CHAP. I.] 



SLAVERY. 



427 



slave alone was repulsed, on the ground that his admis- 

 sion would deprive the owner of his services. 1 Like 

 other property, slaves could be possessed by the 

 Buddhist monasteries, and inscriptions, still existing 

 upon the rocks of Mihintala and Dambool, attest the 

 competency of the priests to receive them as gifts, and to 

 require that as slaves they should be exempted from 

 taxation. 



Unrelaxed in its assertion of abstract right, but miti- 

 gated in the forms of its practical enforcement, slavery 

 endured in Ceylon till extinguished by the fiat of the 

 British Government in 1845. 2 Li the northern and 

 Tamil districts of the island, its characteristics differed 

 considerably from its aspect hi the south and amongst 

 the Kandyan mountains. In the former, the slaves were 

 employed in the labours of the field and rewarded with 

 a small proportion of the produce ; but amongst the pure 

 Singhalese, slavery was domestic rather than praedial, 

 and those born to its duties were employed less as the 

 servants, than as the suite of the Kandyan chiefs. Slaves 

 swelled the train of their retainers on all occasions of 

 display, and had certain domestic duties assigned to them, 

 amongst which was the carrying of fire-wood, and the 

 laying out of the corpse after death. The strongest proof 

 of the general mildness of their treatment in all parts of 

 the island, is derived from the fact, that when in 1845, 

 Lord Stanley, now the Earl of Derby, directed the final 

 abolition of the system, slavery was extinguished in 

 Ceylon without a claim for compensation on the part of 

 the proprietors. 



Compulsory Labour. Another institution, to the in- 

 fluence and operation of which the country was indebted 

 for the construction of the works which diffused plenty 

 throughout every region, was the system of Raja-kariya, 



1 HARDY'S Eastern Mcmachism, ch. 

 iv. p. 18. 



2 An account of slavery in Ceylon, 



and the proceedings for its suppres- 

 sion, will be found in PRIDHAM'S 

 Ceylon, vol. i. p. 223. 



