436 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



some restrictions on the powers of the owners. Ceasing to stand in 

 the position of domestic cattle, slaves begin to form a division of the 

 body-politic, when their personal claims begin to be distinguished as 

 limiting the claims of their masters. 



It is commonly supposed that serfdom arises by mitigation of sla- 

 very ; but examination of the facts shows that it arises in a different 

 way. While, during the early struggles for existence between them, 

 primitive tribes, growing at one another's expense by incorporating 

 separately the individuals they capture, thus form a class of absolute 

 slaves, the formation of a servile class, considerably higher, and having 

 a distinct social status, accompanies that later and larger process of 

 growth under which one society incorporates other societies bodily. 

 Serfdom originates along with conquest and annexation. 



For whereas the one implies that the captured people are detached 

 from their homes, the other implies that the subjugated people con- 

 tinue in their homes. Thomson remarks that, "among the New- 

 Zealanders, whole tribes sometimes became nominally slaves when con- 

 quered, although permitted to live at their usual places of residence, 

 on condition of paying tribute, in food, etc." a statement which shows 

 the origin of kindred arrangements in allied societies. Of the Sand- 

 wich Islands government when first known, described as consisting of 

 a king with turbulent chiefs, who had been subjected in comjiaratively 

 recent times, Ellis writes, "The common people are generally consid- 

 ered as attached to the soil, and are transferred with the land from 

 one chief to another." Before the late changes in Feejee, there were 

 enslaved districts ; and of their inhabitants we read that they had to 

 supply the chiefs' houses " with daily food, and build and keep them 

 in repair." Though conquered peoples, thus placed, differ widely in 

 the degrees of their subjection being at the one extreme, as in Feejee, 

 liable to be eaten when wanted, and at the other extreme called on 

 only to give specified proportions of produce or labor yet they remain 

 alike as being undetached from their original places of residence. That 

 serfdom in Europe originated in an analogous way there is good rea- 

 son to believe. In Greece we have the case of Crete, where, under the 

 conquering Dorians, there existed a vassal population, formed, it would 

 seem, partly of the aborigines and partly of preceding conquerors, of 

 which the first were serfs attached to lands of the state and of indi- 

 viduals, and the others had become tributary land-owners. In Sj^arta 

 the like relations were established by like causes : there were the 

 helots, who lived on, and cultivated, the lands of their Spartan masters, 

 and the perioeci, who had probably been, before the Dorian invasion, 

 the superior class. So was it also in the Greek colonies afterward 

 founded, such as Syracuse, where the aborigines became serfs. Simi- 

 larly in later times and nearer regions. When Gaul was overrun by 

 the Romans, and again when Romanized Gaul was overrun by the 



