of their days. 4 It should be noted that Plutarch said this in an ex 
 citement of benevolence and indignation. 
 
 On their part, the slaves of antiquity never dreamed, in their 
 revolts, of invoking any idea of human equality. They found slave 
 ry very just and reasonable in itself; they only tried sometimes to 
 see whether they could not impose it on others, () in place of being 
 subject to it themselves. The facts presently cited prove this com- 
 
 1 Plato, Alcibiades, i. 2 Aristot. politica, lib. i., cap. ii., g 8. 
 
 3 Ibid., g 14. * Plutarch, Cato Major, cap. v. 
 
 (a] Mr. Calhoun, in the speech from which we have quoted in our Preface, 
 said prophetically : " We would soon find the present condition of the two races 
 reversed. They (the negroes) and their Northern allies, would be the masters, 
 and we the slaves." 
 
 lias not this prophecy been literally fulfilled? If deprivation of civil rights 
 be slavery, then have the loyal, as well as the disloyal, whites of the South been 
 enslaved. They, the loyal whites, who furnished, or had taken from them, 
 quartermaster s and other supplies for the United States army, were denied, by 
 the acts of Congress of the 4th July, 1864, and 2ist February, 1867, their civil 
 rights of property rights guaranteed to them by that clause of the Constitution, 
 which provides that private property shall not be taken for public use without 
 just compensation. In the use made of the freedmen, to enslave and pauperize 
 the whites, the spirit and purpose of radicalism were even more strikingly mani 
 fested, than in emancipating the slaves, to make " free labor more profitable than 
 slave labor." In fact, this thing called radicalism is an unholy alliance of im 
 perialism and brigandage, masquerading under the disguise and assumed name 
 of Republicanism. Its politico- economical theory is that "free labor is cheaper 
 and more profitable than slave labor." But, as practically illustrated in Georgia 
 
276 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 pletely. We mention but one now, but it will suffice to prepare 
 for an understanding of the others. 
 
 Twelve hundred Roman citizens, that is to say, twelve hundred 
 men, more or less rich and educated, of fortune and family, were made 
 prisoners in the second Punic war, carried to Greece by the mer 
 chants, sold as slaves in the Peloponnesus, and used by their masters 
 in the work of the fields. If ever slaves ought to have had the sen 
 timent of human equality, certainly these should, who were not 
 born in slavery, and who, in regaining their liberty, would only 
 have been regaining what had been violently taken from them. 
 But see what they did. 
 
 They had long been slaves when the league of Achaian cities 
 asked succor from the Romans against the usurpations of Philip, 
 King of Macedon. T. Quintius Flaminius led some legions to their 
 aid. Arrived in Greece, he vanquished the Macedonians. He 
 was master of the country, when his troops one day encountered 
 the twelve hundred Roman citizens, who were digging the earth. 
 The soldiers and the slaves threw themselves into each other s arms, 
 as compatriots, neighbors, friends, kinsmen, brothers. But the idea 
 never occurred to one of them, either soldier or slave, that the 
 slavery of twelve hundred Roman citizens was a monstrous thing. 
 When they had embraced, they separated, the soldiers resuming 
 their pikes and the slaves their hoes ; and, as this meeting made a 
 great noise in Greece, the grateful Achaian cities raised a common 
 fund, purchased the twelve hundred slaves, and made a present of 
 them to the general of the Roman army. He, to whom they be 
 longed from that moment, and who might have employed them on 
 his own estates, was pleased on his return to emancipate them ; 
 which, however, did not restore them to their primitive condition of 
 Roman citizens, but placed them in the class of freedmen, and im 
 posed on them the obligations and duties of clients. 1 
 
 Thus, as we have said, never in pagan antiquity did our modern 
 ideas of equality and the rights of man germinate in the mind of 
 
 under Governor Bullock, in South Carolina by Governor Scott, and in North 
 Carolina by Governor Holden, that theory would be more correctly rendered 
 thus : " It is more profitable to plunder the State Treasury and the tax-payers, 
 like bandits, than to have slaves to feed and clothe, as masters." 
 1 Plutarch, Flaminius, cap. xiii. 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 277 
 
 master or slave. The three most eminent men among the poets 
 and philosophers, Homer, Plato, and Aristotle, believed ingenu 
 ously, profoundly, in the duality of human nature. No one in all 
 the West, not even among the slaves, maintained or proposed a con 
 trary doctrine ; and it is, under the impression of this general ob 
 livion of human dignity, that we must study the revolts of slaves 
 among the ancients, and their organization into bands of pirates 
 and bands of thieves. 
 
 If we confine ourselves to Roman history, we find ten revolts of 
 slaves more or less serious. Titus Livius mentions six, without giv 
 ing their details. 1 The sixth was that of Eunus the Syrian, re 
 ported at length by Diodorus of Sicily. The seventh was that of 
 Athenion, which Florus also relates fully. The eighth, which was 
 the most celebrated and formidable, was that of Spartacus. Plu 
 tarch, Florus, and Appian have related all the circumstances. The 
 ninth, of small importance, broke out in Sicily, during the civil wars 
 of Pompey and Caesar. Appian, who mentions it, adds that it gave 
 rise to the formation of a body of military, or guards, who after 
 ward served to watch over the safety of Rome. 2 The tenth, which 
 broke out in Italy under Tiberius, is related by Tacitus. 3 
 
 There were principally three causes that impelled slaves to revolt : 
 tampering with them by the chiefs of parties in the civil wars, ex 
 cessive harshness of the masters, and the failure to execute the regu 
 lations relative to labor. 
 
 In the turbulent government of ancient Rome, there was always 
 some conspiracy hatching or miscarrying, and poor Rome had 
 always need for the spy and the executioner. The first ideaof con 
 spirators, we may well believe, was to incite an insurrection of the 
 slaves, (a) The continual wars had thinned out the free popula 
 tion, and given the slave population a formidable preponderance. 
 Seneca relates that in a discussion in the senate on the sumptuary 
 
 1 The first in lib. Hi., cap. xv. ; the second in lib. iv., cap. Ixv. ; the third in 
 lib. xxxii., cap. xxvi. ; the fourth in lib. xxxiii., cap. xxii. ; the fifth in lib. xxxix., 
 cap. xxix. ; the sixth in the summary of lib. Ivii. 
 
 2 Appian. de bell, civil., lib. v., cap. cxxxii. 
 
 3 Tacit. Annal.. lib. iv., cap. xxvii. 
 
 (a) So, after all, it appears that JOHN BROWN S SOUL was not born, nor cradled 
 on Plymouth Rock, but has been " marching on," like the Wandering Jew, ever 
 since the days of Marius and Catiline. 
 
278 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 laws, it having been proposed to require all the slaves to wear an 
 uniform dress, the reply was that they must guard against giving to 
 the slaves a means of counting their masters. 1 While the quaestor, 
 Curtius Lupus, was putting down the tenth revolt of the slaves, 
 which broke out in Italy in the 24th year of the Christian era, 
 Rome trembled, says Tacitus, at the idea of the frightful multitude 
 of slaves, and the small number of freemen that she contained. 2 
 
 Party chiefs endeavored, as we have said, to attract the slaves to 
 their ranks by offering them freedom. But we must add, in com 
 pliment to the good sense of the slaves, that they did not always 
 listen to such propositions. During the civil wars, Harms having, 
 by sound of trumpet, promised liberty to all the slaves, who would 
 enroll under his banner, only three presented themselves. 3 (rt) 
 
 1 Seneca, de dementia, lib. i., cap. xxiv. 
 
 2 Tacit. Annal., lib. iv., cap. xxvii. 3 Plutarch, C. Marius. 
 
 (a) The good conduct and fidelity of the Southern slaves, through the four 
 long years of the Civil War, won for them, deservedly, the gratitude and good 
 will of the Southern whites, and astonished the Northern humanitarians. In 
 thousands of cases, when their masters were in the army, they were left alone, 
 without a white man on the place, with none but women and children to direct 
 or control them. Nobly yes, nobly is the proper word did they respond 
 to the confidence reposed in them by their masters. Their conduct was uniformly 
 good ; even better than when their masters were at home. They seemed to feel 
 that the confidence reposed in them had put them " on good behavior," and we 
 have never yet heard of the first instance in which that confidence was abused. 
 Even. since the war, outrages on their part have been the exception, not the rule ; 
 and the exceptional cases are directly traceable to the pernicious influence of the 
 Freedmen s Bureau, the carpet-baggers, and the scalawags, who, for political 
 purposes, have sought to excite a " race hatred " between them and the (so- 
 called) rebels, by urging them to arson and other crimes. We do not class as 
 outrages petty pilfering and stealing; for these are natural and unavoidable con 
 sequences of throwing a large mass of slaves, without prevision or preparation, 
 on their own resources for a support. On a question so important on which 
 such strenuous efforts have been made, and so much public money spent, to 
 create false impressions at the North, for party purposes it is fortunate that we 
 can add the unimpeachable testimony of the Rev. J. B. Smith, before the Senate 
 Committee on Southern Outrages. (See Senate Document, 42d Cong., 1st Sess., 
 Report No. I, pages 214-224.) 
 
 Mr. Smith was the Secretary of the Board of Missions of the Protestant Episco 
 pal Church, for that department of work among the colored people. He was 
 requested to go from New Jersey, where he had resided up to 1867, to the South, 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 2/9 
 
 Appian lets us know that Catiline was contriving a slave revolt, 
 when he attempted his celebrated conspiracy. 1 The first and third 
 of the six revolts mentioned by Livy, were also incited by conspira- 
 
 to establish a normal school for the purpose of educating colored people, to make 
 them competent to teach their own race. On consultation with General How 
 ard, the latter requested him to go to North Carolina. He went there in Decem 
 ber, 1867, and established at Raleigh a normal school for the education of colored 
 teachers. His testimony will surely be taken at the North. He said : 
 
 " With regard to the people of North Carolina and I have had a great deal 
 of intimate, close conversation with gentlemen from various parts of the State 
 I regard them as an extremely kind people I mean kind toward the colored peo 
 ple ; they have a kindly feeling for them ; I have evidence of it on all sides in 
 expressions and in acts. I find that the relationship, which formerly existed be 
 tween master and slave, has left a feeling of kindness on the part of the master 
 toward the slave. I find masters continually recognizing the old relationship, 
 and aiding and assisting their former slaves. I know of no feeling, upon the 
 part of any one in North Carolina, that I have ever talked with and met, of 
 antagonism toward the colored people. 
 
 " Question. Have you, since you have been in North Carolina, found any 
 prejudice against you, or unkindness on account of your occupation ? 
 
 " Answer. I have not found any unkindness toward me among the people 
 of North Carolina ; no one has treated me unkindly. 
 
 " Question. Have you, on the contrary, met with personal kindness from the 
 people there ? 
 
 " Answer. Yes, sir ; the very best people of the State, all through the com 
 munity, have treated me with the utmost kindness ; visited my family and myself. 
 
 " Question. In your opinion, is it perfectly safe for any man, white or black, to 
 keep a colored school anywhere in that State, if he confines himself to the legiti 
 mate duties of his profession ? 
 
 " Answer. That is my opinion. 
 
 " Question. With perfect safety ? 
 
 " Answer. I think so. 
 
 " Question. Would you hesitate to establish a colored school in any portion of 
 the State, under the care of a judicious and sensible man ? 
 
 " Answer. Not at all. 
 
 " Question. Would you think his life and personal property safe ? 
 
 " Answer. Perfectly. 
 
 " Question. You said you voted for General Grant in the last election ? 
 
 " Answer. Yes, sir. 
 
 " Question. Have you had any conversation with Governor Holden, relative to 
 the late election ? 
 
 " Answer. I have had several conversations with him. 
 
 1 Appian. de bell, civil., lib. ii., cap. ii. 
 
280 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 tors ; l and the tenth, reported by Tacitus, was instigated by Titus 
 Curtisius, an old soldier of the praetorian cohorts. 2 
 
 " Question. How did he express himself in regard to the politics of those who 
 were opposing his election ? 
 
 " Answer. I had a conversation with him, I think, last April. Colonel Hay- 
 man was in charge of the camp. He was an Episcopalian, and I had called on 
 him to pay my respects. I found Mr. Barringer, Mr. Kingsland, Colonel Hay- 
 man, and Governor Holden together. Mr. Kingsland was connected with the 
 North Carolina Land Company. He was talking to Governor Holden about the 
 great injury done to the State by his proclamation that it kept persons from 
 coming into the State to buy land. The proclamation was in regard to certain 
 outrages. I do not know whether at that time he had declared the County of 
 Alamance in insurrection. Mr. Kingsland was talking upon that subject when 
 I went in. Governor Holden was very much, excited about the recall of the United 
 States troops, and had received no assurance then that there would be any troops to 
 supply their place* Well, I spoke to Governor Holden, and said, Governor, what 
 distresses me is, that you should put these colored men up for Congress, for re 
 sponsible offices. I notice in my work among these people that there is a great 
 moral injury done to them throughout the State ; the effect is very bad ; it un 
 settles them ; they do not seem to be disposed to go to any regular labor, because 
 they are looking to political preferment. He then expressed himself in regard 
 to the colored people, and said that Congress had seen fit to pass a law, by which 
 they were admitted to seats in the State Legislature, and he wanted them to have 
 some of the same themselves, and, therefore, he went for sending them to Con 
 gress. Then he said to me, or rather to us all, Now, if the Government does 
 not send these troops, I shall arm the colored people. I can control by my word 
 80,000 men. I can go to the convention that is to meet here next week, (a Re 
 publican convention,) and control them by a word. I remarked at the same 
 time, * That is dangerous power very dangerous power to be in the hands of 
 one man. He then said to me, in the presence of these gentlemen, What is to 
 hinder the Ku-Klux from taking you, Dr. Smith ? Are you not afraid ? Not 
 at all, said I. Said he, There is nothing to hinder them from taking you or 
 any other Radical. Said I, Excuse me, but that is not my name. I am not 
 a Radical. Well, then he went on to say that, for his own part, in his opinion, 
 General Grant would hold the government of the United States, no matter what 
 the election was in 1872 ; that he desired him to be emperor, and his son to succeed 
 him as emperor. 
 
 " Question. That is, that he, Governor Holden, wished it ? 
 
 " Answer. That he, Governor Holden, wished it. 
 
 ..." There is one thing I would like to state. I asked a leading member of 
 the House of Representatives of North Carolina, knowing him to be a man of prin- 
 
 1 Hist., lib. iii., cap. xv. Ibid., lib. xxxii., cap. xxvi. 
 
 2 Tacitus, Annales, lib. xiv., cap. xxvi. 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 28l 
 
 The severity of the masters was also a powerful cause of irrita 
 tion and revolt ; for, until the time of the Emperor Adrian, there 
 
 ciple, How could you vote for the Shoffner bill to empower the Governor of 
 the State to declare, at will, a county to be in insurrection, if none existed ? 
 the word insurrection being a well-defined term. He said, Oh, we passed such 
 a law, but it will never be executed. Said I, Then, why did you pass it? 
 Now, doctor, said he, it is necessary to hold the State as Republican for three 
 or four years longer, and the passage of that bill was necessary to enable us to 
 hold it: 
 
 " Question. Give his name. 
 
 " Answer. Augustus S. Seymour, of Cleveland County. 
 
 "Question. Where did he say that? 
 
 " Answer. In the legislature that passed the Shoffner act of last year." 
 
 Are our Northern readers surprised that we in the South, who have always 
 claimed to be republicans, should not like that kind of republicanism, which 
 requires United States troops, or such legislation as the Shoffner bill of North 
 Carolina, with such militia as that of Kirk and Bergen, to hold the State as Re 
 publican ? That they may realize what they are preparing for themselves by 
 supporting the men who in Congress support such men as Holden of North Caro 
 lina, Scott of South Carolina, and Bullock of Georgia, and voted for the Shella- 
 barger Ku-Klux Bill, we urge them to ponder well this testimony of a Northern 
 man, whose integrity is unquestionable, and whose opportunities of knowing the 
 truth are so abundant. He was asked : 
 
 " Does this (his connection with the normal school for the education of colored 
 teachers) lead you to the examination generally of the condition of the black 
 people of the State ? 
 
 " Answer. Certainly ; I am interested, and constantly inquiring and convers 
 ing with the colored people ; and I may say that I organized, on going there, a 
 land and building association, for the colored people, which brought me into 
 intimate contact with them. I am the treasurer of it. The object is to secure 
 to them homesteads. 
 
 " Question. Has the question of the treatment of the colored race and the out 
 rages of the Ku-Klux assumed in any form a political aspect in that State ? 
 
 " Answer. I have stated that numbers of the Union League assumed the badge 
 of the Ku-Klux, and whipped colored people their own race ; so that I do not 
 believe, from the information I have received, the organization (Ku-Klux) has 
 any political character whatever." 
 
 Dr. Smith s testimony is fully confirmed by that of Daniel R. Goodloe, which 
 will be found in the same document, pp. 224-236. Mr. Goodloe is well known 
 at the North by his long connection (as a contributor and assistant editor, from 
 1847 to 1860) with the National Era, the Washington organ of the Abolitionists. 
 He was one of the corresponding committee of the Republican Association of 
 Washington City, to whom Mr. Frank P. Blair, in 1855, addressed his declara- 
 19 
 
2$2 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 was no law that intervened, in any case, for the protection of the 
 slaves. Under Adrian they were withdrawn, from the domestic tri 
 bunal and transferred to the tribunal of the magistrates. 1 Now, a 
 great number of facts testify that, during this long period of their 
 history, while they remained subject to the discretion of their mas 
 ters, the latter were often ungrateful, harsh, and even odiously bar- 
 barous. We do not wish to speak in detail of the mutilations, to 
 which they subjected some of their slaves, to fit them for the pur 
 poses of the gynaeceum, or preserve their freshness of color, and 
 firmness of voice for the theatre. Generally, the slaves, who were 
 subjected to this kind of mutilation, became of great value, and 
 were the best treated ; although Appian says that, for this, they had 
 a mortal hatred of their masters. 2 But what irritated, exasperated, 
 and sometimes, with good reason, provoked the slaves to rebellion, 
 was the excessive and useless bad treatment, which they suffered 
 
 tion of adhesion to the Republican party, in which he denounced the Democratic 
 party as a " combination" to extend slavery from ocean to ocean. Being asked 
 as to the state of things existing in North Carolina, affecting the security of per 
 son and property, Mr. Goodloe answered : 
 
 " In that portion of the State, of which I can speak from personal knowledge, 
 it is as good as it is anywhere in the world ; there is no more steady-going and 
 quiet people that I know of anywhere in the world. There is just as much secu 
 rity for life there as there is in Massachusetts ; more than there has been in this 
 city about election times, to my certain knowledge. ... I have never been afraid 
 to go anywhere in North Carolina ; while I was marshal, I went all over the 
 State, without any other weapon than a pocket-knife." . . . 
 
 " I have heard it stated from authorized sources, and it has been sworn to, that 
 there has been no instance of violent resistance to civil process." 
 
 See also pages 232 and 233, where Mr. Goodloe proves that the State of North 
 Carolina has been brought to the brink of hopeless insolvency by Governor Hoi- 
 den and " a set of swindlers, native and foreign, who ought to be in the peniten 
 tiary for the balance of their natural lives; " and that they had fraudulently squan 
 dered and dishonestly spent the State revenues and credit, until " State insolvency 
 was looked upon as an already accomplished fact." 
 
 1 Ulpian, in the eighth book of his treatise De officio proconsuh s, under the title 
 " De Donnnorum Savitia" cites the rescript of Antoninus the Pious, which com 
 mences thus : " Dominorum quidem potestatem in servos suos inlibitam esse 
 oportet, nee cuiquam hominum jus suum detrahi." (Mosayc. et Romanar., leg. 
 collat., tit. iii.) Pithou also mentions the law of Adrian, as given by Spartian, 
 in his notes, thus: " Spartianus in ejus vita (Hadriani) servos, inquit, a dominis 
 occidi vetuit, eosque jussit damnari per judices, si digni essent." 
 
 2 Appian. de bell, civil., lib. iii., cap. xcviii. 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 283 
 
 from avaricious, capricious, and^ferocious masters. When old age, 
 or disease, began to make them useless, there were masters, who for 
 got the former services of these poor helpless slaves, and let them 
 die of hunger and misery. This is what made Plutarch so indig 
 nant, and made him say that his ox and his slave merited the same 
 kind treatment. Sometimes, though rarely, masters treated their 
 slaves with horrible ferocity. We know the history of that Vedius 
 Pollion, of whom Seneca speaks, who fed the fishes in his ponds 
 with the flesh of his slaves. 1 
 
 The third cause of slave discontent and revolt was the inexe- 
 cution of the regulations concerning them. Although the interven 
 tion of the magistrate in the relations of master and slaves was not 
 complete until the time of Adrian, there were, nevertheless, even 
 under the republic, general regulations as to slaves some estab 
 lished by custom, others decreed J?y the senate. Diodorus testifies, 
 in the most positive manner, that the revolt, of which the shepherd 
 Athenion was the chief, broke out on account of the impossibility 
 of a faithful execution by the praetor of Sicily of the established 
 regulations as to slaves. 2 Plutarch clearly shows that the revolt of 
 Spartacus had no other cause. 
 
 The three revolts, which were truly serious and terrible, broke 
 out very nearly in the last sixty years of the republic. The two 
 first took place in Sicily, the last at the gates of Rome. Etinus, the 
 Syrian, and Athenion were the leaders of the former, Spartacus of 
 the latter. 
 
 Eunus the Syrian, as his name indicates, was a slave originally 
 from Syria. Generally, the slaves brought from that country were 
 active, elegant, and industrious, and were employed in the houses 
 of the great in the service of the table, which was the most difficult 
 and nice. Syria also furnished excellent mimics, dancers, and ma 
 gicians. Eunus presented himself at the prisons, where the slaves 
 worked in chains, as a prophet, who was in communication with 
 the gods. He called, to witness the sanctity of his mission, the 
 tower-crowned headdress of the Syrian Venus ; and concealing in 
 his mouth a nutshell filled with lighted sulphur, he threw out, with 
 his words of ecstasy, light flames, which astonished his hearers. 3 
 
 1 Seneca, de clement., lib. i., cap. xcviii. 
 2 Diod. Sicul., fragm., lib. xxxiv. 2. 
 3 Flor. Hist., lib. hi., cap xix. 
 
284 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 This prodigy immediately drew to him two thousand partisans. 
 These broke the doors of the prisons, and "Eunus soon counted an 
 army of more than sixty thousand men. 1 The war was fierce and 
 long. The slaves took the camps of four praetors. At last they 
 shut themselves up in the city of Enna, there defended them 
 selves with courage, and nearly all died of famine, pestilence, 
 and the sword. 2 
 
 Sicily had scarcely recovered from this frightful shock, which 
 deprived her of more than sixty thousand workmen, when the 
 second revolt broke out. It was caused, as we have said, by the 
 inexecution of the regulations. A slave shepherd, originally from 
 Cilicia, and named Athenion, assassinated his master, roused the 
 slaves to revolt, and in a short time gathered together an army as 
 numerous as that of Eunus the Syrian. 3 Athenion also stormed two 
 praetorian camps; but his slaves, like those of Eunus, perished by 
 famine. 4 
 
 A very characteristic trait, common to Eunus and Athenion, was, 
 that in revolting, neither had any idea of abolishing slavery or of 
 establishing equality. Scarce had they drawn armies around them, 
 before they hastened to forget that they had had the chain around 
 their necks, and to enjoy with delight the prerogatives of lordship. 
 First, as may easily be believed, castles, villages, and cities were 
 pillaged. 5 Then the two chiefs, with puerile delight, decked them 
 selves out with the insignia of royalty. Athenion, the shepherd, 
 especially always appeared clothed in a rich robe of purple, with a 
 cane of silver in his hand, and a diadem on his brow. 6 ^ 
 
 The revolt of Spartacus was still more terrible, and Florus speaks 
 of it with dolorous humility. For, this time, it was not a mere 
 revolt of slaves. It was a revolt of gladiators. 7 
 
 One Lentulus Batiatus, of Capua, was by profession a raiser of 
 slaves, whom he trained to fencing and made gladiators. 8 He had 
 nearly a hundred pairs of them, whom he kept confined, and des 
 tined to fight each other to the death, although they had committed 
 no offence. These slaves, nearly all Gauls, Germans, or Francs, 
 resolved to escape and flee. They elected three leaders, Spartacus, 
 Crixus, and (Enomaus. 9 Their project having been discovered, only 
 
 i Flor. Hist., lib. iii., cap. xix. Ibid. 3 Ibid. * Ibid. 
 
 5 Ibid. Ibid. 1 1bid. 8 Plutarch, M . Crassus, cap. viii. 
 
 9 Ann. Flor., lib. iii., cap. xx. \ I. The writers differ greatly as to the number 
 
 -t 
 
 *JU(JUL..-U 
 
 I . I M 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 285 
 
 half of them succeeded in getting out, armed with knives, cleavers, 
 and spits, which they took from the kitchens. 1 Scarce out of 
 Capua, they met some carts belonging to their masters, carrying to 
 the neighboring cities arms destined for a combat of gladiators, 
 which they seized. Some troops of the garrison of Capua, having 
 been sent to bring them back, were beaten and disarmed, and the 
 fugitives profited by this victory to lay aside their gladiatorial 
 weapons, which they considered as infamous, and take those of Ro 
 man soldiers, which were the arms of free men. 2 Thus, neither the 
 gladiators of Capua nor the slaves of Sicily had any idea, in revolt 
 ing, of proclaiming the equality of men. Both were ashamed of 
 the condition, from which they were trying to escape, instead of 
 boasting of it like i\\Q Jacques of the middle ages, or the Gueux of 
 the Netherlands. 
 
 Plutarch, Florus, and Appian relate in detail the war of the 
 gladiators. It lasted three years. From the first, Spartacus was 
 recognized as the principal chief, 3 and for him it was a succession 
 of victories. He successively defeated five praetorian or consular 
 armies. At last the senate charged Crassus with the conduct of the 
 war, and recalled, to aid him, Lucullus from Thrace, and Pompey 
 from Spain. At one time it was thought that Spartacus was about 
 to march against Rome,* and the terrified republic recalled the time 
 of Hannibal. 
 
 Spartacus, who was a man with a heart above his condition, had 
 but one idea. He wished to cross the Alps, reach Gaul, and, once 
 there, let every man take the road to his own country. 5 The 
 strategy of the consuls and the mutiny of his companions prevented 
 the realization of his project. He therefore turned about for three 
 years in Lower Italy, like a red deer in a cage, passing and repassing 
 the Apennines, trying to reach Sicily, and even throwing two thou 
 sand men to aid some pirates, who deceived him ; 6 then burning 
 
 of gladiators, who accompanied Spartacus. Florus is the one who puts it at the 
 lowest figure. We have taken a mean number. See Cicero ad Attic., vi. 2 ; 
 Epit, lib. xlv. ; Vellei. Paterc., lib. ii. 30, 6 ; Eutrop. vi. 2 ; Oros., v. 25 ; Frontin. 
 I, 5, 21, Ixxiv. Pacatus (Paneg., Theod., cap. xxiii.) says that he had a battal 
 ion, agmen. 
 
 1 Plutarch, M. Crassus, cap. viii. 2 Ibid., cap. ix. 
 
 3 Ibid., cap. viii. Appian. de bell, civ., lib. i., cap. cxvii. 
 
 4 Appian. de bell, civ., lib. i., cap. cxvii. 
 
 6 Plutarch, M. Crassus, cap. ix. 6 Ibid., cap. x. 
 
286 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 and pillaging the country, emptying the wine-cellars of the friends 
 of Epicurus, to the great disgust of the gourmands, 1 and sacking 
 Nola, Nuceria, Thurium, and Metapontus. 2 
 
 At last two of his lieutenants, Caius Cannicius and Castus, weak 
 ened his army, by separating from him. 3 In his last battle, as 
 they brought to him his horse caparisoned, he killed him with 
 a blow of his sword, and chose to fight on foot. 4 He fought 
 with the skill of a gladiator and the courage of a hero. Wounded 
 in the thigh in searching for Crassus, he fell, and received so many 
 sword-cuts before dying that his body could not be recognized. 5 
 He had with him his wife, the daughter of a Thracian herds 
 man, somewhat versed in magic, who had loved him "in the 
 bush," and who, having one day found him asleep with a snake 
 coiled around his face, predicted that he would become a terrible 
 and fortunate king. 6 Florus thus sums up his history. He was, he 
 says, first a Thracian hireling, then a soldier, then a deserter, then 
 a brigand, then a gladiator. 7 This war ended, there remained, 
 of all the companions of Spartacus, six thousand prisoners. Six 
 thousand crosses were erected on the two sides of the road leading 
 from Capua to Rome, and there they were all crucified on the same 
 day. 8 \ 
 
 The characteristic of all these revolts, however well they may 
 have appeared to be put down, was always, as may easily be 
 believed, to leave a great residuum of bandits and robbers, who 
 established themselves near the Roman highways, and from the 
 thickly wooded swamps or mountain gorges rushed out to carry 
 off sheep and cattle, or put travellers to ransom. The disorders of 
 the civil war, which preceded or followed the death of Caesar, had 
 produced such numbers of them, that Augustus was obliged to dis 
 tribute troops through all Italy, to prevent their taking the field 
 with armed bands, and carrying off slaves and free persons. 9 Under 
 Tiberius, brigandage had grown so bold, that this emperor aug- 
 
 1 Et cadum Marsi memorem duelli 
 Spartacum si qua potuit vagantem 
 
 Fallere testa. (Hor. Carm., lib. iii., od. xiv.) 
 
 2 Flor., lib. iii., cap. xx. 3 Plutarch, M. Crassus, cap. xi. 
 
 * Ibid., cap. xi. 5 Appian. de bell, civ., lib. i., cap. cxx. 
 
 6 Plutarch, M. Crassus, cap. viii. 7 Florus, lib. iii., cap. xx. 
 
 8 Appian. de bell, civ., lib. i., cap. cxx. 
 
 9 Sueton. Tranquil., cap. xxxii. 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 28/ 
 
 mented the troops (corps de garde} and detailed the praetorian 
 cohorts to guard the city. 1 
 
 It should be understood that the system of the ancient was dif 
 ferent from that of modern robbers. The ancient robbers hardly 
 ever killed. They ransomed, and when the person captured had 
 not the money, they sold him, as a slave, which was another mode 
 of ransom. These robbers even acted on certain rules, on which 
 one could depend. If taken by them, the prisoner had only to 
 send to a relative or friend, and he was conducted immediately 
 to the place designated and set at liberty, if the relative or friend 
 acted with caution. Appian mentions Decimus Brutus, who killed 
 Caesar, and who was taken in Gaul, as he fled after the death of the 
 dictator, and carried, at his request, to the Gallic lord, on whose 
 territory he had been captured. 2 
 
 Sometimes these brigands formed small armies, which they placed 
 in the service of a general. During the wars of Fabius Maximus 
 ^Emilianus in Portugal, there were two companies of briga.nds, of 
 ten thousand men, who gave much trouble to the Roman army. 3 
 The same thing has occurred often in modern history. During the 
 wars which followed the death of Charles VI., in 1418, "there 
 reigned (says Monstrelet) on the marches of Poutoise, Isle- Adam, 
 and Gisors, a brigand chief, named Tabary." * This Tabary, who 
 was small and lame, but brave, espoused the cause of the Burgun- 
 dians, which did not prevent his cutting the throats of the Duke of 
 Bedford s English. He had the honor of being killed in 1420, in 
 an assault, at the head of his band, and in company with the Mare- 
 chal Villiers de 1 Isle- Adam, Antoine de Cro i, Robert de Saveuse, 
 the Seigneur de Noyelle et de Lyonnel de Bournonville, on the 
 fortress of Toussy, in Auxerrois, defended by the Seigneur de la 
 Tremoille. 5 
 
 We should add a few words relative to a specialty included in 
 the general profession of robbers that of a corsair. We have 
 already said that, among the most ancient peoples on the coast of 
 the Mediterranean Sea, the profession of a corsair was not dishon- 
 
 1 Sueton. Tranquil., Tiber., cap. xxvii. 
 
 2 Appian. de bell, civ., lib. iii., cap. xcviii. 
 
 3 Appian. de bell. Hispan., cap. Ixviii. 
 4 Chroniq. d Enguer. de Monstrelet, liv. i., cap. ccii. 
 
 5 Chroniq. d Enguer. de Monstrelet, liv. i., cap. ccxxxiii. 
 
288 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 orable. 1 It was then followed by free men. In the Odyssey, the 
 heroes, in a very amicable 2 spirit, ask this question : " My lord, are 
 you a pirate ?" Within a few centuries, fugitive slaves also took 
 to piracy. Plato assures us that, in his time, all the pirates, who 
 infested the coasts of Italy, were previously slaves. 8 What is worthy 
 of notice is that, as soon as these fugitive slaves came together at 
 any one point took possession of some strong castle, and founded 
 some durable establishment they hastened to establish slavery 
 among them. When Pompey had delivered the Roman republic 
 from the crowd of pirates, whom Mithridates had let loose on the 
 Mediterranean; when he had taken from them 378 ships, and killed 
 10,000 men, he opened the 120 cities, or castles, which they had 
 seized,* and found there all that constituted a complete state at that 
 epoch : captives in chains, who waited to be ransomed, arsenals 
 full of timbers, iron, sails, hemp, and a great multitude of slaves, 
 who worked in the prisons. 5 
 
 The most illustrious pirate, whom antiquity has produced, was 
 Agathocles, tyrant of Sicily, who succeeded to all the splendor of 
 the elder Dionysius. Son of a poor potter, he passed his infancy 
 in houses of ill-fame. 6 Grown to manhood, he became a pirate, 
 and began his career by robbing his own fellow-citizens. 7 Exiled 
 twice from Syracuse, he took refuge with the Murgantines, who 
 elected him their general. Syracuse, which had banished him as 
 a robber, recalled him as a general ; and then commenced those 
 brilliant wars against Carthage, which made him the most powerful 
 monarch that Sicily ever had. 8 
 
 J Thucyd., lib. i., cap. v. Polyb. Hist., lib. ii., cap. viii. 
 
 2 Odys., lib. iii., v. 71-73. 3 Plato de legibus, lib. vi. 
 
 4 Appian. de bell. Mithridat., cap. xcvi. 5 Ibid. 
 
 6 Ibid. 7 Justin., lib. xxii., cap. i. 8 Ibid. 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 289 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 MODERN TRADES UNIONS/ 
 
 WE have reached a point where those who have followed, step 
 by step, the development of this book, will raise a grave 
 objection to the historic theory, which it proposes. If it be true, as 
 this book teaches, that the commune and the trades union are, one 
 the administrative, and the other the industrial association, which 
 slaves form on attaining liberty, so that these two species of asso 
 ciations are reproduced simultaneously and necessarily in all slave 
 countries, how does it happen that, after the fall of the Roman Em 
 pire, the trades unions and the communes disappeared, although 
 there were slaves still in Europe ? and that we had in France to wait 
 until the reign of Philip Augustus to again find burghers and trades 
 unions ? Does it not seem, if the theory of this book is correct, 
 that with the general tendency to emancipation, which Christianity 
 introduced in the Old World : with the trouble and tumult caused by 
 the invasion of the barbarians in the West : the multitude of freed- 
 men ought to have been greater and greater, and that there ought 
 to have been, on the contrary, more communes and more trades 
 unions than ever? 
 
 The objection is real and serious. It requires us to present a phase 
 of the invasion of the peoples of the North, which no historian that 
 we know of has as yet explained and pointed out. 
 
 There is in history a custom, to call the peoples of the North, who 
 invaded the Roman Empire in the fifth century, barbarians ; but no 
 one has given us a clear idea of what constituted their barbarism. 
 We will endeavor to settle this question, which, we hope, will illu 
 minate and fix some points heretofore undecided and obscure. 
 
 As we have already said, if we consider the family in the primi- 
 
 1 We have not thought it necessary to support the ideas contained in this chapter 
 by justificative notes. For us, learning is not a luxury, but a necessity. Now, 
 this chapter being based entirely on the testimony of well-known books, such as 
 the History of Paris by Felibien, the Treatise on Police, and the Register of 
 Trades, we have not thought necessary to enlarge this book by superabundant 
 citations. 
 
2QO HISTORY OF THE 
 
 tive times of history, we find it entirely constituted in the father and 
 absorbed by him. The wife was bought, ajid consequently a slave; 
 the son could be sold, and was therefore a slave ; the servant was 
 completely a slave. At this epoch of the family, the wife, the son, 
 and the servant were owned; they owned nothing neither name, 
 nor personality, nor property. They existed only by the father and 
 in the father. Such, we have shown, was the primitive state of the 
 family. 
 
 As ages rolled by, the constitution of the family was modified. 
 The authority of the father diminished, and the personality of the 
 wife, the son, and the servant was disengaged. Things finally 
 reached the point where the wife had her portion in the joint pro 
 perty, and could demand a divorce ; when the son, at twenty-one 
 years of age, was independent of the father, and had his legal part 
 in the succession ; when the servant ceased to be a slave to become 
 a hireling, and thenceforth discuss the conditions of his labor. 
 
 This revolution in the family is a human fact : that is to say, a 
 fact produced in the Jewish family, in the Greek, the Roman, and 
 the German ; in the East and in the West ; in humanity. 
 
 Well ! Barbarous peoples are those who, as compared with others, 
 have not passed through so many phases of the history of the family. 
 As facts invincibly establish that the family does not remain sta 
 tionary between the two extreme points of its constitution, which we 
 have indicated, it necessarily follows that every people (who are but 
 an aggregation of families) must pass through all the degrees suc 
 cessively. Hence, the most barbarous people are those, who have 
 made the least of this inevitable journey; the most civilized are 
 those, who have made the most. 
 
 The nations of the North, who invaded the Roman Empire in the 
 fifth century, were, in fact, barbarians, as compared with the nations 
 invaded that is to say, the Goths, the Franks, the Burgundians, 
 the Saxons, the Vandals, the Quadi, the Heruli had not reached the 
 point in the history of the family, to which the peoples of Gaul, 
 Spain, Italy, and Greece had arrived. With them, the authority 
 of the father was more entire and more absolute. For example, the 
 servant, who in the Roman Empire had almost generally reached 
 the condition of a hireling, was, among them, still in the condition 
 of slavery, and consequently they knew nothing of communes, or 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 2QI 
 
 trades unions, or of any of the associations, to which freedmen give 
 birth. 
 
 Thus, the peoples of the North, who inundated the empire in the 
 fifth century, were, properly speaking, more primitive than the van 
 quished. To find in the history of Italy an epoch when its institu 
 tions were analogous to those of the Goths or the Franks, we must 
 go back at least to the time of Tarquin the Proud. Already, from 
 the time of Marius, the feudal relations of the great families of 
 Rome were weakened. We have seen that a judicial decision was 
 necessary to force Marius to recognize the suzerainty of the house 
 of Herennius. Among the Goths, the Saxons, and the Franks, on 
 the contrary, the feudal hierarchy was still, in the fifth century, pre 
 dominant. 
 
 When, after the invasion, the barbarian society of the North was 
 infused in exaggerated proportions into the civilized society of the 
 South, there resulted from the mixture a third society, much less 
 advanced than that, which for some years previous covered the face 
 of the Roman world. Greece, Italy, Spain, Gaul were obliged to 
 recommence recommence is the term rigorously correct many 
 successive steps of progress, which those countries had already passed 
 through. For example, they recommenced the emancipation of 
 slaves, to arrive, in the twelfth century, at the communes and the 
 trades unions, two things, which they already had long before the 
 invasion of the barbarians. 
 
 This sudden and immense backset, impressed on the Roman world 
 by the invasion, is a phenomenon so clear and striking that the 
 greatest annalist history ever had, Vico, has based upon it his cele 
 brated theory of the Recorsi that is to say, of the returns of 
 humanity upon itself at given periods of the life of peoples. Vico 
 shows with admirable art how all the West recommenced, as we 
 have said, in the fifth century, what it had already done and per 
 fected seven or eight centuries before. This idea of Vico is mathe 
 matically true. But if Vico was right in affirming that the West 
 repassed, under the peoples of the conquest, through the same laws, 
 the same institutions, the same progress, which the Roman people 
 had already given to it, he is wrong in concluding that this consti 
 tutes a circular revolution of humanity upon itself. For the Franks 
 recommenced the Romans, it is true ; but having recommenced, they 
 
HISTORY OF THE 
 
 continued them. This is what Vico did not observe, and what ruins 
 his theory, (a*) + 
 
 (a) This theory of Vico has been very generally adopted, and, in another form, 
 is expressed by the adage, " History repeats itself." Doubtless it is on this theory 
 that Generals Grant, Sherman, and even Logan, rest their hopes of wearing some 
 day the imperial purple when, by the misrule of carpetbag-negro-scalawag bar 
 barism, Radical policy shall have accomplished its object of disgusting the peo 
 ple with republicanism, and shall have prepared them for a transition to a mon 
 archical or imperial form of government, as John Adams, a great man and a 
 patriot, though a monarchist, anticipated and foretold. (See Translator s Preface, 
 fol. xvi.) 
 
 General Logan bases his hopes on the Grand-Commandership of the Grand 
 Army of the Republic, and on his great projet of removing the seat of govern 
 ment from Washington to a new metropolis, Logansport. But his aspirations are 
 simply ridiculous ; as bogus as the paste diamonds, with which, after having first 
 tendered his services to the rebel States, he is said to have bought his major- 
 general s commission, valuing them at $1,500, when they were not worth 1,500 
 cents. 
 
 The simple fact that his Grand-Commandership should cause a man of General 
 Logan s mediocre mental calibre to "dream dreams" of becoming the EMPEROR 
 CONSTANTINE of the New World, through the influence and by the instrument 
 ality of the G. A. R., proves two other facts, viz. : 
 
 1. The general acceptation of the idea that in the circular revolution of hu 
 manity upon itself, the republican that is to say, the municipal and State rights 
 of the working and burgher classes will inevitably be swallowed up by the 
 unification and centralization of all political power, in America as in Europe, in 
 the hands of an emperor or a king, and of the nobility, which that emperor or 
 king may create. 
 
 2. The anti- republican, imperialistic tendencies of such an organization as the 
 G. A. R., which is not a trades union, nor a labor union, but is Apolitical, office- 
 seeking union of men, who have no sympathy, nor any point of contact with the 
 working and burgher classes, except a desire to put into their own pockets the taxes, 
 which the working and burgher classes pay for the support of the government. 
 
 Genera] Grant bases his aspirations on his brilliant military services. But their 
 lustre is now obscured behind a big black cloud auri sacra fames the " ac 
 cursed greed for gold," which cannot say " no " to any who come " dona ferentes" 
 (bringing gifts,) but clutches with miser s grasp at houses and lands, U. S. bonds 
 and Sto. Domingo shares, railroad land-grants and stocks, fast horses and fat 
 cattle anything and everything, on which there are no express charges to be 
 paid. The aspirant for an imperial throne and sceptre must be more noted for 
 giving than accepting. 
 
 The most dangerous man to republican liberty in this country is General W. 
 Tecumseh Sherman. He has all the requisite qualifications of a successful mili- 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 293 
 
 Now, if we apply this idea to the history of the slave races of the 
 middle ages, we account with precision, and clearly, for the kind of 
 
 tary usurper. He has the military genius ; the ruthlessness of his savage name 
 sake, Tecumseh; an unscrupulous disregard of all the obligations of honor, 
 clemency, good faith, truth; the prestige of giving to his followers "all that his 
 quartermasters couldn t take possession of, or didn t want." 
 
 He accepted the surrender of Columbia, S. C, having pledged his military 
 honor for the protection of noncombatants and private property. He then applied 
 the torch and burned Columbia to the ground, reckless alike of feeble woman 
 hood and innocent childhood. 
 
 He is the very man to sweep remorselessly over all obstacles that might stand 
 in his way to imperial and absolute power. 
 
 He afterward charged the "enormous crime" of the destruction of Columbia 
 on General Wade Hampton. General Hampton replied by the following letter, 
 which the Radical Senate refused to receive or act on, because they knew that an 
 investigation would acquit General Hampton and convict General Sherman, both 
 of the burning and the slander. 
 
 WILD WOODS, Miss., April 21, 1866. 
 To the Hon. REVERDY JOHNSON, U. S. Senate : 
 
 Sir A few days ago I saw in the published proceedings of Congress that a 
 petition of Benjamin Rawles, of Columbia, S. C., asking compensation for the 
 destruction of his house by the Federal army, in February, 1865, had been pre 
 sented to the Senate, accompanied by a letter from Major-General Sherman. 
 
 In this letter General Sherman uses the following language : " The citizens of 
 Columbia set fire to thousands of bales of cotton rolled out into the streets, and 
 which were burning before we entered Columbia. I myself was in the city as 
 early as nine o clock, and I saw these fires, and know that efforts were made to 
 extinguish them ; but a high and strong wind kept them alive. 
 
 " I gave no orders for the burning of your city, but, on the contrary, the confla 
 gration resulted from the great imprudence of cutting the cotton bales, whereby 
 the contents were spread to the wind, so that it became an impossibility to arrest 
 the fire. 
 
 " I saw in your Columbia paper the printed order of General Wade Hampton 
 that, on the approach of the Yankee army, all the cotton should thus be burned ; 
 and from what I saw myself, I have no hesitation in saying that he was the cause 
 of the destruction of your city." 
 
 This same charge, made against me by General Sherman, having been brought 
 before the Senate of the United States, I am naturally most solicitous to vindicate 
 myself before the same tribunal. But my State has no representative in that body. 
 Those who should be her constitutional representatives and exponents there are 
 debarred the right of entrance into those halls. There are none who have the 
 right to speak for the South ; none to participate in the legislation which governs 
 her ; none to impose the taxes she is called upon to pay ; and none to vindicate 
 
2Q4 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 interruption, which the barbarians brought with them in their march 
 toward civil life. The people of the South had passed through 
 
 her sons from misrepresentation, injustice, and slander. Under these circum 
 stances, I appeal to you, in the confident hope that you will use every effort to 
 see that justice is done in this matter. 
 
 I deny emphatically that any cotton was fired in Columbia by my order. 
 
 I deny that the citizens " set fire to thousands of bales rolled out into the 
 streets." 
 
 I deny that any cotton was on fire when the Federal troops entered the city. 
 
 I most respectfully ask of Congress to appoint a committee charged with the 
 duty of ascertaining and reporting all the facts connected with the destruction of 
 Columbia, and thus fix upon the proper author of that enormous crime the infamy 
 he richly deserves. 
 
 I am willing to submit the case to any honest tribunal. Before any such, I 
 pledge myself to prove that I gave a positive order, by direction of General Beau- 
 regard, that no cotton should be fired ; that not one bale was on fire when Gen 
 eral Sherman s troops took possession of the city ; that he promised protection to 
 the city; and that, in spite of his solemn promise, he burned the city to the 
 ground, deliberately, systematically, and atrociously. 
 
 I therefore most earnestly request that Congress may take prompt and efficient 
 measures to investigate this matter fully. Not only is this due to themselves and 
 to the reputation of the United States army, but also to justice and truth. 
 
 Trusting that you will pardon me for troubling you, I am, very respectfully, 
 your ob t serv t, WADE HAMPTON. 
 
 Not long after the war, yet long enough for the passions of war to cool, we 
 read and were shocked at a report of a speech made by General Sherman, in 
 defence and justification of the outrages committed by his bummers on the helpless 
 women and children of Georgia and South Carolina ; the substance of which speech 
 was that, because of the great crime of their male relatives, i. e. rebellion, these 
 women and children had no rights, which his bummers were bound to respect. 
 In a hasty examination of the files of the Washington Chronicle for that speech, 
 we find in that paper of the 3Oth of August, 1865, the following extract from a 
 speech made by General Sherman at a soldiers picnic at Lancaster, Ohio : 
 
 " When the rebels ventured their all in their efforts to destroy our Government, 
 " they pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honors to their cause. 
 " The Government accepted their wager of battle. Hence, when we conquered, 
 " we by conquest gained all they had. Their property became ours by conquest. 
 " Thus they lost their slaves, their mules, their horses, their cotton, their all ; and 
 " even their lives and personal liberty, thrown by them into the issue, "were theirs 
 " only by our forbearance and clemency. 
 
 "By this right of conquest we own this ground we stand on to-day, conquered 
 "from the Indians the Shawnees, I believe. 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 295 
 
 nearly all the successive phases of the family. The people of the 
 North had passed through but few. The Greeks, Italians, Span- 
 
 " The State of Ohio is ours by conquest from the French and English. 
 
 " So, soldiers, when we marched through and conquered the country of the 
 " rebels, we became owners of all they had ; and I don t want you TO BE TROU- 
 " BLED IN YOUR CONSCIENCES/^ taking, while on oiir great march, the property 
 " of the rebels. They forfeited their right to it, and I, BEING AGENT FOR THE 
 " GOVERNMENT TO WHICH I BELONGED, GAVE YOU AUTHORITY TO KEEP ALL THE 
 
 " QUARTERMASTERS COULDN T TAKE POSSESSION OF, OR DIDN T WANT." 
 
 Now, it is difficult to believe that General Sherman, with all the advantages of 
 a West-Point education, was so ignorant as not to know that his statements about 
 having conquered the State of Ohio from the Shawnees, the French, and the 
 English, were untrue. Almost every schoolboy knows, and, in view of his Con 
 necticut origin, it is difficult to believe that General Sherman did not know, that 
 the State of Ohio is a monument of the magnificent patriotism of the State of 
 Virginia on the one hand, and of the directly opposite characteristics of the State 
 of Connecticut on the other. Excepting only the " Connecticitt Reserve" the 
 State of Ohio is a part of that " magnificent gift" from the State of Virginia, 
 which was conveyed to the United States by a deed executed and signed by 
 Thomas Jefferson, Samuel Hardy, Arthur Lee, and James Monroe, on the 1st of 
 May, 1784, and which so excited the admiration of the great Webster. It would 
 seem, therefore, almost an act of madness for General Sherman thus to subject 
 himself to the risk of being thought so ignorant on the one hand, or so prone to 
 imaginative statements, destitute of truth, on the other. But there was a method 
 in this madness. Unfortunately mankind are so constituted, as the history of all 
 successful usurpations proves, that nothing is so well calculated to attract adhe 
 rents as the idea that their leader is ready to give to them all the property of his 
 opponents " that his quartermasters can t take possession of, or don t want." 
 
 Connected with the destruction of Columbia is a question of some curious 
 interest. It appears from a pamphlet published to vindicate General Hampton 
 from the charge brought against him by General Sherman, that the soldiers, who 
 did the burning, said that the duty of burning Columbia was assigned to them as 
 a special honor or privilege. The theory of the writer of the pamphlet was, that 
 the reason of this assignment was, that there were no Roman Catholics among 
 them ; and that all the Roman Catholics of Sherman s army were carefully and 
 purposely kept out of the city, because they were opposed to the burning, lest the 
 Roman Catholic instittition in that city shotild be involved in its destruction. If 
 this theory was correct, the Roman Catholics may well be proud of their exclu 
 sion from a participation in the honor (?) of burning down the (falsely so-called) 
 " hotbed and cradle of secession" 
 
 The city of Atlanta, Georgia, was also surrendered by the mayor to General 
 Sherman, under a " solemn promise" of protection to noncombatants and pri 
 vate property. Even General Sherman will hardly dare to assert that the 
 
296 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 iards, Gauls, had reached the regime of freedmen. The Franks, 
 Burgundians, Saxons, and Visigoths were, still under the regime of 
 
 " citizens of Atlanta set fire to thousands of bales of cotton rolled out into the 
 streets," or that they " were burning before he entered the city." For he stayed 
 in Atlanta many weeks. In spite of his "solemn promise," he gave the city up 
 to sack and pillage. He gave his soldiers "authority to seize and keep all that 
 his quartermasters could n t take possession of, or did n t want." When he was 
 about to leave, he burned the city of Atlanta to the ground, " deliberately, sys 
 tematically, and atrociously." An eyewitness assures us that, at the lowest calcu 
 lation, 500 pianos, the private property of the ladies of Atlanta, were taken and 
 sent North before the burning. 
 
 Attila, Alaric, Genghis Khan the barbarous Hun, the brutal Goth, the savage 
 Tartar sacked and burned cities; but not after they had pledged a soldier s 
 honor for the protection of private property. Had they been guilty of such 
 " enormous crime," yet they would have scorned to " slander " so spotless a name 
 as that of Wade Hampton. 
 
 POSTSCRIPT. Washington, May 29, 1871. To-day, a friend met me and said : 
 " What do you think now of your friends, the communists ? They have burned 
 the greater part of Paris, and have murdered the archbishop and many priests." 
 I replied : " The first part of the statement may be true. A great part of Paris 
 may have been burned ; but if so, I do not believe that it was deliberate, sys 
 tematic, atrocious, like the burning of Atlanta and Columbia. Certain it is, that 
 the fires of Paris did not occur after a surrender tendered and accepted, but in 
 the heat of the fight ; and they were most probably accidental. As to the latter 
 part of the statement, I hope it is not true, and I do not believe it." He said: 
 " Our minister, Mr. Washburne, telegraphs it officially." I replied : " Perhaps 
 as a mere rumor, started by the imperialists and monarchists, to cast odium on 
 the name and cause of the republican communists. Moreover, there is much 
 reason to believe that Mr. Washburne is himself an imperialist, as anxious as Gov 
 ernor Holden to see General Grant an emperor, and his son succeed him as em 
 peror. I take such telegrams from Mr. Washburne cum grano salts, and await more 
 reliable information. Besides, in judging the communists, whom our imperialist 
 journals delight in stigmatizing as the dangerous classes, we must not forget 
 that they have to carry the worse than dead weight of the three branches of the 
 proletariat the beggars, prostitutes, and thieves for whose misdeeds the 
 imperialists are more responsible than the working classes, though they are all 
 charged to the latter." 
 
 A gentleman from Pennsylvania said to me a few days since : " It has always 
 surprised me that no Southern man has ever taken the trouble to contradict a 
 charge, which was made against the rebels during the war, and which excited more 
 bitter feeling against them at the North than almost everything else that they were 
 charged with. I myself know that there was not one word of truth in the charge." 
 I asked : " What do you refer to? " He replied : " To the charge that the rebels 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 
 
 slavery. The former had produced around them a multitude of 
 municipalities, in which the slave races entirely effaced, by the 
 
 set fire to the woods in the Wilderness for the purpose of burning up the Union 
 wounded. I know that this charge was untrue, for I was in all those fights. The 
 ground was covered with dry leaves, which took fire accidentally from the burning 
 paper of the cartridges which fell among the leaves. The rebels had no more 
 to do in starting the fire than we had ; and as many of the rebel wounded per 
 ished by the fire as of our men. But this story was almost universally believed 
 at the time. I have never seen any contradiction of it, and to this day thousands 
 of our people believe that the rebels fired the woods purposely to burn up our 
 wounded." 
 
 June 1st, 1871. I have just received the following: 
 
 ATLANTA, GA., May 29, 1871. 
 Mr. B. E. "GREEN: 
 
 Dear Sir I received yours of the 23d inst., requesting me 
 to send you a copy of the correspondence between General 
 Sherman and myself in regard to the surrender of Atlanta, 
 and the protection afforded by him. 
 
 I lost the manuscript copy of my letter and his original 
 letter to me in reply, but you will find them in the book con 
 taining the history of his march through Georgia. I forget 
 who wrote it, but presume you can find it in any of the book 
 stores at Washington. That copy is correct. 
 
 The correspondence did not relate to the surrender of At 
 lanta, as that took place about a week before. My letter was 
 one of expostulation against his order exiling the citizens, 
 and asking him to revoke or modify it; and his was a long 
 argumentative letter in reply. 
 
 I send you a brief history of the circumstances attending 
 the surrender, copied from the Atlanta City Directory, which 
 is substantially correct. You will see I surrendered the city 
 to Colonel Coburn, of General Ward s Division of Slocum s 
 Corps ; and you will see that Colonel Coburn promised pro 
 tection to private property, and that the words used by me 
 were reduced to writing the next day at his request ; but his 
 were not. I did not notify General Sherman of his promise, 
 
 20 
 
298 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 privileges of burghership, the almost forgotten stain of their origin. 
 The latter still lived in pure feudalism, without any mixture of com- 
 
 and acted on the presumption that he knew what his officers 
 did in so important a matter; but in thinking about it since, 
 I have concluded that it might be this promise of Colonel 
 Coburn never came to his knowledge, else he would not have 
 allowed the houses and other property of poor widows and orphans 
 to be burned up. And I think so for this reason, also : General 
 Sherman, for the most part, was very particular to observe all 
 the promises he made to me. For instance, he told me to 
 cause the citizens to put their fine furniture in one of the 
 chufrches, and he would guard it, etc. They did put as much 
 of it in one house as it would hold, and he did guard it. That 
 house, I don t suppose, held the hundredth part. 
 
 When I was verbally complaining to him of the hardship 
 of expulsion, and the loss of property it would occasion, etc., 
 he told me they might take out every "smithering" of their 
 personal property ; but, notwithstanding I reminded him of 
 the promise, he would not allow them to take out cotton, 
 tobacco, spirits, and cattle. 
 
 One day I told him a poor widow wanted to take out her 
 milch cow, and his officers would not allow her. He replied 
 he " reckoned it would be difficult to drive a fat cow by the 
 commissary s office." He had probably forgotten his promise. 
 My cows were taken, and others. Some did take them out. 
 The officers prevented buggies from being taken out. This 
 was probably without the General s knowledge. I supposed 
 they wanted them for their own use. If I was well, and had 
 more time, I might throw more light on the subject. Yours, 
 etc., JAMES M. CALHOUN. 
 
 (Extract from the Register of the City of Atlanta.) 
 
 On the morning and until the night of the 1st of Septem 
 ber, 1864, Major-General Stewart s Corps, General Ferguson s 
 brigade of cavalry, and the Georgia militia were in the city. 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 299 
 
 mime or trade s union all masters, all seigniors, all barons, all 
 kings. 
 
 and a corps under command of General S. D. Lee came within 
 six miles of Atlanta, (to Killis Brown s, on South River.) In 
 the afternoon, General Slocum s command were at the Chat- 
 tahoochie River, eight miles distant. At night, the Confed 
 erate forces were withdrawn from the city, except Ferguson s 
 brigade ; and the following day, the Hon. James M. Calhoun, 
 then Mayor of Atlanta, with a committee of some twelve citi 
 zens, after going more than two miles up the Marietta road, 
 and first meeting with Captain Scott, obtained an interview 
 with Colonel John Coburn, of Indianapolis, Indiana, the sub 
 stance of which we give below. 
 
 After having been introduced by Captain Scott, Mayor Cal 
 houn said : " Colonel Coburn, the fortunes of war have placed 
 Atlanta in your hands. As mayor of the city, I come to ask 
 protection for noncombatants and for private property." To 
 this Colonel Coburn replied : " We did not come to make war 
 on noncombatants, nor on private property. Both shall be 
 respected and protected by us." On this day, also, the com 
 mand of General Slocum regularly invested the city, General 
 W. T. Sherman himself coming in September the 7th. On 
 the morning of the 3d, the above remarks on the part of 
 Mayor Calhoun were, by request, reduced to writing, and 
 addressed to General Ward instead of Colonel Coburn ; but 
 the reply was not reduced to writing. 
 
 The foregoing calls for a few brief comments. 
 
 1st. All honor to the brave men of the United States armies and they were 
 not a few who did not go South to make war on noncombatants, (that is, women 
 and children,) nor on private property. They were not Vandals. 
 
 2d. How should we characterize the general, who in the moment of victory 
 could so brutally make a jest of the petition of a "poor widow " ? 
 
 3d. Ex-Mayor Calhoun s handwriting bears the tremulous impress of age and 
 sickness. See how, by their softening influence on the heart, charity, which covers 
 a multitude of sins, seeks to find some palliation for the great spoiler! But his 
 "enormous crime" burns through the mantle of that charity, which, hoping all 
 
3OO HISTORY OF THE 
 
 We may, then, compare the peoples of the South and the peo 
 ples of the North, toward the fifth century,*to two liquids at differ- 
 
 things, believing all things, would even hope, if there was no room to believe, 
 that " it might be" he did not know, or had forgotten, that through his officers he 
 had promised protection to women and children and to private property. When 
 the ex-mayor comes to speak of how General Sherman did keep a promise to him, 
 his charity becomes sarcasm as bitter as that of the Yankee soldier, who said to 
 his comrade Charley, "I believe Sherman has set the river on fire." Sherman, 
 wanting to get together all the fine furniture and articles of value which might 
 otherwise be concealed, told the mayor to cause the citizens to put them in one of 
 the churches, and he would guard it. He did guard it, from, not for, the owners. 
 It was a " wooden-nutmeg" trick shrewd, but not consistent with the ideas of a sol 
 dier s honor, as understood by Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, Joseph E. John 
 ston, John B. Gordon, Hood, and others of that stamp to get all the fine furniture 
 and other valuable personal property together, so that his men could more con 
 veniently "keep all that his quartermasters cotddrit take possession of, or didn t 
 want" and that he might more surely burn and smither what his men didn t care 
 to keep. 
 
 4th. Worcester gives this definition : 
 
 Smithers, n. pi., fragments, atoms. (Local Eng.} Halliwell. 
 
 General Sherman s promise to the mayor, that the women and children, whom 
 he was driving from their homes, might take out every " smithering" of their per 
 sonal property, was made to the ear, with the intent of breaking it to the hope. 
 He intended first to smither it into fragments, and then they might take out the 
 atoms, if they could. This corresponds with what he said at Memphis before the 
 Vicksburg campaign : that he " did not intend to leave to any old woman in the 
 
 South even her ; " using the most vulgar term for that necessary domestic 
 
 utensil, with which an old woman of antiquity is said to have slain as great a 
 warrior as Sherman, by throwing it from a housetop. Perhaps General Sher 
 man s resolve to smither the crockery of all the old women in the South may have 
 been suggested by a prudent precaution against a similar tragic end for himself. 
 
 Colonels Bowman and Irwin, in their Sherman and his Campaigns, page 222, 
 say: 
 
 " On the nth of September, the town authorities addressed the following peti 
 tion to General Sherman, praying the revocation of his orders : 
 
 " Sir The undersigned, mayor, and two members of 
 council for the city of Atlanta, for the time being the only 
 legal organ of the people of the said city to express their 
 wants and wishes, ask leave, most earnestly, but respectfully, 
 to petition you to reconsider the order requiring them to leave 
 Atlanta. 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 3OI 
 
 ent degrees of saturation one ready to crystallize ; the other, more 
 limpid, more corrosive, farther from the condensation of its ele- 
 
 " At first view, it struck us that the measure would involve 
 extraordinary hardship and loss ; but since we have seen the 
 practical execution of it, so far as it has progressed, and the 
 individual condition of many of the people, and heard their 
 statements as to the inconveniences, loss, and suffering attend 
 ing it, we are satisfied that it will involve, in the aggregate, 
 consequences appalling and heart-rending. 
 
 " Many poor women are in an advanced state of preg 
 nancy ; others, now having young children, and whose hus 
 bands are either in the army, prisoners, or dead. Some say : 
 I have such a one sick at home ; who will wait on them when 
 I am gone ? Others say : What are we to do ? We have no 
 houses to go to, and no means to buy, build, or to rent any 
 no parents, friends, or relatives to go to. Another says : 
 I will try to take this or that article of property, but such 
 and such things I must leave behind, though I need them 
 much. We reply to them : General Sherman will carry your 
 property to Rough and Ready, and General Hood will take it 
 from there on. And they will reply to that: But I want to 
 leave the railway at such a point, and cannot get conveyance 
 from there on. 
 
 " We only refer to a few facts, to illustrate, in part, how 
 this measure will operate in practice. As you advanced, the 
 people north of us fell back, and before your arrival here, a 
 large portion of the people had retired south ; so that the 
 country south of this is already crowded, and without houses 
 to accommodate the people ; and we are informed that many 
 are now starving in churches and other out-buildings. This 
 being so, how is it possible for the people still here (mostly 
 women and children) to find any shelter? And how can they 
 live through the winter in the woods no shelter nor subsist 
 ence in the midst of strangers who know them not, and with 
 out the power to assist them, if they were willing to do so ? 
 
3O2 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 ments and when their mixture took place, that one of the two 
 which was nearest to crystallization was suddenly thrown back, and, 
 
 " This is but a feeble picture of the consequences of this 
 measure. You know the woe, the horror, and the suffering 
 cannot be described by words. Imagination can only con 
 ceive of it ; and we ask you to take these things into consid 
 eration. 
 
 " We know your mind and time are constantly occupied 
 with the duties of your command, which almost deters us 
 from asking your attention to this matter ; but we thought it 
 might be that you had not considered the subject in all its 
 awful consequences, and that on more reflection you, we hope, 
 would not make this people an exception to all mankind ; for 
 we know of no such instance ever having occurred surely 
 none such in the United States. And what has this helpless 
 people done, that they should be driven from their homes, to 
 wander as strangers, outcasts, and exiles, and to subsist on 
 charity ? 
 
 " We do not know, as yet, the number of people still here. 
 Of those who are here, we are satisfied a respectable number, 
 if allowed to remain at home, could subsist for several months 
 without assistance, and a respectable number for a much longer 
 time, and who might not need assistance at all. 
 
 " In conclusion, we most earnestly and solemnly petition 
 you to reconsider this order, or modify it, and suffer this un 
 fortunate people to remain at home and enjoy what little 
 means they have. Respectfully submitted. 
 
 " JAMES M. CALHOUN, Mayor. 
 " E. E. RAWSON, Councilman. 
 " L. C. WELLS, Councilman: " 
 
 Page 226. " As soon as his arrangements were completed, General Sherman 
 wrote to General Hood by a flag of truce, notifying him of his orders, and pro 
 posing a cessation of hostilities for ten days from the I2th of September, in the 
 country included within a radius of two miles around Rough and Ready station, 
 to enable him to complete the removal of those families electing to go south. 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 303 
 
 in an instant, all the embryos of sediments which were already de 
 posited on the sides of the vase dissolved and vanished. 
 
 Hood immediately replied, on the Qth, acceding to the proposed truce, but pro 
 testing against Sherman s order. He concluded : 
 
 " Permit me to say, the unprecedented measure you propose transcends in 
 studied and iniquitous cruelty all acts ever before brought to my attention in this 
 dark history of the war. In the name of God and humanity, I protest, believing 
 you are expelling from homes and firesides wives and children of a brave people. " 
 
 Porus, after a brave and stubborn resistance, was defeated and brought captive 
 before Alexander. The latter asked: "What have you to say?" Porus an 
 swered : " That you shall treat me as a king." Alexander said: "Make of me 
 some special request." Porus replied: " Everything is included in what I have 
 said." Alexander restored him to his throne, added to his dominions, and made 
 him a friend. 
 
 Mark the contrast ! 
 
 After a brave and stubborn resistance of the Confederate armies, the captive 
 women and children kneel at the feet of the victor, Sherman ; some far advanced 
 in pregnancy, some " in the perils of childbirth," some with babes just born. 
 Mark this, ye working and burgher classes of the North, who were deceived into 
 believing that the war was made to put down the rebellion of a slaveholding aris 
 tocracy. General Sherman s own aide-de-camp tells us that these suppliant women 
 and children were "almost entirely of the lower class" They were the wives 
 and children of the white working and burgher classes of the South. They came 
 beseeching General Sherman to treat them as women and children. 
 
 How did he reply to their supplications ? Practically, his answer was : 
 
 " I, at the head of my army, and my brother John in the Senate, have an 
 understanding with the imperialists and with the capital that hires labor. I 
 want to be an emperor ; my brother, the senator, wants to get rich. The capital 
 that hires labor wants to reduce wages, increase the cost of living, make labor 
 pay the taxes, spend those taxes for the profit of capital, and establish a moneyed 
 aristocracy, freed from the restraints of all usury laws. 
 
 " Now, your, fathers and husbands and brothers and sons and sweethearts are 
 opposing us have committed the great crime of fighting us, who came to divorce 
 capital from labor in the South. For their great crime I intend to punish you. 
 I will not leave to any old woman among you, out of her crockery, so much as a 
 
 I will drive you from your homes to starvation or worse. I will smith er 
 
 into fragments your little property, and you can take the fragments with you into 
 exile, if you can. For my purpose is to burn ! BURN ! BURN ! " 
 
 But let the horrible story be told in the words of the great modern Vandal s 
 own aide-de-camp, Brevet-Major George Ward Nichols. He says : 
 
 Page 23. " A long train of wagons and ambulances from Atlanta, provided 
 by General Sherman, had driven into the space between the outposts, and de 
 posited their freight of women and children with (the smitherings of) their house- 
 
304 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 Thus, the arrival of the peoples of the North truly arrested the 
 peoples of the South in their progress ; it suspended emancipations, 
 
 hold furniture. These people seemed to be almost entirely of the lower class. The 
 wealthier citizens removed from Atlanta -when the firing began, those only remain 
 ing who were willing to take the risk of shot and shell, and the possibility of federal 
 occupation. 
 
 " The dust from our wagons had hardly subsided, when the sharp crack of the 
 whip and the loud cries of the train-masters and mule-drivers announced the 
 arrival of the rebel convoy to remove the people (that is, the women and children) 
 whom General Sherman had refused to permit Hood to throw upon him as a 
 burden." 
 
 Page 26. " Meanwhile, under Sherman s orders, the removal of the citizens 
 of Atlanta outside our lines was continued. . . . The rebels howled forth threats 
 and objurgations at what they termed a fiendish act of cruelty; but General Sher 
 man little heeded their ravings. He had taken this step only after due premedita 
 tion. Atlanta was a captured city. ... It would have been an absurd incongruity 
 daily to fill the mouths of the wives and children of men in arms against the 
 Government." 
 
 Page 37. " Nov. I3th. Behind us we leave a track of smoke and flame. 
 Half of Marietta was burned up not by orders, however; for the command is 
 that proper details shall be made to destroy all property which can ever be of use 
 to the rebel armies. Stragglers will get into these places, and dwelling-houses 
 are levelled to the ground. In nearly all cases these are the deserted habitations 
 formerly owned by rebels who are now refugees. Yesterday, as some of our 
 men were marching toward the Chattahoochie, River, they saw in the distance 
 pillars of smoke rising along its banks the bridges were in flames. Said one, 
 hitching his musket on his shoulder in a free and easy way : " I say, Charley, I 
 believe Sherman has set the river on fire." 
 
 (The aide heard the words of the soldier, but was so blinded by the smoke 
 that he could not see the point of this bitter sarcasm on the General.) 
 
 Page 38. "Atlanta is entirely deserted by human beings, excepting a few 
 soldiers here and there. The houses are vacant; there is no trade or traffic of 
 any kind ; the streets are empty. Beautiful roses bloom in the gardens of fine 
 houses ; but a terrible stillness and solitude covers all, depressing the hearts even 
 of those who are glad to destroy it. In the peaceful homes of the North there can 
 be no conception how these people have suffered for their crimes." 
 
 "Atlanta, night of the \^th November. A grand and awful spectacle is pre 
 sented to the beholder in this beautiful city, now in flames. By order, the chief 
 engineer has destroyed by powder and fire all the store-houses, depot-buildings, 
 and machine-shops. The heaven is one expanse of lurid fire ; the air is filled 
 with flying burning cinders ; buildings covering two hundred acres are in ruins 
 or in flames. Every instant there is the sharp detonation or the smothered boom 
 ing sound of exploding shells and powder, concealed in the buildings ; and then 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 305 
 
 rendered impossible the communes and trades unions which were 
 ready to be formed, and dried up the source of the communes and 
 
 the sparks and flame shoot away up into the black and red roof, scattering cinders 
 far and wide." 
 
 Page 41. " A brigade of Massachusetts soldiers are the only troops now left 
 in the town ; they will be the last to leave it. To-night I heard the really fine 
 band of the Thirty-third Massachusetts playing John Brown s soul goes march 
 ing on, by the light of the burning buildings. I have never heard that noble 
 anthem when it was so grand, so solemn, so inspiring." 
 
 Nero was a great artist, (see page 232.) His enjoyment of the sight of burning 
 Rome was enhanced by the music of his own fiddle. General Sherman also is a 
 great artist in "studied and iniquitous cruelty," in punishing women and children 
 for the crimes of their male relatives, and in Vandal incendiarism. It was alto 
 gether a fitting and artistic climax, this band of a Massachusetts regiment play 
 ing "John Brown s soul goes marching on," by the light of the burning buildings 
 of Atlanta, on that night of the I5th November. 
 
 The great Webster once represented Massachusetts in the Senate of the United 
 States. Speaking there for her, in reference to the gift by Virginia of those lands 
 in Ohio, which Sherman claims to have conquered from the Shawnees, French, 
 and English, he said : 
 
 " And a most magnificent act it was. I never reflect upon it without a dispo 
 sition to do honor and justice and justice would be the highest honor to Vir 
 ginia, for the cession of her Northwestern territory. I will say, sir, it is one of 
 her fairest claims to the respect and gratitude of the United States, and that, per 
 haps, it is only second to that other claim that attaches to her : that from her 
 counsels, and from the intelligence and patriotism of her leading statesmen, pro 
 ceeded the first idea put into practice of the formation of a general Constitution 
 for the United States." 
 
 The great Webster passed away. Men of very different stamp spoke for Mas 
 sachusetts in the U. S. Senate. New ideas sprang up with new men. Almost 
 before the grand tones of Webster s majestic eloquence had died away, Massa 
 chusetts sent John Brown, a border-ruffian, horse-thief, murderer, and incendiary, 
 into Virginia, to apply the torch by night to her peaceful homes, and excite a ser 
 vile insurrection, with all its attendant horrors. 
 
 How artistically appropriate it was, then, that on that night of the 1 5th No 
 vember, a brigade of Massachusetts soldiers should be the last to lose the glad 
 dening sight of the effects of fire on the homes of Atlanta on " the beautiful 
 roses blooming in the gardens of fine houses," which (Major Nichols says) they 
 were "glad to destroy"" and that a Massachusetts band should play "John 
 Brown s soul goes marching on " by the light of the burning buildings! The 
 wise en scene was perfect, and placed General Sherman alongside of Nero as a 
 grand artist in INCENDIARISM WITH APPROPRIATE MUSIC. 
 
 For his artistic war of starvation on the women and children of the white 
 
3O6 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 trades unions already existing, viz. , emancipations. Then, as we have 
 said above, everything recommenced. Emancipations began anew, 
 and few at a time, as in the primitive ages of ancient history. The 
 asylums so long closed were reopened ; and after seven centuries 
 of this new preparatory labor, the conquering races in their turn 
 attained to the same degree of civilization in which they found the 
 
 " lower classes" of the South; for his systematic, deliberate, artistic burning of 
 Atlanta, Rome, Marietta, Columbia, the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa, 
 etc., etc., the advocates of imperialism, low wages, and high taxes glorify him; 
 while they cry out with well- affected horror at the barbarism of the republican 
 leaders of France, because, in all the hurry and tumults and excitements of a 
 siege, they could not prevent a few fires, or control the demoniac fury of strag 
 glers. See what the aide-de-camp says of the burning of Marietta : 
 
 " Stragglers will get into these places, and dwelling-houses are levelled with the 
 ground." 
 
 How inconsistent ! how absurd! how unjust! how hypocritical ! to praise Sher 
 man for burning systematically and artistically, and denounce the French repub 
 lican advocates of local self-government, because it was not in their power to 
 afford protection against fire to every part of beleaguered Paris ! 
 
 Disgusting as is this hypocrisy, of those who wilfully misrepresent the French 
 republicans, it is yet more sad to witness the ignorance of others, who, without 
 knowing what they do, unite in vilifying and traducing the communists, as the 
 rebels were vilified and traduced by the false charge that they purposely set fire 
 to the woods in " the Wilderness," to burn up the Union wounded. 
 
 We read, this morning, in a Washington City paper, opposed to centralism and 
 imperialism, the following : 
 
 " The communists pretended to regulate the price of labor, and to exalt it, by 
 defiance of all law, human and divine. Who can contemplate the sad spectacle 
 of poverty and degradation which is the work of these infidel destructives, without 
 a feeling of deep and stern resentment ? " 
 
 Now, all this deep and stern resentment, as our readers will see from our 
 author s very clear and precise explanation of what a commune is, (see, ante, page 
 138,) grows out of a total ignorance and misapprehension of the subject. 
 
 It is not true that " the communists pretended to regulate the price of labor." 
 This was a matter of the trades unions. All that the communists contended 
 for was the right of local self-government the right to levy and collect 
 and spend their own local taxes for local purposes, through officers chosen by 
 themselves from among themselves instead of being tyrannized over in their 
 local affairs, and plundered, by the appointees and favorites of a central des 
 potism, emperor, king, or president. (See, ante, p. 138; see, also, note, pp. 
 148-150.) 
 
 The following is taken from the New York Herald of June 2, 1871 : 
 
 \ 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 307 
 
 races whom they conquered. Then they, also, had communes and 
 trades unions. 
 
 Seven hundred years of time and efforts from the fifth to the 
 
 DELESCLUZE S DEFENCE. 
 
 WHAT THE BROTHER OF THE DEAD COMMUNIST LEADER HAS TO SAY ABOUT 
 THE COMMUNE. 
 
 To the Editor of the Herald : 
 
 In spite of the profound sorrow I feel at the assassination of my brother Charles, 
 there is one sentiment that encourages me to speak as I do in this letter. It is, 
 that his dear memory should be placed beyond those perfidious calumnies to which 
 the press of New York has given currency with regard to the Commune of Paris. 
 Whether it be from ignorance or bad faith, the journals of this city have been the 
 echo of the misrepresentations of the royalists at Versailles. It has been said 
 that the Commune of Paris aimed at the destruction of private property ; that it 
 wanted to divide the domains of the State ; that its programme forbade the exist 
 ence of religion or of family ties in society, etc. All these ridiculous allegations 
 are nothing but lies. The Commune of Paris has nothing to do with these doc 
 trines, which were originated by a few misguided individuals, ignorant of the 
 wants of our society. The commune has never had any other programme than 
 that of building up a republic in France, based upon justice and morality. It has 
 claimed, with an energy and courage which one day will be admired, complete 
 municipal franchise for its city, and, consequently, for other cities. It was resolved 
 to destroy the centralization of the Empire, and to substitute in its place the decen 
 tralization of administration that is to say, the right to every commune to 
 govern its own aft airs. But it meant, above all, to maintain the political central 
 ization vested in a national assembly, to be elected by all the departments, and 
 sitting in any one city in France. Some time hence, I shall, perhaps, take occa 
 sion to give exact details as to the principles and the future of the commune. To 
 day my heart is too much oppressed for that task. To return, therefore, to my 
 brother. Never has he had other ideas than those above stated ; never did I 
 meet with a man who had more respect for the rational laws of his country. For 
 him the ties of family were an object to be cherished. 
 
 Hear what he said in a book he published in Paris after his return from Cay 
 enne, and you will know his thoughts on the subject : 
 
 " If there is any one thing in this life which should be above the combinations 
 of interest and the selfish exaggeration of passions, which has nothing to fear 
 from the reverses of fortune, it is undeniably the love of family this mysterious 
 chain which descends from father and mother to the children, and makes all of 
 them, as it were, partakers of the same life. 
 
 " How is it that this sentiment only appears in all its purity and force in the 
 midst of trials and sufferings ? In the course of an existence which has never 
 been clouded by tempests, habit and security seem to render dormant an affection 
 
308 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 twelfth century, from Clovis to Philip Augustus were required for 
 France to remount to the level from which the invasion precipitated 
 her. 
 
 unmenaced by danger. Such beings love as they breathe, without being aware 
 of it. It is only in evil days that one knows the value of these ties, if they are 
 based on esteem and self-denial." 
 
 Let those who accuse the radicals of desiring the obliteration of family life 
 think on these words, and they will acknowledge, if they are sincere, that this 
 sacred institution, being, as it is, the only foundation of an advanced society, has 
 nowhere had better supporters than our poor vanquished friends in Paris. And 
 how about this war between the two selfish and criminal monarchs I mean 
 those of France and Prussia ? Was it not vehemently opposed before its outbreak 
 by the radicals ? The unanimous cry of all their journals was, " No war." 
 Among them was distinguished the Reveil, the editor in chief of which was my 
 brother. 
 
 (Extract from the JReveil, September 3, 1868.) 
 
 " France does not want war, and she proclaims it aloud. She protests against 
 an adventurous policy, carried on in the name of peace and liberty." 
 
 Here is another of July 26, 1870: 
 
 " And what have the people of the Rhine Provinces done to us ? True, they 
 have been French, but their interests and habits are German. Do they ask us to 
 incorporate them with our country ? No, not at all. It is only intended to revive 
 the spirit of imperial conquest, to blind our people, and to profit by it by securing 
 the tottering dynasty of Louis Bonaparte. Will France follow this man, who is 
 only absorbed by his personal interests. We hope not." 
 
 These quotations will suffice. They will free the radical party in this respect 
 from all responsibility. From personal information I have learned that the inhab 
 itants of Paris would have eagerly accepted a conciliation, if based on the con 
 dition above mentioned. In all the sittings of the commune, my brother did ever 
 invoke the best sentiments of the human heart. Certainly he believed in the 
 necessity of a revolution, but he desired to carry it on without denying respect to 
 law and public opinion. 
 
 When he was appointed deputy, he saw that in the presence of a resistance of 
 the Parisians against the monarchical plots of Thiers, it was his duty to return to 
 his electors, to remain with them to the last, and to await there the triumph of the 
 right, whatever may be the means necessary to attain it. He has fulfilled his 
 duty. The work which he and others have undertaken will be completed by the 
 future generation. But his profound conviction did not efface the melancholy 
 presentiment which weighed upon his mind. Thus, during his stay in the Min 
 istry of War, he, in private conversation, often let out that he had given up all 
 hope of conciliation, and that he was doubtful of success for the present. In his 
 proclamations he told the National Guard that it might happen that they who 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 309 
 
 It was, in fact, under Philip Augustus, as we have seen, that the 
 greatest municipal movements of the middle ages took place. Then 
 feudalism finished its gestation of the slave races. 
 
 It was also under Philip Augustus that the trades unions, those 
 twin-sisters of the communes, were formed. To better understand 
 their history, we will clear away some facts, which encumber their 
 approach. 
 
 We have said, that, when the invasion presented itself on the banks 
 of the Rhine, all Gaul had reached the regime of the commune. 
 The territory was divided into one hundred and fifteen cities, which 
 had for their capitals one hundred and fifteen municipal towns, 
 governed by one hundred and fifteen hotels de ville. The fury of 
 the barbarians fell entirely upon the towns. In fact, the institutions, 
 the life were there. All the towns were taken ; many were ruined. 
 
 The Abbe Dubos, Montesquieu, M. de Savigny, and some others 
 have written works, more or less curious, to show how far the bar 
 barians destroyed the Roman government in Gaul. In our opinion, 
 all these historians have made mistakes, because they put the ques 
 tion on a false basis. In fact, by the government of Gaul under the 
 Romans, these historians have understood something which was only 
 a part, and a very feeble part, of that government. They have 
 understood the action which the praetorian prefect of the diocese 
 of Gaul exercised in the name of the emperors, through his vicar, 
 his seventeen governors, his one hundred and fifteen counts, and 
 his four treasurers-general of the finances of the province. Now, 
 we repeat, the action of all these officers constituted but a part, an 
 accessory part, of the government. They established a connection 
 between Gaul and Rome or Constantinople that was all but 
 they did not govern it. 
 
 What governed Gaul was the municipal councils, the curice. In 
 fact, the four treasurers-general received the taxes; but who levied, 
 
 combated would reap no advantages from the social revolutions, the fruits of 
 which will, however, certainly be enjoyed by their children. And he was right, 
 sir. On this man, who was so devoted, so sincere, so much attached to the right 
 who had throughout his life fought for the right have the journals of this 
 city cast a slur with regard to his tragic death, making him alone responsible for 
 the massacres of Paris, caused by the obstinacy, disloyalty, and the royalist 
 intrigues of Thiers, MacMahon, and the like. HENRY DELESCLUZE. 
 
3IO HISTORY OF THE 
 
 9 
 
 who were responsible for them? The municipal councillors, or 
 curiales. The seventeen governors commanded the troops ; but 
 who raised and who paid them ? The curiales. The counts pre 
 sided over the tribunals ; but who composed them, who studied and 
 who decided the causes ? The curiales. The real government of 
 Gaul, then, resided entirely in the municipalities. The counts, the 
 governors, the treasurers-general, the praetorian prefect did nothing 
 but report the results of this government to the emperors, and in 
 some sort stamp his coat of arms upon the province. 
 
 Then the question whether the barbarians destroyed the Roman 
 government in Gaul is reduced to this : did the barbarians destroy 
 the municipalities? 
 
 Put in these terms, the question is at an end. Yes ; the barbarians 
 did destroy the Roman government in Gaul, because they destroyed 
 the column which sustained the edifice, the soul which animated the 
 body. What matters it, after that, that the emperors affected not to 
 know that Gaul was no longer under Roman dominion, and that 
 Anastasius conferred on Clovis the powers of praetorian prefect, 
 and sent him the patrician robe ? Does that prove that this dignity 
 had any real value in a province where the true supports of govern 
 ment had perished ; where the municipalities that is to say, the 
 power which was responsible for the taxes, which furnished the 
 troops, which administered justice were dispersed? What would 
 the Emperor Anastasius himself have done with Gaul, without taxes, 
 without soldiers, without tribunals ? (a) 
 
 (a) This suggests several questions relative to the conquest, by the people of 
 the North, of the people of the South, in the late civil war in the United States. 
 First. Did the people of the North destroy the "true supports" of republican 
 government in the South? 
 
 Answer. Yes ; they did. They tore down the column that supported the edi 
 fice ; they sought to destroy the soul that animated the body. They sought to 
 disfranchise the intelligence, the virtue, and the worth of the South, and to place 
 the political, the governing, power in the hands of ignorant negroes just emanci 
 pated, suddenly, and with far less knowledge of the science of government than 
 the barbarians, whose predominance threw Europe back seven centuries in her 
 march of progress and civilization. 
 
 Second. Who did this ? 
 
 Answer. Not the people of the North or of the South not the working and 
 burgher classes but the monarchists and imperialists ; a few corrupt and design- 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 3!! 
 
 Yes ; the barbarians of the invasion destroyed the Roman govern 
 ment in Gaul, because they destroyed there the municipalities. Now, 
 
 ing men, " in whose minds," to use the language of M. Guizot, " the plans of the 
 great machine were centred," and who, like Governor Holden of North Caro 
 lina, "wished to see General Grant (or some other .despot) an emperor, and his 
 son succeed him as emperor." 
 
 Third. Why did they do this? 
 
 Answer. For several reasons. 
 
 1st. Because the tendency of the Southern institution of negro slavery, unlike 
 the white slavery of Europe, was to strengthen the principles of social and polit 
 ical equality among all whites, a tendency odious to the aristocrats, monarchists, 
 and imperialists of the North. 
 
 2d. Because the tendency of negro slavery, which married Southern capital to 
 labor, was to a system of high wages, cheap living, moderate taxation, honest 
 and economical government expenditures ; while the interests of Northern capital, 
 divorced from and hostile to labor, called for a system of low wages, dear living, 
 oppressive, unequal, and unjust taxation of labor; wasteful, corrupt, and extrava 
 gant government expenditures, for the projit of capital. 
 
 3d. Because certain Northern leaders hoped that a very short experience of 
 government by negro slaves just emancipated, without prevision or preparation, 
 totally ignorant of the alphabet, the A B c of political science, led, and, by the 
 aid of Ku-Klux bills, controlled by white men more depraved than the negro 
 slaves would disgust the people with republicanism, and prepare them for a 
 "transition" to an imperial and aristocratic form of government. 
 
 Fourth. What will be the results of such governments in the South, sustained 
 by Ku-Klux bills, and upheld by fabricated reports of Congressional committees, 
 a majority of whom repudiate all legal rules of evidence to accomplish their 
 wicked partisan purposes? 
 
 Answer. A sudden and immense backset to civilization, and to all develop 
 ment, social, political, commercial, and industrial. For a few ex. gr. for Gen 
 eral Howard and his brothers in the Freedmen s Bureau, for Holden and the 
 swindler Littlefield in North Carolina, for Governor Scott and his " pals " in 
 South Carolina, for the bandits Bullock and Blodgett in Georgia sudden and 
 immense fortunes. For labor, Asiatic wages and diet. For the people, indi 
 vidual and State bankruptcy. For industry and commerce, paralysis. 
 
 Finally. If Gaul under the barbarians of the North of Europe was worthless 
 to Anastasius, will not the South, under the deeper barbarism of carpetbag-negro- 
 scalawag misrule, soon be worse than worthless to the people of the North ? 
 
 We leave the answer to this question to the "sober second thought" of the 
 working and burgher classes of the North, trusting that their own self-interest 
 will open their eyes to the fact that they are not benefited but directly injured by 
 permitting the South to be plundered and impoverished ; that the South can only 
 be valuable to them as customers in a legitimate trade; and that that trade will 
 
312 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 ^| 
 
 from this, for the modern trades unions, two consequences result, 
 which we proceed to deduce, and which will open to us their history. 
 
 First, in destroying the municipalities, the barbarians destroyed 
 the trades unions ; for the trades union and the municipality, in 
 ancient as in modern history, are two facts which are never sepa 
 rated. In ruining Spires, Worms, Strasbourg, Rheims, Amiens, 
 Arras, Tournay, the city of Morins, and all the towns of the two 
 Aquitaines, of Guienne, Lyonnaise, and Narbonnais, what could the 
 trades unions, which had their seat in those cities, do but disperse 
 and perish? Moreover, these nomad people, living as it were in 
 tents, composed exclusively of two species of men, the nobles and 
 the slaves, without freedmen, who precisely formed the trades unions 
 of the Roman world what had they to do with these industrial 
 and sedentary associations ? 
 
 Secondly, in destroying the trades unions with the municipalities, 
 the barbarians destroyed them in the same manner that is to say, 
 imperfectly and gradually. The Franks, Burgundians, Saxons, and 
 Visigoths had not, and had no idea of having, any logic in their 
 destruction. They threw themselves brutally, as soldiers, athwart 
 the Gallic-Roman civilization, and what could save itself was saved. 
 Thus, some towns, and principally those which were at the same 
 time capitals of provinces and capitals of a diocese, succeeded, by 
 the influence of the bishop and the respect obtained by the Church, 
 in preserving some fragments of their municipal government. We 
 have already seen in the course of this book, that when the edict 
 of Moulins took from the municipalities of the kingdom the juris 
 diction of civil matters, the hotels de ville of Rheims, Toulouse, 
 Boulogne, and Angouleme resisted, alleging and proving that they 
 had that jurisdiction since the time of the Romans. For this reason, 
 M. Raynouard and M. de Savigny have produced a great number 
 of documents establishing that the municipalities in Gaul did not 
 absolutely perish in consequence of the invasion. 
 
 Well ! For the same reason, we find in the middle ages, long 
 before the known establishment of modern trades unions, traces of 
 mysterious associations which the historian knows not where to place. 
 These are some lost children of the vast system of the Roman unions 
 
 be more and more profitable to them as the South becomes more and more pros 
 perous, and happy and contented because prosperous. 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 313 
 
 which the barbarians of the invasion overlooked in their seclusion, 
 and which there lived a poor and sickly life, deprived of air and 
 sunshine that is to say, deprived of their support, viz. emanci 
 pations like those mutilated and invalid municipalities for which 
 we must seek long and minutely in the charters of the first and 
 second races, and whose history, fall, and misfortunes must be 
 known to recognize in them what Aulus Gellius calls " little Romes, 
 made after the image of the great Rome." 
 
 We have, then, in the history of the middle ages, two kinds of 
 trades unions, as there were two species of communes. These were, 
 first, the Roman unions, which perished, and of which we find here 
 and there the ruins ; next, the French unions, which came into ex 
 istence, or rather were developed, under Philip Augustus, and were 
 organized after the time of St. Louis. 
 
 For example, traces of the Roman unions are recognizable, among 
 other documents, in a capitular of Dagobert II., of the year 630, 
 concerning the organization of the bakers; in another capitular of 
 Charlemagne, of the year 800, directing that the corporation of 
 bakers should have their complement in the provinces ; in a pas 
 sage of the edict of Pistes, of the year 864, concerning the gold 
 smiths union ; finally, in what Ducange relates of the rex arcari- 
 orum, the rex arbalestariorum, the rex merceriorum, the rex alata- 
 riorum, the rex Juglatorum, and the rex ministellorum. Moreover, 
 the modern bakers union of Paris seems to have been grafted on 
 the ancient Roman corporation ; for it was subject to a tax (droit 
 tit haubari) of a hogshead of wine paid to the king annually, and 
 this tax is mentioned in a capitular of Dagobert II., of the year 
 630, and in another of Charlemagne, of the year 803. 
 
 We have already said that the trades or labor unions always de 
 velop themselves parallel with the communes, and we have shown 
 how they were two associations of the same origin, the same nature, 
 almost for the same end. It is in the towns, then, that we must 
 seek for the trades unions ; there where the freed races concentrate 
 in the commune. Now, although the greater number of communes 
 differ in some peculiarity of their interior organization, and the 
 trades unions of each town, formed from the point of view of the 
 persons and things of that town, always present something peculiar 
 and individual, nevertheless, both of these two species of associa- 
 21 
 
3H HISTORY OF THE 
 
 9 
 
 tions are cast in the same mould almost, and it may be said that it 
 is enough to know one commune and one trades union to know all 
 the communes and all the trades unions. We therefore confine 
 ourselves to an exposition in detail of the organization of the trades 
 unions formed in the commune of Paris, which will be in the main 
 an exposition of all modern trades or labor unions. 
 
 The first written and official document on the trades unions of 
 Paris dates from the year 1258, under the reign of St. Lopis. It 
 is the ordonnance of Stephen Boileau, prevot-guard, known under 
 the name of "Register of trades and merchandise. To better com 
 prehend the situation of these unions in relation to the government, 
 we must say something of the different powers which governed the 
 city of Paris in the middle ages. 
 
 We have already said that Paris had a commune that is to say, 
 the right of self-government. The seat of this government was the 
 hotel de ville, which primitively bore the name of "Parloir aux 
 bourgeois" The inhabitants of Paris were divided, like those of 
 every communal city, into burghers and dwellers. The burghers 
 were those who were inscribed on the municipal rolls, and who en 
 joyed the right of commune. The dwellers were those who had 
 their domicile in the city, without participating in its privileges. 
 
 The government of the city resided in the municipal council, and 
 the supreme chief was a magistrate, who did not bear the name of 
 mayor, as in most of the communes, but that of prevot of merchants, 
 (Prevot des marchands.*} See the historic reason for this special 
 nomenclature. 
 
 There was at Paris, from the time of Tiberius, a Roman counting- 
 house belonging to the general union of the boatmen of the empire. 
 These boatmen carried on the commerce of the river, and their 
 statutes served as the basis of the customary charter of Paris ; for this 
 charter was not written until 1411. Moreover, in 1170, Louis the 
 Young, in speaking of the custom of Paris, called it ancient. The 
 commune of Paris had, therefore, this peculiarity from its origin : 
 that it was an association, a commune of merchants ; which caused 
 the name of prevot of merchants to be given to its first, magistrate, 
 instead of the name of mayor, which was more usual. 
 
 However, the city did not include the seigniory of the commune 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 315 
 
 only. It also included the seigniory of the king. The seigniory 
 of the king was in virtue of his title of viscount, and it was under 
 the charge of a lieutenant of the king, who bore the name of Prevot 
 of Paris. 
 
 We therefore must not confound the pr6vot of merchants with the 
 Prevot of Paris. The former was a municipal magistrate ; the latter 
 an officer of the king ; and, consequently, their jurisdictions were 
 perfectly distinct and separate. 
 
 Stephen Boileau, who reduced to writing in 1258 the statutes of 
 the trades unions, was Prevot of Paris; that is to say, the trades 
 unions received their institution from the royal power, like the 
 Roman trades unions after the reign of Trajan. 
 
 When Stephen Boileau reduced to writing the statutes of the 
 trades unions, they had already long been in existence. Philip 
 Augustus is cited in many places of the register, and notably in the 
 first title, as having regulated the trades. The prevotal ordonnance 
 of the year 1258 did not, therefore, create the trades unions. It 
 only brought them into relations with the royal power; and the 
 work of Stephen Boileau consisted chiefly in bringing together into 
 one body the peculiar customs of each trade, most of which had 
 probably never been written. 
 
 The register of trades contained the statutes of one hundred in 
 dustrial professions. We give them in the order of the register, and 
 in their bare announcement we have a sort of summary of French 
 industry in the thirteenth century. 
 
 They were the talmeliere, (bakers,) the millers, the corn mer 
 chants, the grain measurers, the auctioneers, the gaugers, the tavern 
 keepers, the beer brewers, the hucksters of bread, salt, and sea fish ; 
 the hucksters of fruits and vegetables, the goldsmiths, the tinners, 
 the ropemakers, the workmen in small lead and tin wares, the 
 smiths, (workers in iron,) the farriers, the edge-tool makers, the cut 
 lers, the locksmiths, the box and case makers, the brass-wire beaters, 
 the copper and brass buckler makers, the iron-wire drawers, the 
 brass-wire drawers, the nail makers, the hauberk makers, the bone- 
 bead makers, the coral-bead makers, the amber and jet bead ma 
 kers, the glass cutters, the gold and silver thread beaters, the tin 
 beaters, the gold and silver leaf beaters, the thread and silk net 
 makers, the spinners of silk with big spindles, the spinners of silk 
 
316 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 ^ 
 
 with little spindles, the thread and silk fringe makers, the workers 
 in silk tissues, the branliers en fil, (breeches makers,) the silk and 
 velvet drapers, the founders, the book-clasp makers, the shoe-buckle 
 makers, the silk weavers, the lamp makers, the barrel makers, the 
 carpenters, the masons, the stone cutters and plasterers, the dish and 
 cup makers, the cloth weavers, the sarrazinois (quaere, Saracen ?) 
 tapestry makers, the common tapestry and coverlet makers, the 
 fullers, the dyers, the hosiers, the garment cutters, the linen mer 
 chants, the hemp and thread merchants, the hemp-cloth merchants, 
 the pin makers, the sculptors of images of the saints, the painters of 
 images of the saints, the oil makers, the tallow-candle makers, the 
 scabbard makers, the scabbard trimmers, the comb and lantern ma 
 kers, (a} the writing-desk makers, the cooks, the poulterers, the play- 
 ing-dice makers, the button makers, the bath keepers, the clay potters, 
 the mercers, the brokers, the bursars, the house painters and the sad 
 dlers, the saddle-tree makers, the blazon painters on saddles, the har 
 ness makers, the horse-bit makers, the leather dressers, thecordwain- 
 ers, the sheepskin-shoe makers, the cobblers, the curriers, the glove 
 makers, the hay merchants, the flower-headdress makers, the felt 
 hatters, the cotton hatters, the peacock s-feather hatters, the furriers, 
 the bonnet makers, the furbishers, the archers, the fishermen in the 
 king s waters, the fresh-water fishermen, and the fishermen of the sea. 
 
 If, before going farther, we wish to find what points of resem 
 blance the French trades unions may have had to the Roman 
 trades unions, we must consider them in their relation to the chief 
 of the State, in their relation to the persons composing them, and 
 in their relation to each other. 
 
 Considered in their relation to the chief of the State, the French 
 unions were divided, in the third century, into two categories. The 
 first comprises those which required an authorization ; the second, 
 those which were only required to conform to the regulations of the 
 trade. The Roman unions were never in an analogous condition ; 
 for we have seen that they were all free by conforming to the laws 
 up to the time of Trajan, and that after that prince s time they were 
 subject to a previous authorization. Besides, this division of the 
 unions seems to have been very arbitrary, or at least it seems now 
 
 (a) Query, what natural connection was there in the thirteenth century between 
 combs and lanterns ? The compositor suggests that lantern frames as well as 
 combs were made of horn. 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 317 
 
 impossible to find the theoretical reasons for it, if any there were. 
 Thus, sometimes there were professions of great importance which 
 were free, as that of goldsmith ; and others, of small importance, 
 which required an authorization, as that of farrier. Sometimes, on 
 the contrary, professions of great importance, as that of baker, 
 required the royal authorization ; and others of less consequence, as 
 that of ropemaker, were only subject to the customs of the trade. 
 We have only observed one species of trades unions which were 
 always subject to a previous authorization, viz., those which in 
 volved public functions as it were, such as auctioneer, grain measurer, 
 and ganger. 
 
 The situation of the free trades or professions was very simple. 
 Any one could enter them on three conditions : first, of knowing the 
 trade ; second, of having the necessary capital, (s il a de quoi, says 
 the register;) third, of complying with the customs which governed 
 the union. Subject to these three conditions, there was no limit to 
 the number of their members. 
 
 The authorized professions were of two sorts : those which ob 
 tained their authorization from the Prevot of Paris, and those which 
 obtained their authorization from the prevot of merchants ; that is 
 to say, which depended on the municipal authority. These were 
 limited to three, viz. grain measurers, auctioneers, and gaugers. 
 
 Naturally, the necessity, for certain professions, of a previous 
 authorization, limited, or at least restricted the number, which raised 
 them to the condition of offices hereditary and salable for money, 
 provided always that the heir or purchaser fulfilled the conditions 
 of the trade. This is expressly stated in many titles of the register, 
 and especially in title L, relative to cloth weavers. 
 
 To obtain permission to enter a profession, it was necessary, ac 
 cording to the nature of that profession, to present a petition either to 
 the prevot of merchants, at the hotel de ville, or to the Prevot of 
 Paris, at the castle. Then the applicant paid a fee in silver, was 
 examined by the guards of the trade, and, if admitted, was installed, 
 having taken the oath. 
 
 Considered in reference to the persons composing them, the 
 French unions had still less resemblance to the Roman unions. We 
 have seen that from the time of Constantine the latter formed a kind 
 of necessary corps, impressing an indelible character, and that none 
 who once entered could ever leave them neither they nor theirs; 
 
3l8 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 % 
 
 neither their persons nor their property. No such principle is ob 
 servable in the French unions. Their members could always with 
 draw ; and, although each profession possessed a common fund and 
 a general treasury, the patrimony of the associates remained com 
 pletely free and invariably distinct. This characteristic, peculiar to 
 the trades and labor unions of the middle ages, of leaving to their 
 members perfect liberty of withdrawal, did not prevent their being 
 connected, like the Roman unions, with the administrative system 
 of the kingdom. For St. Louis and his successors employed the 
 unions to collect the taxes. It was the peculiarity of different an 
 cient institutions, tainted with the spirit of fatality or of absolute 
 solidarity, to divest themselves of that on entering upon modern 
 times. The trades and labor unions and the curiae may be cited as 
 memorable examples. 
 
 There is, however, one exception to what we have said of the lib 
 erty of withdrawal possessed by members of the unions. Undeni 
 able facts establish that the butchers could not quit their unions. In 
 1260, the great butchery of Paris belonged to twelve families, which, 
 at the end of four hundred years, in 1660, were reduced to three. 
 We easily comprehend how the extinctions enriched the survivors. 
 Now, toward the middle of the fifteenth century, the butchers 
 wished to retire from the union, or at least to rent their stalls to 
 others. Then a decree of parliament, of the 2d April, 1465, inter 
 vened, requiring them to occupy their stalls in person. A century 
 later, on a new occasion, this decision was confirmed by another 
 decree of parliament, of the 4th of March, 1557. 
 
 We must not, however, exaggerate the importance of this fact, 
 true as it is, in the general history of the trades and labor unjons. 
 It is certain that it constituted an exception. Moreover, we should 
 add that this exception is only relative to the epoch in which it 
 manifested itself; for, under the first, and even under the second 
 race, there still existed some Roman unions which were governed 
 by the principles of Roman law. We have cited a capitular of 
 Charlemagne, of the year 800, directing that the provincial judges 
 should see to it that the bakers kept up their complement. The 
 principle of absolute obligation, (solidarity ,) which in the fifteenth 
 century still oppressed the butchers, is then, as we have said, strange 
 only for its time ; and it only proves that the Roman traditions have 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 319 
 
 penetrated much farther than is generally believed into some spe 
 cialties of our history. 
 
 We find in the modern unions an element which was totally 
 wanting in the ancient, and which requires a separate notice, viz. 
 apprentices. 
 
 The ancient unions had no apprentices, for the very simple reason 
 that the workmen they employed were slaves. Hence the complete 
 absence in the Roman laws of regulations on apprenticeship, mas 
 terpiece, and admission to mastership. 
 
 The modern unions, at least from the time of the prev tal ordon- 
 nance of 1258, which is their first charter of organization, have 
 never employed any but free workmen. Besides, slaves commenced 
 to become rare at that epoch. 
 
 Apprentices were divided into two classes, the sons of the mas 
 ters, and strangers. Between these two kinds of apprentices there 
 was this profound difference, that the number of the first was unlim 
 ited, that of the latter restricted. We add that the sons of the 
 masters who were not legitimate, or born in lawful marriage, (nes 
 de loyal mariage, as the register of trades says,) wer^ in all re 
 spects assimilated to strangers. 
 
 A very important part of the internal laws of the unions was that 
 which regulated the conditions of the work of the apprentices ; and 
 that is readily conceived when it is said that apprenticeship was the 
 school of the masters, and that no one reached the first rank with 
 out having regularly passed through all the degrees of the hierarchy. 
 It appears, without being able to find the reason for the fact, that 
 the masterships were divided, in reference to apprentices, into 
 two categories ; some admitting an indefinite number, and others a 
 very limited number. For example, the professions of silk draper 
 and fringe maker, of gold and silver leaf beaters, of amber and 
 coral bead makers, admitted only a restricted number of appren 
 tices ; those of gold and silver thread beaters, tin beaters, hauberk 
 makers, admitted them at will. In the professions in which the 
 number of apprentices was limited, the masters could ordinarily 
 have but one, often two sometimes, but rarely, three. The spin 
 ners in silk on big spindles had three, the goldsmiths but one, the 
 cutlers two. 
 
 Generally, all apprentices were subject to two conditions : .they 
 
32O HISTORY OF THE 
 
 A 
 
 engaged to serve their masters for a fixed time, and paid him a cer 
 tain sum of money. 
 
 A goldsmith s apprentice was required to serve six years, a rope- 
 maker s four, a cutler s six, a box maker s seven, and a buckle ma 
 ker s eight. The amount paid for apprenticeship also varied. The 
 box maker s apprentice paid twenty Parisian sous, the bead maker s 
 thirty, the silk draper s six Parisian livres. Almost always the ap 
 prentice could substitute for the payment of money an increased 
 length of service. Thus, a silk draper s apprentice paid nothing if 
 he was willing to serve eight instead of six years ; the box maker s, 
 by serving eight years instead of seven. 
 
 The contract of apprenticeship was so strict and rigorous for the 
 apprentice, that he not only could not quit before the expiration of 
 his time, but the master could sell him to another for the remainder 
 of his term of service. Nevertheless, this right of selling an ap 
 prentice was fixed and limited to certain extreme cases, such as a 
 lingering sickness of the master, his quitting the business, excessive 
 poverty, or departure for beyond seas. The apprentice, on his 
 part, could buy his time ; but if he did so before the expiration of 
 his legal term of service, he could not receive the mastership. If 
 the master workman died, his widow retained his right and kept the 
 apprentice. If the master had no heirs, the apprentice could apply 
 to the guards of the trade to which he belonged for a new master. 
 The guards referred him to the Prevot of Paris, who immediately 
 granted his request. 
 
 When the time of their legal service was ended, the apprentices 
 who wished to become masters made a masterpiece before the guards 
 of the trade, presented a petition to the Prevot of Paris or to the 
 prevot of merchants to obtain the mastership, and, on payment of 
 the fees, were established. It often happened that the apprentices 
 did not aspire to mastership, which always involved an establish 
 ment, and required a certain capital. Then, their service ended, 
 they became what was called in the thirteenth century vallez or ser- 
 gans. These were free workmen, going from shop to shop, from 
 city to city, and working with masters for wages. Title II. of the 
 register of trades, relative to goldsmiths, speaks of these workmen, 
 who " knew how to gain a hundred sous a year, and their food and 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 32! 
 
 drink." Generally, masters could take as many sergans or vallez 
 as they pleased. 
 
 Finally, we must consider the French unions in themselves ; that 
 is, in reference to their administrative organization. 
 
 We have already said that the number of their members was not 
 fixed. This depended on the public necessities, and increased or 
 diminished according to the bent of manners and the tendency of 
 industry. At the commencement of the sixteenth century, the 
 money-brokers union, reduced to five or six heads of families, was 
 so poor that it declared that it could not pay the expense of the silk 
 robes they were required to wear on the entry of Mary of England, 
 second wife of Louis XII. ; while, sixty years later, the mercers 
 included twenty-five hundred families, and, in 1557, Henry II., on 
 a general review of the infantry of Pans, found under arms a body 
 of three thousand mercers, perfectly equipped. 
 
 However large or restricted it might be, every union, considered 
 in itself, had two points of view, viz. administrative and religious. 
 
 The invocation of such and such holy personages, by every union 
 of the middle ages, was no novelty. Among the pagans, the mer 
 chants specially invoked Mercury ; the sailors, Neptune ; laborers, 
 Ceres and Triptolemus. In the middle ages, the drapers invoked 
 Our Lady, {Notre Dame /) the grocers, St. Nicholas ; the mercers, 
 St. Louis ; the furriers, St. Sacrament ; the hosiers, St. Fiacre ; the 
 goldsmiths, St. Eloi. 
 
 Every union, then, as we have said, had two aspects, one reli 
 gious, the other administrative ; and two centres, a church and a 
 bureau. In the church, the ceremonies and prayers of the union 
 were held ; in the bureau, the common interests and general affairs 
 were discussed. To take the six corps of Paris in their order : The 
 drapers had their brotherhood (confrerie) at the principal altar 
 of St. Pierre des Arces, and their community (communante) in the 
 rue des D$chargeurs, (street of porters,) in a house called the car- 
 neaux, (vent-hole,) which belonged in 1527 to Jean-le-Bossu, Arch 
 deacon of Josas. The grocers had their brotherhood at Grands- 
 Augustins, the mercers at St. Sepulchre, the furriers at Carmes des 
 Billettes, the hosiers at the Church of St. Jaques-de-la-Boucherie, 
 the goldsmiths in a chapel in the rue des Deux Portes ; and as to 
 their bureaux, the grocers had theirs in the cloister of St. Oppor- 
 
322 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 % 
 
 tune, the mercers in the rue Quincampoix, the hosiers in the clois 
 ter of St. Jaques, and the goldsmiths in the rue des Deux Fortes. 
 
 The French, like the Roman unions, had a general administration. 
 To understand its mechanism, it is necessary to make first a short 
 digression. 
 
 Between the thirteenth and sixteenth century, a kind of central 
 izing movement occurred in the unions, which consisted in grouping 
 a certain number of them, under the name of metiers, (trades,) 
 around a master-union, under the name of corps. In the time of 
 St. Louis there were only the metiers ; in the time of Louis XII. 
 there were the corps and the metiers. 
 
 The primitive administration of the metiers was much less fixed 
 and less regular than that of the corps was subsequently. There is 
 no doubt that each of the metiers had a treasury, which in the reg 
 ister bore the name of " bolte de la conflairie" It results, also, from 
 a donation of twenty-four houses by Philip Augustus, in the com 
 mencement of his reign, to the drapers, and another of eighteen 
 houses to the furriers, that these two unions, and probably all the 
 others, had certain material interests in common. The administra 
 tors of the general interests of each union differed in their number, 
 in the mode of election, and in the length of their terms of office. 
 
 These administrators bore the name of prud ^homines or gardes. 
 Most of the trades had two ; for example, the beer brewers, the tin 
 potters, the rope makers, the iron cutlers, the locksmiths, the bone- 
 bead makers, and the silk spinners. Others had three, as the gold 
 smiths and the knife cutlers ; some four, as the fullers ; some six, 
 as the farriers ; a small number eight, as the thread and silk fringe 
 makers ; finally, we find some which had twelve, as the talmeliers 
 (bakers) and fruit hucksters. 
 
 It is certain that, primitively that is to say, when the Roman 
 traditions had not yet entirely disappeared, and at the epoch when 
 royalty was not completely mixed up with the unions, the prud - 
 hommes were elected by the corps. There were even in the register 
 some trades that elected their guards, as the goldsmiths; but in 
 most of the trades the prud hommes were, at the beginning of the 
 thirteenth century, nominated by the Prevot of Paris; that is to 
 say, by the king. For all the unions whose prud hommes were 
 nominated by the Prevot of Paris, the duration of their functions 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 323 
 
 was unlimited ; for the prevot maintained or changed them at will. 
 But the fullers were an exception to this. Their prud hommes, by 
 special law, were changed every six months. In the unions in 
 which the prud hommes were elective, the usual term of their func 
 tions was for a year. The goldsmiths union had this peculiarity, 
 that the guards were not re-eligible until after the expiration of 
 three years. 
 
 There remains one point to exhaust all that is necessary to be 
 said about the metiers that is, their jurisdiction. We know that 
 in the middle ages, an epoch full of small associations, forming so 
 many small and almost independent states, the jurisdictions were 
 numerous. Thus, the scholar appealed to the university ; the priest 
 to the bishop ; the burgher to the hotel de ville ; the gentleman to 
 the king. The trades, also, had a jurisdiction. This jurisdiction 
 was not complete ; that is to say, the trades had no tribunal before 
 which every member of the union had the right of demanding a 
 trial for any offence, as every scholar had the right of claiming 
 the jurisdiction of the university. That could not be, because 
 every member of an union of Paris was at the same time a burgher, 
 and hence this latter character subjected him to the jurisdiction of 
 the hotel de ville. The jurisdiction of the trades was partial, and 
 only embraced offences committed against the statutes of each union. 
 
 Well ! this jurisdiction of the trades was exercised ejther by the 
 prevot of Paris or by the grand officers of the crown. We know 
 that the Roman unions all depended on the officers of the palace. 
 It was the same with the unions of the middle ages, which royalty 
 had subjected to its grand officers. Thus, the grand pantler had 
 under him the bakers ; the grand cook, the fishermen ; the grand 
 chamberlain, the mercers, drapers, furriers, and frippers ; the grand 
 butler, the wine merchants. The jurisdiction exercised by these 
 grand officers carried with it an annual tax on the part of the trades, 
 besides fines and confiscations. For this reason, the supreme mas 
 tership of the trades was, in fact, an endowment worthy of being 
 conferred by feudal title. 
 
 Such was the situation of the trades toward the middle of the 
 thirteenth century. We can follow the different variations which 
 they subsequently underwent, first, in the forty or forty-five ordon- 
 nances relative to the unions, issued by the Prevots of Paris down 
 
324 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 % 
 
 to the commencement of the fourteenth century, and, next, in the 
 royal ordonnances down to the sixteenth, the epoch when they 
 acquired a fixed organization. 
 
 Since the end of the fifteenth century, as we have said, the corps 
 were already formed. Under Louis XII. , on the entrance of Mary 
 of England, there were six, called the six corps of Paris, and they 
 ranked in this order : the drapers, the grocers, the mercers, the 
 leather dealers, the hosiers, and the goldsmiths. Henry III. erected 
 the wine merchants into a seventh corps, and their letters-patent 
 were confirmed by Henry IV., Louis XIII., and Louis XIV. Never 
 theless, the other corps were unwilling to receive them into their 
 assemblies. Moreover, it was only after an infinite succession of 
 troubles, disputes, wranglings, revolts, and suits that the rank of the 
 corps was definitely settled as we have stated. 
 
 The six corps formed, as it were, the aristocracy of the trades, in 
 this sense, that they expressed their interests and were their head. 
 Their emblem was a Hercules, seated, trying to break a fasces of 
 six rods, with this device : Vincit concordia fratrum. The six corps 
 represented industry in great ceremonies, and in truth summed up 
 all its political value. 
 
 At the commencement of the seventeenth century, the six corps 
 petitioned the city for special arms. Master Christopher Sanguin, 
 prevot of merchants, granted their request, and accorded to them 
 arms, as follows : 
 
 The drapers bore : azure, a ship of silver, with the banner of 
 France, an open eye en chef, with this legend : Ut ccztera dirigat. 
 In fact, the drapers were the first corps. Others blazoned their 
 escutcheon thus : silver, a vessel of gold, sails and flag azure, sail 
 ing on a sea of sinople. These were, as we see, the arms of in 
 quiry. We have found no author who gives a reason for it. 
 
 The grocers bore : azure and gold couped. On the azure a silver 
 hand holding golden scales. On the gold two ships floating gules, 
 (red,) with the banner of France; two red stars en chef; with this 
 device : Lances et ponder a servant. In fact, the grocers had charge 
 of the standard of weights at Paris. 
 
 The arms of the mercers were : sinople, three silver ships, with the 
 banner of France, placed two and one, en chef a golden sun with 
 eight rays, between two ships. Their device was, Toto orbe sequimur. 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 32$ 
 
 The leather dealers, who claimed to have received their arms from 
 a Duke of Bourbon, Count of Clermont, grand chamberlain of 
 France in 1368, bore : azure, a silver paschal lamb, holding a red 
 banner ; on it a golden cross. The shield was supported by two 
 ermines, and had a ducal crown for its crest. 
 
 The hosiers, who only became a corps under Louis XII., by the 
 withdrawal of the money-changers, bore : azure, five silver ships 
 with the banner of France ; en chef, a golden star. 
 
 The goldsmiths, confirmed in their privileges and statutes by 
 Philip IV., received from him in 1330 their arms. They were : 
 gules, (red,) a golden cross dentelled, cantoned on the first and 
 fourth quarters with a golden cup ; on the second and third, a 
 golden crown ; en chef, France. Their device was : In sacra in- 
 que coronas. 
 
 It is to be remarked that four of the six corps, viz. the drapers, 
 grocers, mercers, and hosiers, had their arms by municipal grant, 
 which explains why the ship (nef) of the coat of arms of the hotel 
 de ville of Paris appears so abundantly on their escutcheons. 
 
 Such, with perhaps some other details of small importance, was 
 the organization of the trades unions of the middle ages. If the 
 reader has observed with some care the general spirit of their stat 
 utes, he will have seen that they were at once a guaranty for society, 
 for industry, and for the public. 
 
 The unions were a guaranty for society, first, because they regu 
 lated the condition of the working classes, maintained order and 
 emulation among them, and were, in a measure, the guards of the most 
 restless and turbulent parts of the population; next, because corpo 
 rations of every kind are always conservative in their nature, and 
 the countries where they exist can always venture more in liberal 
 enterprises, as they are strongly restrained by the chains of tradi 
 tions. 
 
 The unions were also a guaranty for industry, because they cre 
 ated a hierarchy among the laborers, establishing among them de 
 grees, which were reached by time, labor, and intelligence; and 
 because they inexorably closed the door of the professions to all 
 those who did not bring in their hands the golden branch of talent 
 and good conduct. 
 
 The unions were, finally, a guaranty for the public; for the strict- 
 
326 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 4) 
 
 ness of those who guarded their statutes admitted to mastership only 
 those who were long practised in a profession, and could prove, by 
 the perfection of their masterpieces, that they accepted all its obli 
 gations, and were proficients in its exercise. 
 
 But how did it happen that, with all these incontestable ad vantages, 
 the unions ended by becoming the objects of general animadversion, 
 and the constituent assembly abolished them with as much enthusi 
 asm as they did titles and feudal rights? How happened it that the 
 masterships, that knighthood of the people, found no mercy at the 
 hands of the democratic destructives of the end of the last century ? 
 And if burgher institutions fell pell-mell under their hands, along 
 with royal institutions, was it blindness, contempt, or stupidity? 
 
 No ! It must be admitted that it was not solely the fault of the 
 constituent assembly that the unions fell. It was also the fault of 
 the unions themselves. 
 
 From the middle of the fourteenth century, in 1358, Charles of 
 Valois, Duke of Normandy, Dauphin of France, and regent of the 
 kingdom during the captivity of King John, expressed in these 
 terms, in an ordonnance relative to tailors, the coming condemna 
 tion of the unions. Speaking of the regulations concerning the 
 unions, he said: " Generally they are made more in favor and for 
 the profit of individuals of each trade than for the common good." 
 Behold the true germ, which, in its development, has killed the 
 unions egotism. 
 
 In fact and this was, however, less a crime of intention than a 
 misfortune of the times when the unions were established, it was 
 without any general plan, and without any social preoccupation. 
 Each of them only thought of itself, and thought only of aggran 
 dizing itself, no matter at whose or what cost. Instead, then, of 
 being co-ordinates, they were rather in a state of strife. This is 
 why they perished. 
 
 Toward the end of the eighteenth century, the clashing of the 
 opposite interests of the several unions rendefed almost all progress 
 in industry impossible, because each union was absolute master in 
 the kind of work which the statutes guaranteed to them respectively. 
 For example, if four or five trades had to co-operate in any product, 
 each one of them could stop all improvement by refusing, through 
 ignorance or interest, to do otherwise than their forefathers had 
 
WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 327 
 
 done. It is, then, certain that the unions which founded profes 
 sional industry in France, ended by becoming obstacles to its devel 
 opment ; but as the evil came from want of unity and general agree 
 ment in their statutes, the remedy was to be found in their revision, 
 and not in their destruction. The destructives of the constituent 
 assembly therefore overstepped the mark ; for, instead of removing 
 the disease, they killed the patient. 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 SUMMARY. 
 
 HERE ends the task we have imposed on ourselves in this 
 book ; and that its general course may remain clearly traced 
 on the mind of the reader, we sum up its principal ideas. 
 
 We commenced by stating the fact, subsequently proved in the 
 course of the work, that the laboring and burgher classes, in all 
 countries where they exist, came from a previous emancipation of 
 slaves. 
 
 This fact once established, we were led to prove that primitively 
 slavery existed among all the peoples of the world, without excep 
 tion. Then we have inquired whence came this slavery universally 
 existing in the first ages of every nation ; and we have concluded, 
 from the study and comparison of a great mass of facts, that slavery 
 was born in the primitive family and, consequently, it was not 
 originally established by the hand of man. 
 
 These ideas stated and discussed, we have followed the slave races 
 to their emerging from slavery by emancipation, and have seen them 
 divide into two great columns one formed of the industrial freed- 
 men, who gathered together in the cities ; the other formed of the 
 agricultural freedmen, who were scattered through the country. 
 The first form the commune and the burghers ; the second, feudal 
 ism and the peasants. 
 
 Arrived at this point, we have treated separately the history of 
 these two great divisions of the freed races. 
 
328 THE WORKING AND BURGHER CLASSES. 
 
 The commune appeared to us to be the administrative association 
 of the freedmen ; the trades union their industrial association. As 
 there are freedmen among all the peoples of the world, we have 
 concluded that there were also, communes and trades unions among 
 all the nations of the universe. 
 
 Feudalism seems to us to be the government which regulates the 
 relations of the agricultural freedmen to their masters; and, as there 
 have been agricultural freedmen in all countries, we have concluded 
 that feudalism was an element of ancient as of modern history. 
 
 Below the burghers and the peasants, outside of the commune 
 and feudalism, we have found those who could not support them 
 selves, who form the class of beggars, and constitute pauperism. 
 
 Alongside of the burghers and the peasants, we have found those 
 who were unwilling to live their life, and who, in the three great 
 categories of literary slaves, courtesans, and bandits, gained by in 
 tellect, beauty, or force, what birth had refused to them. 
 
 Such, excepting some transpositions of chapters required by the 
 logic of our ideas, is the book which we present to the public. It 
 is a faithful picture of the historic fortune of the slave races, in 
 which we see what they were before becoming, and to become, what 
 they are. 
 
 We are stopped on the threshold of the present : there, where 
 the historian meets the publicist ; the affirmation theory ; facts the 
 idea. 
 
POSTSCRIPT. 
 
 WE have already alluded briefly (see p. xlviii.) to the repug 
 nance of the non-slaveholding whites of the South to the 
 proposition for negro enlistments in the Confederate armies ; a 
 repugnance which even the great name and magic influence of 
 Robert E. Lee could not overcome. This proposition was advo 
 cated by General Lee at a late period of the civil war perhaps too 
 late to have changed the results. Reluctant as we are to detain our 
 readers, we would feel that our part of this work was incomplete if 
 we failed to notice the fact, that long before General Lee came to 
 that conclusion, there was one man whose forecast anticipated that 
 some such measure would be indispensable to the success of the 
 Confederate cause. That man was Colonel John T. Pickett, who 
 was selected, on account of his previous Mexican experience, as 
 the first diplomatic agent of the Confederate States in Mexico. 
 Early in the war under date of Vera Cruz, February 22, 1862 
 he submitted, for the consideration of the Confederate Government, 
 the following 
 
 "MEMORANDUM. 
 
 "Is there no mode by which we may be able to neutralize the 
 hostility existing throughout the world against our institution of do 
 mestic servitude ? It is in vain to attempt to correct the gross mis 
 apprehensions prevailing with regard to it. The word ( slavery is 
 sufficient to condemn it among the peoples. Can we not invent a 
 better and more appropriate name for it ? It is not slavery as 
 understood among men ; but we bear the odium as though it were. 
 The enactment of laws which would prohibit the separation of 
 mothers and children, (though what white family is not so sepa 
 rated?) the granting to the negroes certain civil rights, (so to speak,) 
 
 22 $29 
 
X 
 
 33 POSTSCRIPT. 
 
 
 
 such as protection from cruel and arbitrary punishment, right to 
 change their masters if maltreated, privilege to purchase their free 
 dom, etc., etc., might go far toward the end so much to be de 
 sired. Practically, these things do exist to a certain extent. The 
 force of public opinion is protection to the negro, not to speak of 
 the interest and even affection of the master. But the world at large 
 knows not these things, and cannot or will not be convinced ; 
 whereas, an expression of the supreme legislative will would appeal 
 to the governments and to the enlightenment of the age. I resided 
 for years in the British West Indies, made many visits to Hayti and 
 to the Dominican Republic, have seen only too much of the fruits 
 of indiscriminate equality among the mongrels and hybrids of Span 
 ish America, and therefore no one can entertain sounder views on 
 the great domestic question than I do. In short, emancipation with 
 out deportation would be national suicide ; with it, a chimera. 
 
 These suggestions were not acted on for two reasons : first, be 
 cause the question was a local one, belonging exclusively to the 
 States, and the Confederate authorities had no constitutional power 
 to touch it in any way ; secondly, because their whole time, atten 
 tion, thoughts, and energies were absorbed in the question of de 
 fence of repelling the armed invasion of their territory. 
 
 Colonel Pickett s idea was, that the inauguration of a scheme of 
 gradual emancipation would emasculate the Abolition party of the 
 North, satisfy Europe, and secure intervention, peace, and inde 
 pendence ; and that although the Constitution of the Confederate 
 States gave to the Confederate Government no right to interfere with 
 the local institutions of the States, yet the Confederate Congress 
 might, by joint resolution, recommend some such action to the State 
 Legislatures, and justify their recommendation by the plea of " mili 
 tary necessity" which in time of war covers, like charity at all 
 times, a multitude of sins. 
 
 Colonel Pickett soon found that he could accomplish nothing by 
 remaining in Mexico, and, without waiting for instructions from his 
 Government, returned to take part in the active service of the field, 
 as chief of staff to General Breckinridge. As Mr. Colwell, under 
 the excitements of the war, came to the conclusion that negro 
 slavery should be sacrificed to save the Union, so Colonel Pickett, 
 
POSTSCRIPT. 331 
 
 from his standpoint, under the influence of his associations with the 
 diplomatic representatives of the monarchies and empires of Europe, 
 came to the conclusion that the institution should be sacrificed to 
 secure European intervention, peace, and independence. 
 
 Subsequently, he ran as a candidate for the Confederate Congress, 
 against General Humphrey Marshall, that he might officially and 
 more effectually ventilate his views in favor of negro enlistments 
 and gradual emancipation. He was defeated, not, as he supposes, 
 by any intrigues of General Marshall, but because it got bruited 
 about among the non-slaveholding whites that he was in favor of 
 negro enlistments and gradual emancipation. 
 
 Still later, he learned that the Confederate Government contem 
 plated sending another minister to Mexico, and, for the benefit of 
 his successor in that mission, submitted the suggestions of his expe 
 rience, as follows : 
 
 " The cause of Mexican hate toward us, as individuals and as 
 a nation, is patent. ... It may be said to arise, firstly, from the 
 great aversion of the Mexicans to negro slavery ; and, secondly, 
 from jealousy of race, the natural dread a weaker people have for 
 a stronger neighbor, and from the artfully contrived teachings of 
 the United States Government as to past and future aggressions upon 
 Mexican territory. 
 
 "As to the first proposition. It is impossible to unteach the Mexi 
 can mind on the subject of slavery. We daily feel what an aboli 
 tion propaganda has done among a more enlightened people. But 
 it ought to be in our power to persuade Mexican statesmen (for it 
 will be with Mexicans that our diplomatist will have to deal, even 
 under the government of Maximilian) that, although slavery has both 
 its moral and political blessings, and as practised in the Confederate 
 States, it is but a mode of hiring servants for life, while in other coun 
 tries they are employed by the day, month, or year, yet we have never 
 designed to force the institution upon our neighbor. It can be shown, 
 too, that free colored people are regarded with more consideration 
 and entitled to more substantial privileges among us, though not 
 admitted to social and political equality, than in the United States. 
 Our history will furnish instances. General Jackson treated the free 
 
332 POSTSCRIPT. 
 
 
 
 colored inhabitants of New Orleans as citizens, in a certain sense. 
 We know that a large class in Mobile, of the present day, termed 
 * Creoles, are colored people, (whence the popular error as to the 
 true signification of that word,) of French and Spanish admixture. 
 It is also a fact that many adopted citizens of Texas have African 
 blood in their veins. Neither did our Southerners in California ob 
 ject to the eminent Don Pio Pico because of his negro blood. But 
 California, an Abolition State, refuses citizenship to the Chinese, (to 
 which refusal the writer does not object, individually,) while, to my 
 knowledge, some of the best families in Mexico have Chinese blood 
 in their veins the natural consequence of the annual galleon be 
 tween Acapulco and Manilla. I was on very friendly terms with 
 the head of one of these families, Don Luis Jauregui. But the most 
 striking contrast of this whole picture would be the treatment which 
 the negroes received from a New York mob not many months ago. 
 
 " It would be an ungracious office, but we might remind the Mex 
 icans that they enslave their own race. Indeed, white peons are 
 very numerous, and peonage is the most atrocious system ever con 
 ceived of. It is slavery for debt, without provision for infancy, sick 
 ness, or old age. It is transmitted from father to son, while with us 
 the child takes the condition of the mother only. But hear Com 
 modore Perry on the subject of Mexican peonage. God pity these 
 poor creatures ! says the commodore in his journal, in reference to 
 the laboring classes of the Lew Chew Islands. 1 1 have seen much 
 of the world, have observed savage life in many of its conditions, 
 but never, unless I may except the miserable peons of Mexico, have 
 I looked upon such an amount of apparent wretchedness as these 
 squalid slaves would seem to suffer. 
 
 " It is a system which would have disgraced the laws of Draco, 
 which are said to have been written in blood. If we were as hypo 
 critical and meddlesome as our Northern brethren, and were in a 
 condition to do so, we might cajole the world by a crusade against 
 this enslavement of white men. We might create a great sensation, 
 too, by broaching a scheme for the amalgamation of the white and 
 red races of the continent. Why should it not be as great an honor 
 to claim the blood of Montezuma as that of Powhatan ? At least, let 
 us impress Mexicans with the fact that we have no prejudice against 
 their native race that Indians are citizens with us, and sit in our 
 
POSTSCRIPT. 333 
 
 national legislature. It would be well, also, to explain to them that 
 it is in the abolition programme to colonize Mexico with North 
 American negroes of the Protestant (i. e. heretic ) faith, and speak 
 ing the English language. 
 
 "As a proof that Mexico is thoroughly abolitionized, I will men 
 tion that, during my long residence as United States Consul at Vera 
 Cruz, I never succeeded in reclaiming, by intervention of local 
 authority, a single negro deserter from the vessels of my nation ; 
 while, on the other hand, I scarcely ever failed to have the white 
 sailors returned promptly. I think the accomplished gentleman * 
 mentioned in connection with the secretaryship of the new mission 
 has some official knowledge of this fact. I will dismiss this part of 
 my theme by suggesting that the envoy procure some of our stand 
 ard Southern works on the slavery question. They may be useful 
 to him, and cannot, probably, be procured in Mexico. He can 
 easily obtain the published Northern view of the subject in that 
 capital, and should do so. Fas est ab hoste doceri. 
 
 Colonel Pickett is an accomplished scholar, a sound thinker, a 
 quick and acute observer. Yet the standpoint from which his ob 
 servations were taken did not command a view of the whole field. 
 He looked at the subject only as a diplomatist, intent on one object, 
 viz. peace and independence through the instrumentality of an 
 European intervention. Consequently, like M. Guizot, (see ante, 
 p. 134,) with many clear and correct views, he stopped halfway on 
 his road to a great discovery. He saw that the world is governed 
 by sensations; but he did not prosecute his inquiries far enough to 
 discover who created these sensations, and for what purposes. If he 
 had done so, he would have seen that self-interest was at the bot 
 tom; that "man advances in the execution of a plan which he has 
 not conceived, of which he is not even aware, and which he compre 
 hends very imperfectly," while " its designs are centred in a single 
 or in few minds." 
 
 He saw that the diplomatic representatives of European despot 
 isms were bitterly and unchangeably opposed to the peculiar institu 
 tion of negro slavery in the Southern States, while they had no word 
 
 * Walker Fearn, Esq., Secretary of Legation to Mexico with the Hon. John 
 Forsyth, Minister Plenipotentiary. 
 
*- 
 
 334 POSTSCRIPT. 
 
 of sympathy for the far more wretched condition of the peons of 
 Mexico, nor for the slaves of the Lew Chew Islands and of the 
 British East Indies. 
 
 He did not stop, or rather he did not go on, to inquire why this 
 was so. If he had, he would have discovered that negro servitude, 
 as it existed in the Southern States, being a peculiar institution, pro 
 duced peculiar political and politico-economical results. 
 
 i st. Its tendency was to strengthen the democratic principle of 
 political and social equality among the rich and poor whites. 
 
 2d. It elevated the whites, however poor they might be, above 
 the degradation of selling their votes. 
 
 3d. It married capital to labor, by making it the interest of cap 
 ital to keep up wages, which went into its pocket, and to keep down 
 the cost of living, which came out of its pocket. 
 
 4th. The result of these peculiar influences was to give stability to 
 free institutions, causing the Southern States to be "constantly in 
 clined most strongly to the side of liberty; the first to see and the first 
 to resist the encroachments of power ; and, by the marriage of capital 
 to labor, it enlisted capital on the side of labor against that legisla 
 tive policy which seeks to cheapen labor, to increase taxes, and to 
 squander the taxes paid by labor for the profit of capital." (See Cal- 
 houn s speech, ante, p. xxxii.) 
 
 If Colonel Pickett had pushed his observations beyond the diplo 
 matic into the politico-economical field of inquiry, he would have 
 discovered that, on the part of the advocates of centralism and of 
 capital, emancipation was the chief object of the war ; because, 
 
 i st. Emancipation would divorce Southern capital from labor; 
 
 2d. It would destroy the chief support of the democratic princi 
 ple of equality among the whites, and place the Government on the 
 inclined plane to monarchy ; 
 
 3d. It would substitute for the incorruptible votes of the poor 
 whites of the South the cheaply purchasable votes of negro freedmen, 
 to neutralize the votes of the working and burgher classes of the 
 North and West. 
 
 When Colonel Pickett said that "emancipation without deporta 
 tion would be national suicide ; with it, a chimera, he spoke of im 
 mediate emancipation in mass. His observations and experience in 
 Mexico and the West Indies doubtless satisfied him, as ours did us, 
 
POSTSCRIPT. 335 
 
 that deportation was surrounded with practical difficulties which made 
 the scheme chimerical. Those difficulties were, first, the enormous 
 expense of moving 4,000,000 of people, and of taking care of them 
 in transitu, and until located in new homes ; second, their inability 
 to take care of themselves after they were located, as shown by the 
 fate of the American negro colony on the island of Santo Domingo ; 
 third, the inhumanity of the "frightful misery" which must inev 
 itably result from turning them off to take care of themselves ; and, 
 finally, because their labor was indispensable where they were, and 
 could not be supplied except by a slow and gradual system, running 
 through a long course of years. 
 
 This idea of gradual emancipation with deportation originated 
 with Mr. Jefferson, fifty years ago long before the vvty peculiar 
 politico-economical results of the peculiar institution were analyzed 
 by the master mind of Calhoun. Up to the close of the war, de 
 portation of the negroes was a favorite idea with most of the prom 
 inent leaders of the monarchical cheap-labor party. 
 
 On the 8th of December, 1859, Senator Trumbull said : 
 
 "When we say that all men are created equal, we do not mean 
 that every man in organized society has the same rights. We do 
 not tolerate that in Illinois. I know that there is a distinction be 
 tween these two races, because the Almighty himself has marked it 
 upon their very faces ; and, in my judgment, man cannot, by legis 
 lation or otherwise, produce a perfect equality between these races, 
 so that they will live happily together. ... I trust that an idea 
 foreshadowed by Mr. Jefferson will hereafter become, although it is 
 not now, part of the creed of the Republican party. I mean the 
 idea of the deportation of the free negro population from this country. 
 ... It seems irtipracticable to transport this great population to 
 Africa. Let us obtain a country nearer home ; and I know I may 
 say for the people whom I represent, we will contribute liberally of 
 our means to relieve the country of the free negro population. I 
 hope it may become the policy of the Republican party ... to 
 deliver the country from the only element which ever seriously 
 threatened its peace, and furnish the means of relieving it from the 
 evils of a large free negro population. By such a course we may 
 lay the foundation for continued and permanent prosperity." 
 
336 POSTSCRIPT. 
 
 
 On the 1 3th of April, 1860, Senator John Sherman, in a speech 
 
 at the Cooper Institute, New York, favored the idea of the "gradual 
 colonization of the negro population of the United States in the 
 Central American States," where they might be "free from the 
 domination of the white race. 
 
 On the yth of March, 1860, Senator Wade, of Ohio, said, in the 
 Senate of the United States : 
 
 "This great Government owes it to various pressing considera 
 tions to provide a means whereby the free negroes may emigrate to 
 some congenial clime, where they may be maintained to the mutual 
 benefit of all. This would insure a separation of the races. Let 
 them go into the tropics. There are vast tracts of most fertile and 
 inviting lands, in a climate perfectly congenial to that class of men, 
 where the negro will be predominant, where his nature seems to 
 be improved, and all his faculties, both mental and physical, are 
 fully developed, and where the white man degenerates in the same 
 proportion as the black man prospers. Let them go there ; let them 
 be separated ; it is easy to do it. They will be so far removed from 
 us that they cannot form a disturbing element in wx political economy. 
 ... I hope, after that is done, to hear no more about negro 
 equality, or anything of the kind. We shall be as glad to rid our 
 selves of these people as anybody else can." 
 
 On the 2ist of August, 1858, at Ottawa, 111., Mr. Lincoln said: 
 
 " I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality be 
 tween the white and black races. There is a physical difference 
 between the two, which, in my judgment, will probably forever for 
 bid their living together upon the footing of perfect equality; and, 
 inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that there must be a difference, I 
 am in favor of the race to which I belong having the superior posi 
 tion." 
 
 In the course of his canvass with Mr. Douglas, in Illinois, in 1858, 
 Mr. Lincoln repeatedly declared that he was opposed to "a social 
 and political equality between the white and black races ; that he 
 "was not in favor of negro citizenship; " and that he would "to 
 the very last stand by the law of Illinois which forbade the marriage 
 of white people with negroes." He also declared that, in his 
 
POSTSCRIPT. 337 
 
 "opinion, it would be best for all concerned to have the colored 
 population in a State by themselves. 
 
 Finally, in his messages to Congress and otherwise, Mr. Lincoln 
 urgently advocated gradual emancipation with deportation. 
 
 In his annual message, December 3, 1861, he said : 
 
 " To carry out the plan of colonization may involve the acquiring 
 of territory, and also the appropriation of money beyond that to 
 be expended in the territorial acquisition. . . . If it be said that 
 the only legitimate object of acquiring territory is to furnish homes 
 for white men, this measure effects that object ; for the e?nigration 
 of colored men leaves additional room for white men remaining or 
 coming here. Mr. Jefferson, however, placed the importance of 
 procuring Louisiana more on political and commercial grounds than 
 on providing room for population. 
 
 "On this whole proposition, including the appropriation of money 
 with the acquisition of territory, does not the expediency amount to 
 absolute necessity that without which the Government itself cannot 
 be perpetuated ? 
 
 This amounts to an assertion by Mr. Lincoln that emancipation 
 without deportation would be national suicide. 
 
 But why tear from their homes, and from the " kind, protecting 
 care" they then enjoyed, 4,000,000 of negroes, to banish them to 
 the "frightful misery" of taking care of themselves in the Central 
 American States ? Did any idea of good will for the negroes enter 
 into this scheme for their banishment ? Surely not ; for when Mr. 
 R. M. T. Hunter, at the Hampton Roads conference, alluded to 
 the sufferings which would result to the old and infirm, and to the 
 women and children, who were unable to support themselves, the 
 only answer was the following story, told by Mr. Lincoln : 
 
 "An Illinois farmer was congratulating himself with a neighbor 
 upon a great discovery he had made, by which he could economize 
 time and labor in gathering and taking care of the food crop for 
 his hogs, as well as trouble in looking after and feeding them during 
 the winter. 
 
 " What is it? said the neighbor. 
 
 " Why, it is/ said the farmer, to plant plenty of potatoes, and 
 
338 POSTSCRIPT. 
 
 ft 
 when they mature, without either digging or housing them, turn the 
 
 hogs in the field, and let them get their own food as they want it. 
 " But, said the neighbor, how will that do when the winter 
 
 comes, and the ground is hard frozen ? 
 " Well, said the farmer, let em root! " 
 (See the War between the States, by A. H. Stephens, vol. ii., p. 
 
 615. Barrett s Life of Lincoln, p. 827.) 
 
 From the inhumanity of saying to the old and infirm negroes, 
 and to the women and children who were unable to support them 
 selves, "Root, hog, or die" the Southern people shrank with greater 
 indignation than Plutarch felt for Cato. (See p. 275.) There was 
 no trace of benevolence or pity for the negroes in that sentiment. 
 
 Did an overcrowded territory require that the negroes should be 
 driven out, like the Indians, to make additional room for white men? 
 It is true that Mr. Lincoln s message of December 3, 1861, gives 
 prominence to this argument, and his message of December i, 1862, 
 elaborates the idea that the time is fast approaching when our popu 
 lation will have so increased, that, "instead of receiving the foreign- 
 born, as now, we shall be compelled to send part of the native-born 
 (the negroes} away. To show when that time would probably arrive, 
 Mr. Lincoln, or rather Mr. Seward, (for his handiwork is clearly per 
 ceptible in both messages,) said : " Several of our States are already 
 above the average of Europe 73^ to a square mile. Massachu 
 setts has 157, Rhode Island 133, Connecticut 99, etc., etc." 
 
 Then he gives a tabular statement of decennial increase, showing 
 that in 1930 our population may reach the overcrowded number of 
 251,680,914; and concludes thus : 
 
 " These figures show that our country may be as populous as 
 Europe now is, at some point between 1920 and 1930 say about 
 1925 our territory, at 73^ persons to the square mile, being the 
 capacity to contain 217,186,000." 
 
 Now, this argument of Mr. Seward, and his ingenious sophistries 
 about capital and labor in the same messages, were as false and as 
 deceptive as his dogma of the irrepressible conflict between free labor 
 and slave labor. They were adroitly and ably prepared for the 
 express purpose of misleading and enticing the working and burgher 
 
POSTSCRIPT. 359 
 
 classes of the North into an indiscretion, a false step, against their 
 natural ally and politically-wedded spouse ; the consequence of which 
 would be, and since has been, a declaration of the Attorney-General 
 that labor is now a divorced grass-widow ! 
 
 The so-miscalled Republican party were not acting in good faith 
 with white labor when they endeavored, in 1861 and 1862, to make 
 it appear that their purpose was to drive out the negroes to make 
 additional room for the rapidly increasing white population. This is 
 apparent from the fact that, since their object has been accomplished, 
 by divorcing capital from labor by emancipation, we hear nothing 
 more said about deporting the negroes. So far from being the spe 
 cial friends of the negroes, they were actuated by a malevolence to 
 the negro almost as atrocious as Sherman s treatment of the women 
 and children of the white working classes of Atlanta. This is ap 
 parent from the proposition to drive away the negroes from their 
 comfortable homes, and say to their old and infirm and women and 
 children, " Root for yourselves, like hogs, or die / " 
 
 Moreover, in the same message, in speaking of our vast territory 
 of 2,963,000 square miles, Mr. Seward admits that they furnish 
 abundant room, a broad national homestead, an ample resource 
 against an overcrowded condition for at least fifty years to come 
 perhaps much longer. Then, why drive the poor negro away now, 
 into the Central American States, to Santo Domingo, or elsewhere ? 
 
 Mr. Seward, the Oily Gammon of politics, throws out a cautious 
 intimation that, like Mr. Jefferson s acquisition of Louisiana, there 
 was apolitical object to be gained. Bluff Ben Wade, in his bluff 
 way, blurts out the true answer, and says, "The negroes form a dis 
 turbing element in our POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 Why disturbing ? We have already given the true answer, but it 
 cannot be repeated too often. If Mr. Wade was candidly and con 
 fidentially explaining this disturbance to one of his party friends or 
 followers, his language, substituting dashes for the oaths with which 
 he sandwiches his discourse, would be about as follows : 
 
 " This peculiar institution, under which these negroes 
 
 exist in this country, has peculiar results. , it mar 
 ries capital to labor. It makes the owners of negroes vote 
 
 with the working-men in the North and West. they want 
 
34O POSTSCRIPT. 
 
 ^ 
 
 to keep up wages, because wages go into their pockets. They 
 
 legislate with a view to keep down the cost of living, because they 
 
 have to feed and clothe and nurse and take care of the negroes, 
 
 and that comes out of their pockets. And , they go in for 
 
 what they call an honest and economical administration of the Gov 
 ernment, and they oppose our little occasional appropriations 
 
 of a few millions or so, with which to enrich our party friends ; and 
 
 , they whine about these paltry millions coming partly out of 
 
 their own pockets and partly out of the pockets of the work 
 ing and burgher classes of the North and West. But , these 
 
 owners of negroes treat poor white men as equals. Now, 
 
 all these disturbances of our political economy grow out of this 
 
 marriage of capital to labor in the South. We must divorce, them. 
 
 We must separate the white from the negro race. We must send 
 
 the negroes off into the tropics. Then Southern capital will 
 
 vote with Northern and Western capital, and we can, by subtle and 
 artful fiscal contrivances of legislation, impose as many burdens on 
 
 the working-men, and grant as many privileges to capital, and 
 
 make as many and as large appropriations for the benefit of our 
 
 party friends as we please. And if we can get rid of these 
 
 negroes by sending them away into the tropics, we can get 
 
 rid of the democratic notion of the slave power about 
 
 the equality of white men, which this peculiar institution 
 
 fosters." 
 
 As we have said, there can be no doubt that Mr. Seward prepared 
 those portions of Mr. Lincoln s annual messages of 1861 and 1862 
 relative to the deportation of the colored population. It is not to 
 be supposed, however, that Mr. Lincoln would have sent those mes 
 sages to Congress without the concurrence and approval of the other 
 members of his cabinet. These were S. P. Chase, Simon Cameron, 
 Gideon Welles, Caleb B. Smith, Edward Bates, and Edwin M. 
 Stanton. Now, if Mr. Lincoln and these his cabinet officers, and 
 Senators Trumbull, Wade, and Sherman are to be accepted as the 
 authorized exponents of the principles and policy of the so-miscalled 
 Republican party, we have, in these messages and in the speeches 
 of those senators, an official declaration of a purpose to drive the 
 colored population out of the country, to make more room for white 
 
POSTSCRIPT. 341 
 
 population, accompanied with the suggestion that it was a necessity, 
 without which t:he Government itself could not be perpetuated ! 
 
 Let the colored population bear this always in mind ! ! 
 
 Let the white population of the North and West bear in mind 
 that since then the so-miscalled Republican party have taken a new 
 departure ! ! ! 
 
 Now, instead of " sending the negro population into the Central 
 American States, where they may be free from the domination of 
 the white race," they have subjected the white race in the South to 
 the domination of the negro. Why this new departure ? Because 
 they wish to use the cheaply purchasable votes of the negro freed- 
 men to neutralize the votes of the white working and burgher 
 classes of the North and West, and hope so to use 4,000,000 of 
 negro freedmen as to secure to themselves the power to govern and 
 tax 40,000,000 of whites. 
 
 What Attorney-General Akerman says is true: "Emancipation 
 has DIVORCED the interests of CAPITAL from the interests of LABOR. 
 By this divorce the working and burgher classes have lost their 
 " natural ally " Now, they must, single-handed and alone, resist 
 the encroachments of power, and the "subtle and artful fiscal con 
 trivances by which capital seeks to divide the wealth of all civilized 
 communities so unequally, and to allot so small a share to those by 
 whose labor it was produced, and so large a share to the non-pro 
 ducing classes." 
 
 This divorce was intended to be, and is, complete and perpetual. 
 It is a divorce a mensa et thoro and a vinctdo. There is no appeal. 
 The decree is irreversible, and it forbids the parties from marrying 
 again. No one at the North or West, not one in ten thousand at 
 the South, indulges in the delusive dream of a restoration of negro 
 slavery. 
 
 What remains ? Much of hope and encouragement in the future 
 of the working and burgher classes. With their eyes opened to the 
 tricks by which centralism and capital cajoled them into a crusade- 
 against their natural allies, and by brute force " divorced capital 
 from labor by emancipation," they may find in the experience of the 
 past a light to guide them in the future.. If they would successfully 
 resist the encroachments of power, and the artful contrivances of 
 capital, they must go back to the political principles of Washington, 
 
342 POSTSCRIPT. 
 
 % 
 
 Jefferson, and Calhoun ; principles which Washington, Jefferson, 
 and Calhoun termed republican, while the monarchists and capital 
 ists of New England, in derision and by way of reproach, called 
 them democratic. 
 
 A few more words to the National Labor party. On the 25th of 
 January, 1871, their committee, under a resolution of the National 
 Labor Congress held at Cincinnati, in August, 1870, called a conven 
 tion to meet at Columbus, Ohio, at 10 o clock, A. M., on the third 
 Wednesday of October, 1871, for the purpose of. nominating candi 
 dates for the offices of President and Vice -President ofUhe United 
 States, and the transaction of such other business as may properly 
 come before them. 
 
 On the 2pth of May, 1871, H. M. Turner, (negro,) -as President 
 of the Georgia State Convention, issued a proclamation addressed 
 to the colored citizens of the States of Alabama, Arkansas, Dela 
 ware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Tennessee, Maryland, 
 Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas, Vir 
 ginia, West Virginia, and the Territory of Columbia." 
 
 This proclamation calls a convention of the colored citizens of the 
 States above named to meet at Columbia, S. C., on the i&th day of 
 October, 1871, at 12 o 1 clock, M. 
 
 Now let the working and burgher classes of the North and West 
 take special notice of these dates! Why this call, in May, 1871, 
 for a negro convention at Columbia on the same day in October 
 selected by the committee of the National Labor party as early as 
 January, 1871 ? 
 
 It is another trick of imperialism and capital to organize ihe 
 negro vote of all the Southern States in the interest of imperialism 
 and capital, and to neutralize by that negro vote of the Southern States 
 any action that may be taken at Columbus, Ohio, by the working 
 and burgher classes of the North and West, against the interests of 
 imperialism and capital. 
 
 Look into and think about the purposes and objects of this little 
 trick ! 
 
 BEN. E. GREEN. 
 
 WASHINGTON, June 12th, 1871. 
 
ADDENDA TO TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. 
 
 SUPPLEMENT TO THE FOURTH ANNUAL REPORT OF THE SPECIAL COMMISSION 
 ERS OF THE REVENUE. COST OF LABOR AND SUBSISTENCE IN THE UNITED 
 STATES. TABLES SHOWING THE COMPARATIVE AND AVERAGE WEEKLY WAGES 
 PAID, ETC., ETC. PREPARED BY EDWARD YOUNG, IN CHARGE OF THE BU- 
 REAU OF STATISTICS. WASHINGTON : GOVERNMENT PRINTING-OFFICE. 1870. 
 
 THE foregoing is the title of an official document sent to us by a 
 Member of Congress,* to convince us, by the statistics it pro 
 fesses to give, that we are wrong in our historic theory that one of 
 the main purposes and results of the late civil war was to reduce 
 wages and increase the cost of living. 
 
 On careful examination, we find this document remarkable alike 
 for the absurdity of its multitudinous errors, and for the very man 
 ifest purpose of deception, with which it has been carefully and 
 elaborately prepared, as a campaign document, to mislead and again 
 betray the working and burgher classes into the support of the (so- 
 wjVcalled) Republican party. 
 
 In seventy-five octavo pages the Bureau of Statistics gives sixty- 
 seven tables of figures, doubtless supposing that no one would ever 
 take the trouble to wade through them. 
 
 The first fifty-eight tables are intended to produce the impression 
 that, under the policy of the (so-miscalled) Republican Administra 
 tion, there has been an increase in wages, amounting to an average 
 of forty-eight per cent., as summed up in Table 57, on page 57, as 
 follows : 
 
 * Hon. John Coburn, of Indiana. 
 
 343 
 
344 
 
 ADDENDA TO TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. 
 
 TABLE SHOWING THE PERCENTAGE OF INCREASE IN MONTHLY WAGES, WITH BOARD, PAID FOR 
 
 AND OTHER LABOR, IN THE UNITED STATES, IN 1869 VER 1860. 
 
 STATES. 
 
 Experienced 
 hands (sum 
 mer.) 
 
 Experienced 
 hands (win 
 ter.) 
 
 Ordinary 
 hands (sum 
 mer.) 
 
 c 
 
 & 
 
 c-o^ 
 
 sis si 
 
 ,c2 
 
 Common la 
 borers other 
 than farm. 
 
 u 
 
 v . 
 "rt 2 
 
 li 
 
 s 
 
 75 
 59 
 
 IOO 
 
 75 
 93 
 
 1 
 
 IOO 
 IOO 
 
 40 
 
 59 
 
 8 
 
 53 
 44 
 59 
 61 
 48 
 46 
 
 102 
 29 
 25 
 38 
 50 
 
 *7 
 16 
 20 
 33 
 15 
 
 20 
 40 
 
 Average in 
 crease per 
 cent. 
 
 Maine 
 
 55 
 46 
 65 
 60 
 
 66 
 81 
 64 
 
 i 
 
 1 
 
 3 * 
 46 
 
 62 
 42 
 60 
 50 
 
 35 
 
 1 
 
 28 
 
 22 
 
 4 
 
 36 
 
 II 
 
 3 
 
 46 
 
 88 
 54 
 35 
 23 
 
 48 
 46 
 
 So 
 
 % 
 
 70 
 
 20 
 
 75 
 
 1 
 
 60 
 42 
 64 
 42 
 59 
 48 
 69 
 
 83 
 37 
 37 
 
 a 
 
 25 
 
 20 
 26 
 
 54 
 85 
 
 I 
 
 26 
 
 45 
 45 
 62 
 62 
 50 
 67 
 55 
 81 
 
 59 
 
 1 
 
 60 
 
 40 
 46 
 41 
 42 
 53 
 42 
 66 
 
 2 
 
 i 
 
 32 
 
 21 
 
 25 
 
 33 
 
 i 
 
 25 
 46 
 60 
 24 
 37 
 27 
 
 45 
 33 
 
 9 
 
 100 
 
 50 
 So 
 81 
 64 
 29 
 So 
 42 
 45 
 33 
 
 
 11 
 
 51 
 32 
 50 
 75 
 
 20 
 
 18 
 15 
 
 38 
 
 9 
 27 
 66 
 
 3 1 
 40 
 66 
 24 
 
 36 
 55 
 
 
 
 i; 
 
 55 
 96 
 5i 
 
 60 
 
 25 
 44 
 42 
 
 50 
 62 
 
 
 
 54 
 48 
 5 
 63 
 2 7 
 15 
 25 
 19 
 
 10 
 
 15 
 
 CO 
 
 1 
 1 
 
 46 
 48 
 62 
 62 
 
 P 
 
 62 
 84 
 62 
 40 
 69 
 37 
 48 
 43 
 48 
 59 
 39 
 62 
 
 53 
 48 
 
 6 3 
 68 
 29 
 19 
 28 
 
 s. 
 
 23 
 
 11 
 
 40 
 43 
 2 9 
 
 48 
 
 
 
 
 Rhode Island . 
 
 
 New York 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Ohio * 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Nebraska 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Texas . * * 
 
 
 
 Average in United States, exclusive of Pacific 
 
 5i 
 
 5i 
 
 47 
 
 46 
 
 46 
 
 51 
 
 
 * The percentages of increase here given, although accurately computed, do not indicate the 
 true advance in the wages paid. This arises from the fact that while there were nineteen returns 
 from Georgia giving the wages in 1869, but six of them gave those of 1860. The true increase in 
 the monthly wages paid in 1869 over 1860 was about 23 per cent, instead of n. 
 
 Under the heading, " EXPENSES OF LIVING," Tables 59 to 66, 
 both included, (pages 5$ to 73,) are intended to produce the im 
 pression that the cost of living has been reduced, while wages have 
 gone up 48 per cent, on an average. In order to make this appear, 
 the Bureau of Statistics selects the years 1867 and 1869 for compar 
 ison, and gives prominence to wheat flour, which, for New England, 
 it puts at $12.35 i n l8 ^7, and $9.15 in 1869; for the Middle States, 
 at ^12.50 in 1867, and $7.85 in 1869 ; for a portion of thfe Western 
 
ADDENDA TO TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. 345 
 
 States, at $12.71 in 1867, and $6.41 in 1869; for other Western 
 States and Territories, at $8.67 in 1867, and $5.35 in 1869 ; and for 
 the Southern States, at $10.72 in 1867, and $9.50 in 1869. 
 The poet says : 
 
 " Oh ! what a tangled web we weave 
 When first we practise to deceive." 
 
 The Bureau of Statistics, absorbed in its figures, had never read 
 these lines, or did not appreciate the exhortation to honest dealing 
 which they contain ; or else it relied on its formidable array of 
 figures to deter any one from attempting to unravel its tangled web 
 of deceit. It is obvious that the Bureau was "practising to deceive " 
 when it selected the years 1867 and 1869, and gave this prominence 
 to the varying price of wheat flour, in order to produce the impres 
 sion on the working and burgher classes that the effect of Radical 
 policy had been to reduce the cost of living. For, this difference 
 in the price of flour was caused, not by any beneficial influence of 
 Radical policy, but partly by the difference in the seasons, and partly 
 by that subtle and artful fiscal contrivance, by which the wheat-grow 
 ers of the West are placed in the power of the great moneyed aristo 
 cracy for the means, with which to move their crops to market; there 
 by enabling Eastern capital to depress the price of Western wheat 
 at pleasure. 
 
 But even admitting that the Bureau s figures are correct and reli 
 able, (which they are not,) they disprove the very idea, which this 
 elaborate document was concocted to sustain. For on pages 74 and 
 75 we have a table of the "comparative cost of building-materials, 
 and of dwelling-houses," in 1861 and 1869, which shows that "the 
 true average increase in the cost of materials and labor required in 
 building a dwelling-house suitable for workmen was 88 per cent." 
 
 Now, this is a much more reliable criterion of the increase or 
 decrease of the cost of living than the difference between the cost 
 of wheat flour in 1867 and 1869 ; and even if it were true that wages 
 had advanced 48 per cent, from 1860 to 1869, how are the working 
 and burgher classes benefited, when that increase of wages is accom 
 panied by an increase of 88 per cent, in the cost of living? 
 
 As to Table 57, page 57, (above quoted,) which pretends to show 
 23 
 
346 ADDENDA TO TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. 
 
 % 
 the percentage of increase in monthly wages, with beared, etc., we 
 
 know that in Georgia, where we have lived since 1855, and we be 
 lieve that in the other Southern States, instead of an increase of 23, 
 or even n per cent., there has been an actual decrease of from 25 
 to 50 per cent, on a general average, and not taking into account 
 the exceptional cases of high wages paid for hands in some of the 
 swindling railroad operations, based on State bonds, which, if not 
 repudiated, will bankrupt the States for the profit of a few individual 
 carpet-baggers and scalawags. 
 
 Neither can we believe that this table is reliable as to the Eastern, 
 Middle, and Western States. 
 
 First, because we know that it is wrong as to Georgia, and believe 
 it to be wrong as to other Southern States. 
 
 Secondly, because it is obviously got up with great care in the in 
 terest of the Radical party, and with a premeditated design to "prac 
 tise to deceive." 
 
 Thirdly, because, as the Bureau of Statistics admits, in an intro 
 ductory note, it is "the result, mainly, of inquiries made through 
 the assistant assessors of internal revenue in the various collection 
 districts of the United States" a very unreliable authority. 
 
 Finally, because a mere reading of Table 65, on page 72, which 
 professes to give a summary of the results of all these inquiries and 
 figures, will show to any man of common sense that it is utterly 
 unreliable, not to use the much stronger language which the absurd 
 ities of that table would suggest. 
 
 It is as follows : 
 
ADDENDA TO TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. 
 
 347 
 
 TABLE SHOWING THE AVERAGE WEEKLY EXPENDITURES OF WORKMEN S FAMILIES IN SOME OF 
 THE MANUFACTURING TOWNS OF THE UNITED STATES IN 1860. 
 
 ARTICLES. 
 
 Two adults. 
 
 la 
 a l 
 8 
 1 
 
 o 
 
 T3 C 
 
 S l 
 
 a:E 
 
 1 
 
 iii 
 
 c2 
 & , 
 
 1 
 T3 C 
 | 
 
 & 
 
 1 
 "5 e 
 J 
 
 as 
 
 X 
 
 l! 
 
 a 
 
 aS 
 
 Us and seven 
 :hildren. 
 
 1 
 
 "SI 
 
 a 3 
 
 I -i 
 
 General average. 
 
 General average in 
 ,867. 
 
 
 
 Z 
 
 3 
 
 z 
 1 
 
 ii 
 
 
 z 
 
 & 
 
 | 
 
 1 
 
 i 
 
 & 
 
 
 $0.75 
 1-25 
 24 
 
 I.OO 
 
 20 
 69 
 
 59 
 
 C 
 
 10 
 
 25 
 
 12 
 
 3 
 30 
 3 
 
 I.OO 
 
 30 
 I. ii 
 
 *4-5 
 
 $0.78 
 i. 60 
 
 33 
 7* 
 
 12 
 
 74 
 4i 
 20 
 23 
 13 
 J 7 
 09 
 25 
 
 11 
 96 
 
 22 
 22 
 23 
 2.17 
 
 37 
 34 
 
 10.97 
 
 $0.85 
 1.75 
 
 s 
 
 14 
 92 
 
 44 
 23 
 39 
 
 25 
 
 22 
 
 08 
 21 
 
 61 
 33 
 74 
 25 
 54 
 02 
 2.23 
 3 
 58 
 
 11.96 
 
 $-95 
 1.92 
 44 
 
 I.IO 
 
 16 
 92 
 
 37 
 
 
 
 20 
 X 7 
 
 12 
 
 24 
 
 47 
 
 21 
 
 1.09 
 23 
 
 21 
 
 13 
 2.29 
 12 
 40 
 
 12.44 
 
 $1.29 
 
 2.21 
 
 I.S 
 
 20 
 
 1.18 
 5 
 
 5 
 
 22 
 
 23 
 12 
 
 29 
 
 73 
 
 42 
 
 1.20 
 21 
 21 
 
 35 
 
 2.17 
 
 05 
 
 34 
 13.36 
 
 $1-37 
 3-09 
 
 P 
 
 ii 
 
 11 
 
 34 
 57 
 24 
 25 
 ii 
 
 SI 
 
 4 6 
 1-13 
 23 
 
 20 
 
 47 
 
 *3-34 
 2 4 
 25 
 
 i6.n 
 
 $i-73 
 2.92 
 63 
 i-35 
 
 26 
 
 1.18 
 26 
 34 
 75 
 23 
 18 
 18 
 06 
 60 
 
 27 
 
 88 
 
 i9 
 35 
 27 
 2.25 
 18 
 30 
 
 I5-36 
 
 $2.50 
 3-oo 
 33 
 1.32 
 
 22 
 7 6 
 56 
 
 50 
 20 
 
 16 
 
 10 
 
 20 
 
 40 
 50 
 
 1. 21 
 
 16 
 
 5 
 2.25 
 
 2.OO 
 16.42 
 
 52.37 
 
 4.68 
 61 
 2.88 
 18 
 i. 80 
 1.26 
 65 
 
 ii 
 
 54 
 20 
 58 
 88 
 62 
 1.50 
 
 22 
 
 38 
 12 
 
 2. 5 6 
 
 
 
 23-44 
 
 $i-39 
 2.48 
 
 39 
 
 3 
 
 I.OO 
 
 55 
 3 
 47 
 19 
 24 
 
 12 
 
 11 
 ,11 
 
 22 
 
 H 
 
 2.6 4 
 13 
 
 57 
 14-93 
 
 $1.99 
 2.46 
 33 
 
 
 Lard ... 
 
 
 Cheese 
 
 26 
 
 I.OI 
 
 46 
 
 :i 
 
 29 
 
 16 
 
 11 
 
 36 
 9i 
 
 22 
 
 t" 
 
 2-14 
 
 14.29 
 
 Sugar and molasses 
 Mflk 
 
 Coffee 
 
 Tea 
 
 
 
 Salt, pepper, and vinegar 
 
 Fggs 
 
 Potatoes and other vegetables 
 Fruits, fresh and dried 
 Fuel 
 
 
 
 Spirits, beer, and tobacco 
 
 
 For benevolent objects 
 Total per week (clothing ex- 
 
 39 
 I4-32 
 
 
 * The increased cost of house rent, and the use of more expensive provisions, render the expenses 
 of these families higher than some of larger size. 
 
 f Not furnished in 1867. Deducting these, the average weekly expenses of families in 1869, as 
 compared with 1867, will be reduced to $13.88. 
 
 This table presents results that would make Mai thus, dead as he 
 is, open his eyes with astonishment. We earnestly recommend to 
 all, who are contemplating obedience to the Scriptural injunction, 
 " increase and multiply" to study it carefully. It would be too 
 tedious to point out all its peculiarities. A few will suffice to direct 
 attention to the others. 
 
 ist. According to this table, the average expense per week of a 
 workman and wife with seven children for bread and flour is $2.50; 
 with eight children, only $2.37. 
 
 2d. With six children, their average weekly expense for lard will 
 be 63 cents ; with seven children, only 33 cents. 
 
 3d. Their average weekly expense for butter will be, without 
 children, $1.00; with one child, only 71 cents; with two children, 
 82 cents; with three children, $1.10; with four children, $1.26; 
 with five children, only 98 cents, etc., etc. 
 
348 
 
 ADDENDA TO TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. 
 
 4th. Their average weekly expense for cheese will be, without 
 children, 20 cents; with one child, 12 cents; with two children, 14 
 cents ; with three children, 16 cents; with four children, 20 cents; 
 with five children, n cents; and with eight children, 18 cents. 
 
 5th. Their average weekly expense, without children, for sugar 
 and molasses, will be 69 cents; with four children, $1.18; with 
 seven children, only 76 cents. 
 
 6th. Their average weekly expense for milk will be, without 
 children, 59 cents ; with one child, 41 cents ; with two children, 
 44 cents; with three children, 37 cents; with four children, 50 
 cents; with five children, 58 cents; with six children, 26 cents; 
 with seven children, 56 cents; and with eight children, $1.26. 
 
 Finally, and funniest of all even funnier than the allowance, 
 on a general average, of 59 cents for milk to a workman and wife 
 \vithout children, and only 26 cents for a workman and wife with 
 six children is the Bureau s estimate for soap and starch:. 
 
 It allows to a man and wife without children, per week 25 cents. 
 
 with i child, 
 
 17 
 
 " 2 children, 
 
 22 
 
 " 3 
 
 
 17 
 
 " 4 
 
 
 23 
 
 
 
 25 
 
 18 
 
 " 7 
 
 
 16 
 
 " 8 
 
 
 54 
 
 Without wasting more time, the reader will find similar absurdities 
 running through the whole of this and other tables of this precious 
 production of the Radical Bureau of Statistics. It might excite mer 
 riment and laughter, if indignation at such palpable partisan patch 
 work would admit of pleasantry. But the question is too serious for 
 mirth. These tables have been laboriously prepared in the interest 
 of the monarchical, aristocratic, cheap-labor party, and on the sup 
 position that the great mass of the people of the United States 
 lawyers, doctors, ministers of the gospel, merchants, civil engineers, 
 etc., etc., as well as the working-men were too busy with their own 
 private affairs, or too ignorant, to discover and expose the deceit 
 attempted to be practised upon them by this array of figures. 
 
 When we examined the figures, we thought, surely , these must be 
 typographical errors. We therefore called upon Mr. Edward 
 Young, at the Bureau of Statistics, in the Treasury Department, 
 and asked him whether there were any typographical errors in 
 
ADDENDA TO TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. 349 
 
 his tables. He said, "No." We then asked him to explain by 
 what process of computation he arrived at such wonderful results, 
 according to which a husband and wife, without children, required 
 25 cents worth of soap and starch per week ; with one child, only 
 17 cents ; with six children, 18 cents ; and with seven childen, only 
 1 6 cents. 
 
 The reply, not very courteously given, was: "That table has 
 been criticized before, and where there is a determination to criti 
 cize, anything may be criticized." Pursuing information under diffi 
 culties, we persisted, and at last drew out this explanation, viz. that 
 the first nine columns of figures do not represent averages, as the 
 heading would indicate, but only the expenditures of single selected 
 families, the averages being given in the tenth and eleventh columns, 
 so as to show a reduction in the cost of living from 1867 to 1869. 
 
 Our interview with the Bureau of Statistics convinced us that its 
 tables were manufactured solely for partisan purposes, and are 
 utterly unreliable, except in so far as they show, on page 75, that 
 the true average increase in the cost of materials and labor required 
 in building a dwelling-house suitable for workmen has been 88 per 
 cent, in the ten years that the so-miscalled Republican party have 
 been in power. 
 
INDEX 
 
 TO 
 
 TRANSLATOR S PREFACE AND NOTES. 
 
 ADAMS, JOHN, xiv., xvii., xxiii. 
 Adams, John Q., xx., xl. 
 Adams, Samuel, xx. 
 
 Akerman, Attorney-General, xxix., xlix. 
 Alaric, 296. 
 
 Alexander the Great, 303. 
 Amalgamation, xlvii. 
 Anderson, Gen. Robert, xliv. 
 Angouleme, 149. 
 Appropriate music, 305. 
 Armstrong, Gen., xl. 
 Art and artists, 305. 
 Asiatic slave trade, xlvii. 
 Atlanta, burned by Sherman, 295. 
 Attila, 296. 
 
 Benjamin, J. P., xlvi. 
 
 Blair, Francis P., xxxvi.-xl., xliii. 
 
 Blood-letting, xlv. 
 
 Boston, working women in, 1. 
 
 Boulogne, 149. 
 
 Breckenridge, John C., xli. 
 
 Bribery at elections, xxvii. 
 
 British policy, xxxix. 
 
 Brown, John, xliv., 277, 305. 
 
 Brown, Jos. E., Gov. of Ga , xxxv., xlvi. 
 
 Buchanan, President James, xii., xlv. 
 
 Bullock, Rufus K.,Gov. of Ga., 276, 281. 
 
 Burlingame s mission to China, fix. 
 
 Burning, see W. Tecumseh Sherman. 
 
 Calhoun, James M., 297. 
 
 Calhoun, John C., xxxiii., xxxvii., 87. 
 
 Cameron, Simon, 340. 
 
 Capital divorced from labor, xxix., xlix. 
 
 Cassagnac, A. G. de, viii., xxxii., 
 
 xxxviii., 87. 
 Catholics, Roman, 295. 
 Census of 1860, xlvii. 
 Chandler, Zach., Senator, xlv. 
 Chase, Salmon P., xxvii., xxxi., xxxviii. 
 Chinese labor, food, and wages, liii. 
 
 Cincinnati Commercial, liii. 
 
 Classes, struggle of, xxx. 
 
 Clephane, Lewis, xliii. 
 
 Coburn, Col.John, captor of Atlanta, 299, 
 
 343- 
 
 Columbia, District of, 148. 
 Columbia, S. C., 293. 
 Colwell, Stephen, vii. 
 Commune, right of, 148. 
 Connecticut Reserve, 295. 
 Consolidation, xxi. 
 
 Contracts for army and navy supplies, xlv. 
 Covode investigating committee, xxvii. 
 Crockery. See W. T. Sherman. 
 Crusades, effects of, xxiv. 
 Curtis s Pac. R. R. bill, xli. 
 
 Davis, Jefferson, xi. 
 
 Delescluze, 307. 
 
 Delilah and Samson, 273. 
 
 District of Columbia, 148. 
 
 Disunion resolutions at Worcester, 
 
 Mass., xlii. 
 
 Divorce of capital from labor, xxix., Ixi. 
 Douglas, Stephen A., xli. 
 
 Edict of Moulins, 148. 
 
 Federalists, xx. 
 
 Female influence on government, 272. 
 Freedman s Bureau, 127, 148. 
 Fullerton, Gen. J. S., 127. 
 
 Genghis Khan, 296. 
 
 Georgetown, D. C., 149. 
 
 Georgetown College, viii. 
 
 Giles, Gov. of Virginia, xxi. 
 
 Goodloe, Daniel R., xliii., 281. 
 
 Gordon, Gen. John B., Ixiv. 
 
 Grand Army of the Republic, xix., 266, 
 
 292. 
 
 Grant, Gen. Ulysses S., xviii.-xix., 292. 
 Grass widows, Ixi. 
 
 351 
 
352 INDEX TO TRANSLATOR S PREFACE AND NOTES. 
 
 Greeley, Horace, xliv. 
 
 Green, Gen. Duff, xi., xli., xlv. 
 
 Guizot, Mons., ix.-x., xxx., 148. 
 
 Hamilton, Gov. of S. C, xxxvii. 
 Hampton, Gen. Wade, 293. 
 Harlan, Sec. of Interior, 274. 
 Harper s Ferry, xliv., 277, 305. 
 Harvard University, xvii. 
 Henry, John, British agent in Boston, 
 
 xxxix. 
 
 Heraldry and genealogy, xvii; 
 Holden, Gov. of N. C., 150, 276, 280. 
 Hood, Gen., 303. 
 Howard, Gen. O. O., 126, 311. 
 
 Imperialist, newspaper, xix. 
 Incendiarism. See John Brown and 
 
 W. T. Sherman. 
 Intermarriage of whites and blacks, xlvii. 
 
 Jefferson, Thos., xxi., xxviii. 
 Jenkins s life of Calhoun, xxxvi. 
 Johnson, Andrew, xlviii. 
 Johnson, Herschel V., xli. 
 Journal of Commerce, xlii. 
 
 Koopmanschap, lii. 
 
 Labor statistics, (Mass.,) xlix. 
 
 Lee, Gen. Robert E., xlviii., 329. 
 
 Lincoln, Abraham, xi., xl., xli., xlv., 272. 
 
 Lippincott s Magazine, xvii. 
 
 Logan, Grand Commander, 266, 292. 
 
 Marietta, Ga., burned by Sherman, 305. 
 Massachusetts, xlii., xlix., 295, 305. 
 Memphis Commercial Convention, xxi., 
 
 Ixi. 
 
 Middle States, xvi. 
 Music, appropriate, 305. 
 New England: 
 
 Cheap labor, xxvii.-xlix. 
 
 Monarchical and aristocratic, xiv. 
 
 Slave-trading, xxiii. 
 New York Herald, 127. 
 New York Times, li. 
 New York Tribune, 127. 
 Nicholas, Judge, of Kentucky, xiii. 
 Nichols, Brevet Maj. Geo. Ward, 303. 
 Non-slaveholders, xlvii. 
 North Carolina outrages, 229, 279. 
 
 Northwestern Territory, xli., 20 q, 10$. 
 it * 1 1 J-* . J 7 s j) %J .) 
 
 JN unification, xxxvi. 
 
 Pacific Railroad, xji. 
 Party names, xx. 
 
 | Peons, 3^2. 
 
 Pickett, Col. John T., 329. 
 Porus, 303. 
 
 Rawlings, Gen., xix. 
 
 Raymond, H. J., li. 
 
 Rheims, 149... 
 
 Rhett, R. B., xlvi. 
 
 Ritchie, Thomas, xxvi.-xl. 
 
 Rome, Ga., burned. See Sherman. 
 
 Scott, Gov. of S. C., 276, 281, 311. 
 Seward, Wm. H., xxvii.-xxxi., 
 
 xxxviii.-xxxix., 338. 
 Seymour, Horatio, liv. 
 Sherman, Gen. W. Tecumseh, 292. 
 Sherman, Senator John, 303. 
 Slaveholders, xlvii. 
 Smith, Rev. J. B., 230, 278. 
 Sprague, Senator, xxxi., Ixi. 
 Steadman, Gen. J. B., 127. 
 Stephens, Alex. H., xiii. 
 Sumner, Senator Charles, x. 
 Sylla, xix. 
 
 Toombs, Robert, xlvi. 
 Toulouse, 149. 
 
 University of Alabama burned, 306. 
 
 See Sherman. 
 
 University of Virginia, viii. 
 Usher, Sec. of Interior, 274. 
 
 Van Buren, Martin, xl. 
 Virginia, xli., 295. 
 
 Virginia and Kentucky resolutions, 
 xxxvi. 
 
 Wade, Ben, xlvi., 336, 339. 
 
 Walker, Gen. W. S., Ixiv. 
 
 Washburne, U. S. Minister at Paris, 296. 
 
 Washington City, 149. 
 
 Webster, Daniel, xli., 295, 305. 
 
 Weitzel, Gen., xii. 
 
 West Indies, 119. 
 
 Wilderness, battles of, 296. 
 
 Wilson, Bill, 130. 
 
 Wilson, Senator Henry, 172, 274. 
 
 Wood, Fernando, 126. 
 
 Worcester (Mass.) disunion resolutions, 
 
 xlii. 
 Working women of Boston, 1. 
 
 Yale College, xvii. 
 Yancey, W. L., xlvi. 
 
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