of England, ordained that some particular days should be granted to all slaves, to devote them to the society of those they loved, or to employ them in labour for their own benefit. He also decreed that, if a master forced his slave to work on a festival, he was to pay a heavy fine. In 945 it was decreed by king Athelstan, that, on certain occasions, "some one should be set at liberty, who, for his crimes, had been condemned to slavery," and this was to be done "for the mercies of Christ." The same statute observes, "It is necessary that every master be compassionate and condescending to his servants, in the most indulgent manner that is possible. The slave and the free man are equally dear to the Lord, who bought them, and bought them all with the same price; and we are all, of necessity, servants of God, and he will judge us in the same manner that we on earth judged them over whom we had a judicial power."

The period of Saxon ascendancy was professedly one of great liberty, but scarcely so in reality, because there was an invidious distinction maintained between noble and base blood. There was then little of the spirit of industry, enterprise, and intelligence, so common in our day, by which persons are enabled to surmount their early disadvantages, and, as they become possessed of wealth, gradually to glide into the higher ranks of society. Trade and commerce, by means of which the industrious poor have risen to affluence, were then comparatively unknown. This, without any positive law, tended to keep persons to their original rank in society; and if, by any extraordinary accident, a person of mean birth acquired riches, he was soon marked by the nobles as an object of

indignation and envy; and, in the unsettled and unequal state of the laws which then prevailed, it would have been impossible for him to defend the property he had acquired, or to protect himself from oppression, except by courting the patronage of some great man, and paying a large price for his safety, as well as binding himself to some kind of service or subjection to his patron; in fact, submitting to a degree of slavery. It is conjectured that there could not be in England less than a million slaves, (or villeins, as they were called,) by whom the land was cultivated, and who were attached to the lands of their arbitrary landlords. These were called national slaves, and enjoyed some peculiar privileges; in particular, they could not be separated from the land; indeed, no native subject could be legally sent beyond sea, though peasants too frequently sold their children, or themselves, into perpetual, and even foreign bondage, and the Anglo-Saxon nobility frequently disposed of their female servants in the same way. In the year 1102, a canon of council prescribed, "Let no one from henceforth presume to carry on that wicked traffic, by which men in England have hitherto been sold like brute animals." It is an established fact in history, that the English were generally in the habit of selling their children, and other relations, to be slaves in Ireland, without having even the pretext of distress or famine; and the port of Bristol, which has since sent out so many ships laden with human flesh to Africa, was then equally distinguished as a market for the same commodity. But under the influence of christian principles, the generous Irish, in a national synod, not only put an end to the nefarious traffic, but

emancipated all the English slaves in the kingdom. This took place in the year 1172. Ireland being then afflicted with public calamities, the clergy and people began to reproach themselves with the unchristian practice of purchasing and holding in slavery their fellow-men. Although these slaves were fairly paid for, and although they were natives of an island from which the Irish had begun to receive great injuries, it was unanimously resolved in council freely to set them at liberty. The Irish were, at that time, a much more enlightened people than the English. This fact has not been sufficiently remembered to the honour of Ireland, when pleading with Britons to impart the succours of humanity and the blessings of the gospel, to the ignorant and oppressed population of that interesting island.

It is also worthy of remark, that, in the division of the House of Commons, on the first motion of Mr. Wilberforce, for the abolition of the African slave-trade, after the Irish union, every Irish member present supported the measure. Ireland should be the land of the free.

To return to our own country. During the various revolutions of the Romans, Saxons, Danes, and Normans, the peasantry, together with the cattle, became the property of the successive conquerors.

On one occasion, Cedwalla, a king who had embraced the Christian religion, under the instruction of Wilfred, presented to his instructor a tract of land, with the persons and property of its inhabitants, comprehending eighty-seven families. The bishop gave them their liberty, instructed them in the christian religion, and baptized into the christian faith two hundred and fifty slaves.

The number of slaves taken captive in war, was still greater than that of predial or rustic slaves. Of the treatment of these unhappy beings we know very little. It is to be feared that they were considered beneath the protection of the law, and left to the arbitrary authority of their possessors; but of the predial slaves we can collect some interesting particulars. This kind of slavery could legally emanate but from one source; viz., birth of servile parentage. It could not arise from contract, but must be hereditary. Every villein must have been born on the estate of a certain master, to whose ancestors his father and more remote progenitors had belonged. In case a master could not prove this claim, or if, on the death of a master, the successor or representative were unknown, the villeins might lawfully emerge from slavery into freedom; but then the question arose, Could they support themselves? Too often the spirit was crushed and broken by long habits of servile dependence, the opportunity of freedom was neglected, and the settlement of a new proprietor earnestly desired, who, together with controul, should receive the responsibility of supporting the vassals. It is even said that, in some instances, poor free men voluntarily and, indeed, illegally recorded themselves as villeins, thus entailing bondage on their posterity, as well as themselves. Some writers state, that if a free man married a nice, or female born in thrall, and settled on a villein tenure, he lost the privileges of freedom during his occupation; but others, on the contrary, say, that the nief, by marriage to a free man, herself became free, during his life; but, if left a widow, might be reclaimed by her former proprietor. These statements, probably, refer to

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different periods, and serve to shew the progress of liberal sentiments in the legislature of our country. The Norman conquest certainly augmented, rather than infringed upon, the liberty of the subject; or rather tended to increase the proportion of free population, by enacting, that any person of servile condition, having lived a year and a day in one place without being claimed, should be entitled to perpetual freedom. Greater facilities were also given to voluntary emancipation. The laws gave the people legal rights, and rescued them from arbitrary bondage. The lords could not deprive the husbandmen of their land, so long as they did the proper service; nor could they be called upon to do any work beside the due service prescribed; nor could any person be sold out of the country. sants, also, had a right to leave the lands they occupied when they pleased, and to choose whom they pleased as masters; only, having no funds, they were constrained to seek the same mode of subsistence; so that, in fact, their service was a rent for the land they cultivated for subsistence. An easy mode of enfranchisement was established, and, from its publicity, tended not only to secure the freedom of the liberated, but to give the generous master the gratification of knowing that his bounty was witnessed by the first men in the district. In the full county court, he was to take his slave by the right hand, to deliver him to the sheriff, and to declare his manumission; to show him the open door, and to put into his hand the arms of a free man,—a lance and a sword. The sweetest blessing of life then became the legal property of the bondsman: from that moment he was irreversibly free.