Slavery-basis of ancient civilization 453 



employing slave labour out of humanitarian scruples. Scarcity of slaves, 

 or lack of means to buy them, were certainly the main restrictive in- 

 fluences. The institution was always there, ready for extension and 

 adaptation as changing conditions might suggest. If ancient civilization 

 did not rest on a basis of slavery, on what did it rest? Assuredly not 

 on free self-disposal. The man free to dispose of himself claimed the 

 right to dispose of others, up to the limits of his own power and will. 

 In this there is nothing wonderful. We need not flatter ourselves that 



; the rule of force is now extinct. True, personal bondage to individuals 

 is forbidden by law, but effective freedom of self-disposal, perhaps an 

 impossible dream, is not yet realized: only its absence is dissembled 

 under modern forms. 



When I say that ancient civilization rested on a basis of slavery, 

 the condition present to my mind is this. A social and political structure 

 requires for its stability a reasonably sound economic foundation. This 

 foundation is found in the assured and regular use of natural resources. 

 And this use implies the constant presence of an obedient labour-force 

 that can be set to work and kept working as and when needed. This 

 force is now more and more supplied by machinery, the drudge that 

 cannot strike. Antiquity made the slave its quasi-mechanical drudge: 



1 the more or less of slavery at a given moment simply depended on 

 circumstances. 



In returning to my original questions, whether the growth of Greco- 

 Roman civilization was in fact achieved through the system of slavery, 

 and whether it could conceivably have been accomplished without 

 slavery, I have I think given my answer to the first, that is, so far as 

 agriculture is concerned. And agriculture was the vital industry, on 

 which the whole fabric principally rested. As to the second question, 

 I can give no satisfactory answer. For my part, I agree with those 

 who hold that, in the conditions of antiquity as depicted in our tradi- 

 tions and inferred by modern inquirers, slavery in some form and degree 

 was an indispensable condition of progress. States, organizations of a 

 lasting kind, had to be established by force. Captive labour, added to 

 the resources of conquerors, seems to be a powerful means of increasing 

 their economic strength and abridging the wasteful periods of conflict. 

 But, once the stage had been reached at which a state was sufficiently 

 stable and strong to provide for order within and to repel invaders, a 

 slave-system became a canker, economic, social, ultimately political. 

 I believe that the maladies from which the old Greco- Roman civiliza- 

 tion suffered, and which in the end brought about its decay and fall, 



were indirectly or directly due to this taint more than to any other 

 cause. I know of no case ancient or modern in which a people have 

 attained to a sound and lasting prosperity by exploiting the servitude 



