294 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the current reason then alleged for enfranchisements was one's 

 soul's health in the realization of a high Christian ideal. About 

 825 Bishop Jonas, of Orleans, asks : " Why are not master and 

 slave, rich and poor, equal by nature, since they have one Lord in 

 heaven, who is not a respecter of persons ? . . . The powerful and 

 rich, taught by these [church fathers], recognize their slaves and 

 the poor as equal to themselves by nature." * In the twelfth cent- 

 ury Bishop Ivo writes : " If we consult the institutes of God, and 

 the law of nature, in which there is neither bond nor free," etc. f 

 In the thirteenth century the doctrine appears in Bracton. \ When 

 describing the classes of men as free, villains, serfs, etc., he says : 

 " Before God, there is no acceptance of men as free, or of men as 

 slaves." Here we see the doctrine, such as the churchmen had 

 been elaborating it, with its scriptural warrant, pass into the 

 English common law. 



In the fourteenth century the kings of France, in enfranchis- 

 ing the communes on the domains, repeatedly allege this doctrine 

 as one of their motives.* Undoubtedly, the real motive was that 

 more revenue could be got from them by taxing them as com- 

 munes than by exacting feudal dues from the members as serfs, 

 but it all helped to spread the doctrine as an idea of what would 

 be "right." 



This review now shows that the doctrine of liberty and equality 

 by " nature," by birth, and by natural right was not by any means 

 an eighteenth-century dogma. It had been growing and spreading 

 for eighteen hundred years. It had begun in skepticism about the 

 fairness of slavery. It could not begin with anything else. It went 

 on until it became a philosophical notion of liberty, meaning the 

 natural right of every one to pursue happiness in his own way, and 

 according to his own ideal of it. It could not stop short of that. 



This dogma did not emancipate slaves or serfs. During a 

 thousand years, from the sixth to the sixteenth century, the peas- 

 ants of France and England passed through the stages of slavery, 

 serfdom, villainage, and compulsory settlement,! by persistent 

 struggles of their own, aided by economic improvements and po- 



* "De Instit. Laic," ii, 22; 106 Migne, 213. He quotes Coloss. iv, 1. 

 f Epist. 221 ; 162 Migne, £26. 



% Book i, ch. 8, ed. Twiss, 1878. 



* The originals of these documents are not accessible to me. One of Philippe le Bel is 

 quoted : " Seeing that every creature who is formed in the image of our Lord ought, in 

 general, to be free by natural right," etc. ; and one by Louis le Hutin : "Seeing that, by 

 the right of nature, each one ought to be born free," etc. 



I In September, 1860, the correspondent of the "Augsbiirger allgemeine Zeitung" 

 wrote from New York that the correct solution of the American slavery question would be 

 to determine upon five steps : 1 , forbid separation of negro families ; 2, bind the slaves to 

 the soil ; 3, change them into serfs ; 4, change serfdom to villainage ; 5, abolish the last. 

 (Quoted by Eodbertus, with approval, 2 Hildebrand's " Jahrbiicher," 266.) This is as 



