HISTORY OF MADAGASCAR. 
193 
lute poverty, into slavery. A father may also sell his 
children into slavery in certain cases. Many are made 
slaves by the sentence of the judges, or the edict of the 
sovereign. Slavery is the heaviest penalty of the law next 
to capital punishment: it is always attended with confis¬ 
cation of property, and involves the wives and children of 
the party on whom it is inflicted. In the hands of a weak 
and vindictive government, it is an instrument of fearful 
oppression and cruelty; and all its severity and bitterness 
have been repeatedly felt in this unhappy country in recent 
years, to an almost incredible degree. Sometimes the 
slavery is final, and the bondman rendered irredeemable; 
in other cases a price is fixed on the slave, on the payment 
of which he is restored to liberty. 
The children of the slaves are the property of the 
owners of their parents; and from this source, as well as 
by purchase, the Malagasy families obtain a succession of 
home-born slaves: these are at any time liable to be sold 
to another master, and taken to a distant part of the 
country. 
The treatment the unhappy slaves receive, differs with 
the dispositions and manners of their owners. In many 
cases that treatment is comparatively mild, the yoke of 
bondage is not felt to be heavily oppressive, the unjust 
and unnatural relation of proprietor and owner is absorbed 
in that of the head of a large household ; and there have 
been rare instances, in which a slave has been so well 
treated as to prefer remaining in slavery to being set free. 
Such individuals, of course, continue with their proprietors, 
although no custom of “ boring the ear,” similar to the 
Jewish practice, is known to exist. 
In some cases a poor freeman has been known to offer 
himself as a slave to a family of respectability and kindness 
i. 
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