A brutal and blundering system 447 



in the form of brute force under direction. The direction, usually en- 

 trusted to slave or freedman overseers, was generally unsympathetic, 

 sometimes cruel ; for the overseer's first thought was to please his 

 master, even if he could only do so by working the slaves to death. 

 The extension of agriculture as a means of profit rather than subsistence 

 created conditions of the same kind in this occupation. It was here 

 that the monstrous abuses incidental to slavery were most strikingly 

 displayed. For, while quarries and mines were only worked in a few 

 localities, the plan of working great landed estates by the labour of 

 slave-gangs was applicable to vast areas of the best soil. And in Africa 

 Sicily and Italy we find it so applied for the profit of the nobles and 

 capitalists of a conquering race. 



The evils of this system may be set down to the account of obsequious 

 stewards heartlessly wringing profit for their masters out of human 

 flesh and blood. But we must not ignore two considerations which 

 suggest that the root of the evil lay not in the caprice or greed of in- 

 dividuals but in the attempt to carry on rural industry by slave labour 

 at all. In the country, opportunities of escape were many ; the slave- 

 prison and the fetters could hardly be dispensed with if you meant 

 to keep your farm-hands at disposal. And manumission, as a means 

 of encouraging good service, was evidently not of much avail in country 

 places. For after long years of exhausting labour the worn-out slave 

 would be unable to earn a living by hard bodily work ; and he knew 

 no other. He had been bought as a flesh-and-blood machine ; as such, 

 to manumit him while still efficient would be a sacrifice of sunk capital 

 for which nobody was prepared. It seems that the ordinary practice 

 was to keep him at work till he could work no longer, and then to let 

 him linger on the estate as an invalid retainer, feeding on what he 

 could get and decaying in peace. But the industrializing of agriculture, 

 heartlessly selfish in its aims, tempted landlords to shirk the unprofitable 

 maintenance of spent labourers. When a slave was no longer worth 

 his keep, it might pay to sell him at once for what he would fetch. 

 There was thus a mouth less to be fed, and the problem of how to turn 

 the remnant of his strength to account was shifted on to his new owner. 

 This plan, approved by the elder Cato as a detail of farm-economy, 

 marks the change of relations between master and slave in rustic life. 

 The old domestic relation has disappeared in the brutal exploitation 

 of a human animal for immediate profit. The crudely industrial system 

 reproduced on great estates the horrid phenomena of the quarry and 

 the mine. 



That humane and thoughtful men should be disgusted with such 

 doings was inevitable, and disgust was soon reinforced by reasonable 

 alarm. For tillage was not the sole occupation of rustic enterprise. It 



