Master and Operative. No Abolitionism 445 



been felt in modern times, when a marked colour-line implied the dis- 

 grace of a * white ' man doing ' niggers' work.' But it is not to be 

 doubted that in agriculture as in other occupations the presence of 

 slavery did degrade labour, at all events so soon as agriculture put on 

 anything of an industrial character. The really ' respectable ' person 

 was the man who directed the operations, the ye&pyo?, agricola, or 

 colonus (in the original sense) : he was the man who worked the land 

 and made it yield crops, whether he took part in the actual digging 

 and ploughing or not. The larger the scale, the more he confined him- 

 self to direction, necessarily ; but he was the producer, a pillar of public 

 economy, none the less. He had provided the labour, bought or hired ; 

 in effect, the labour was his own. With the toiling yeoman farmer of 

 tradition he had this in common, that both worked for themselves, 

 not for another. And this position, attractive in all societies, was 

 marked out with peculiar distinctness through the institution of slavery 

 underlying the social fabric. Sexploitation of man by man, the first 

 beginnings of which elude our search and are only ascertained by in- 

 ference, suggests some sort of superiority in the upper party. At all 

 events the master, the man who has the upper hand, gets the credit of 

 achievement, and in agriculture as elsewhere the subordinate operative 

 is inevitably forgotten. It is from this point of view that we must regard 

 the fine Roman legends of sturdy farmer-citizens, the fathers of the 

 Republic. They are idylls conveying truth, dressed up by the imagina- 

 tion of a later age : and have their place in the region where history 

 and poetry meet and blend. We must not gather from them that slavery 

 was exceptional or a fact of no importance. Tradition habitually ig- 

 nores what is normal and therefore assumed. The fairer inference is 

 that, as I have already remarked, slavery was in those early days still 

 a family institution, not an industrial system. 



Some help towards the understanding of the different position of 

 manual labour in ancient times as compared with modern may be got 

 by considering Abolitionism. That a slave is a man, and as such not 

 to be wholly ignored in respect of the claims of common humanity ; 

 that slave-labour is listless and ineffective, giving poor returns in pro- 

 portion to the strength employed ; these conclusions, moral and eco- 

 nomic, were reached by the thinkers of the ancient world while their 

 civilization was in full bloom. Why then do we find no movement 

 corresponding to the Abolitionism of modern times ? Two things were 

 obviously necessary for such a movement ; the motive to inspire it, 

 and the force to give effect to it. Let men once be convinced that 

 slavery is both wrong and unprofitable, and let them have the power 

 to insist on putting an end to it, Abolitionism in some form or other 

 is the necessary result. 



