Читать книгу The rise, progress, and phases of human slavery. How it came into the world and how it shall be made to go out онлайн

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What happened in the case of one father of a family would as naturally happen in respect of others. In the progress of time, some of the younger branches would naturally stray from the paternal home, and emigrate to other lands, where they would settle down and, in time, become the heads of families—the founders of new races of slaves. Indeed, we have but to imagine the case of one to apply to thousands similarly circumstanced, and we shall see the origin of human slavery at once satisfactorily explained. Those early fathers, or heads of families, would naturally love some of their children better than others; at least, they would have more confidence in some one than in the rest. To those so loved, or so favoured, would naturally devolve the headship of the family, or such portions of the patrimonial estate as might enable them to found new families elsewhere. These families, like the parent one, would as naturally resolve themselves into little communities of masters and slaves; so that in course of time, by the natural operation of one and the same first cause, the whole of society would find itself, what we find it to have been in all early history, an aggregation of souls divided everywhere into two great classes—a master-class possessing, and a slave-class possessed.