500 



SLAVERY 



jn.K-ti-.i-il manumission to a large extent. In 

 the course of time usage greatly modified the 

 riylit- and liabilities of the serf, whose )M>sitioii 

 must have l>een conxiderahly altered when w find 

 him making stipulations regarding the aiiioiint of 

 his services, ami purchasing hi- own redemption. 

 The towns afforded in more than one way a means 

 of emancipation. A serf residing a year in a 



the riglite of a citizen save against his lord, who 

 required from him the customary services in culti- 

 vating the lord's lands ; and his hold on his land 

 became a kind of definite tenure of villeinage. The 

 Black Death (q.v.) checked the progress, but only 

 for a time. But the serfs position became by 

 custom more secure and more independent. Serf- 

 dom died out in England without any special 

 enactment ; yet it was not wholly extinct in the 

 later half of the 16th century, for we find a com- 

 mission issued in 1574 by Queen Elizabeth, to 

 inquire into the lands and goods of all her bonds- 

 men and bondswomen in the counties of Cornwall, 

 Devon, Somerset, and Gloucester, in order to com- 

 pound with them for th-.-ir manumission, that they 

 might enjoy all their lands and goods as freedmen. 

 In a few rare instances liability to servile duties 

 and payments in respect of lands seem to have con- 

 tinued down to the reign of Charles I. In Scotland 

 as in England serfdom disappeared by insensible 

 degrees ; but a remarkable form of it continued to 

 survive down to the closing years of the 18th cen- 

 tury. Colliers and gaiters were bound by the law, 

 independent of jmction, on entering to a coal-work 

 or salt-mine, to perpetual service there ; and in 

 case of sale or alienation of the ground on which 

 the works were situated, the right to their services 

 passed without any exj>ress grant to the purchaser. 

 The sons of the collier and salter could follow no 

 occupation but that of their father, and were not at 

 liberty to seek for employment anywhere else than 

 in the mines to which they had been attached by 

 birth. Statutes 15 Geo. I'll. chap. 28 and 39 Geo. 

 III. chap. 56 restored these classes of workmen to 

 the riglite of freemen and citizens, and almlished 

 the last remnant of .slavery in the British Islands. 



In France, though a general edict of Louis X. in 

 1315 purported to enfranchise the serfs on the royal 

 domain on |>ayinent of a composition, this measure 

 seems never to have been carried into effect, and a 

 limited sort of villeinage continued to exist in some 

 places down to the Hi-volution. In Italy one great 

 cause of the decline of villeinage was the necessity 

 under which the cities and pel t y states found them- 

 selves of employing the peasant population for their 

 defence, whom it MOMM expedient to reward with 

 enfranchisement. In the llili and 12th centuries 

 the number of serfs began to decrease, and villein- 

 age seems no longer to have had an existence in 

 Italy in the l.'dh eentnry. .losejih II. aUilisjied 

 serfdom in Itohemia and Moravia in 1781, and in 

 the German lands in 1782. Over a large portion of 

 Germany the mass of the peasants had acquired 

 their freedom In-fore the end of the 13th century, 

 but in some parts of the Prussian dominions a 

 modified villeinage (leilieigeiisrlinfl) continued to 

 exist until swept away by the reforms of Von Stein 

 in the 1 9th century. 



In Russia serfdom remained apart of the social 

 system until 1861 ; nee RUSSIA, pp. 44, 17. 



ffegro Slarrri/ e\i-ted from the earliest times ; 

 the Carthaginian- seem to have lirought caravans 

 of slaves from various parts of North Africa; but 

 in this the negroes suffered no more than other con- 

 temjMirary barbarian-. The negro slavery of modern 

 time- \vai a sequel to the discovery of America. 

 Prior, however, to that event the negroes, like 



other savage races, enslaved those captives in war 

 whom they did not jmt to death, and a considerable 

 trade in slaves from the coa-i <>t ( Ininea was carried 

 on by the Arabs. The dejiortation of the Africans 

 t<> the plantations and mines of the New World 

 doubtless raised the value of the captive negro, 

 and made slavery rather than death hi- eonnnon 

 fate ; while it may also have tempted the petty 

 j.i inees to make war on each other lor the purpose 

 of acquiring captive* and wiling them. The 

 aborigines of America having proved too weak for 

 the work required of them, tne Portuguese, who 

 possessed a large part of the African coast, began 

 the importation of negroes, in which thev were 

 followed by the other colonisers of the New World. 

 The first part of the New World in which negroes 

 were extensively used was Hayti in St Domingo. 

 The almriginal population had at first been employed 

 in the mines ; but this sort of labour was found so 

 fatal to their constitutions that Las Casasfq.v.), 

 Bishop of ChiauA, the celebrated protector of the 

 Indians, intereeded with Charles for the substitu- 

 tion of African slaves as a stronger race. As early 

 as the beginning of the 16th century a good many 

 Africans were already in Hispaniola; the emperor 

 accordingly in 1517 authorised a large importation 

 of negroes from the establishments of the Portu- 

 guese on the coast of Guinea. Sir John Haw kins 

 (q.v.) was the first Englishman who engaged in 

 the traffic, in which his countrymen soon largely 

 participated, England having exported no fewer 

 than 300,000 slaves from Africa between the years 

 1680 and 1700; and between 1700 and 1786 im- 

 ported 610,000 into Jamaica alone. At first the 

 trade was in the hands of g|>ecial companies, one 

 of which long enjoyed the special right or Assiento 

 (q.v.) from Spain of supplying slaves. Most of the 

 English slaving shins belonged first to Bristol, and 

 from 1730 onwards to Liverpool (q.v.). The 

 slave-trade was attended with extreme inhumanity : 

 the ships which transported the negroes from 

 Africa to America were overcrowded to such an 

 extent that a large proportion died in the passage ; 

 and the treatment of the slave after his arrival in 

 the New World dej>emled much on the character 

 of his master. Leg^il restraint* were, however, 

 imposed in the various European settlements to 

 protect the slaves from injury ; in the British 

 colonies courts were instituted to hear their com- 

 plaints ; their condition was to a certain extent 

 ameliorated, and the flogging of women was pro- 

 hibited. Hut while slavery was thus legftUMd in 

 the British colonies, it was at the same time the 

 law of England (as derided in 177'2 by Lord Mans- 

 tield in the cose of the negro Somerset, and less cm- 

 jihatically by other judges at earlier dates, without 

 any actual statute on the subject ) that as soon as 

 a slave set bis foot on English soil he l>ecame free ; 

 though, if he returned to his muster's country, he 

 could lie reclaimed. I'ji till this date the contrary 

 imjirvssion was the usual one, though pu)>lir opinion 

 was strongly setting against the custom of keep- 

 ing slaves. In 1764 there were lielieved to be 

 thousands of negro slaves in London ; and adver- 



ti-emelits of ' block bo.YS ' for sale wele fleijlient, 



as also rewards offered for runaways. As late as 

 November 1771 the J!iniiiiii//i<nii d'n:rttr advertised 

 the jmblic sale of a negro boy, sound, healthy, and 

 of a mild disjiosition. 



Before the idea of emancipation was contem- 

 plated the efforts of the more humane portion of 

 the jmblio were directed towards the aliolition of 

 the traffic, in slaves, mainly under the influence of 

 a sense of Christian duty. In 1 787 a society for the 

 snjijiressionof the slave-trade was formed in London, 

 numbering Thomas Clarkson and Cranville Shaiji 

 among its original members. The most active 

 parliamentary leader in the cause was William 



