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In

that a master has the same power over his slave. latter, as a rule, can hardly count on the support of his family, and when, as is frequently the case, he is a prisoner of war, the right of killing an enemy easily passes into the right of killing the slave. In the literature dealing with the lower races we repeatedly meet with the statement that the owner may kill his slave at pleasure, or that he is not accountable for killing him. Yet this seems to mean rather that, if he does so, no complaint can be brought against him, or no vengeance taken on him, than that he has an unconditional moral right to put to death a slave whom he no longer cares to keep; we shall see that savage custom very commonly requires that slaves should be treated with kindness by their masters. many cases the master is expressly denied the right of killing his slave at his own discretion.2 Among the Bataks, the owner, though allowed to punish his slave, must take care that the latter does not succumb to the punishment.3 Among the Rejangs, if a man kills his slave, he pays half his price as compensation to the feudal chief of the country.* In Madagascar "masters have full power over their slaves, excepting as to life"; and the same is said of the Tshi-speaking peoples of the Gold Coast. The Mandingoes allow the owner to do what he likes to a prisoner of war and to a person who has lost his freedom through insolvency, but he is forbidden to kill a house-slave. Among the Barea and Kunáma, by putting

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1 Monrad, Bidrag til en Skildring af Guinea-Kysten, p. 42 (Negroes of Accra). Bowdich, Mission to Ashantee, p. 258 (people of Ashanti). Ward, Five Years with the Congo Cannibals, p. 105 (Bolobo). Macdonald, Africana, 1. 168 (Eastern Central Africans). Burton, Zanzibar, ii. 95 (Wanika). Cooper, Mishmee Hills, p. 238. Glimpses of the Eastern Archipelago, p. 106 (highlanders of Palembang). Hale, U.S. Exploring Expedition. Vol. VI. Ethnography and Philology, p. 33 (Maoris). Gibbs, loc. cit. p. 189 (Thlinkets). Steinmetz, Studien, ii. 308 $99.

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2 Steinmetz, Rechtsverhältnisse von eigeborenen Völkern in Afrika und Ozeanien, p. 43 (Banaka and Bapuku). Mademba, ibid. p. 83 (natives of the Sansanding States). Lang, ibid. 241 (Washambala). Desoignies, ibid. p. 278 (Msalala).

3 Glimpses of the Eastern Archipelago, p. 114.

Marsden, op. cit. p. 222.

5 Ellis, History of Madagascar, i. 196.

6 Ellis, Tshi-speaking Peoples of the Gold Coast, p. 291.

7 Post, Afrikanische Jurisprudenz, i. 95.

to death a slave who is a native of the country, the master even exposes himself to the blood-revenge of the family of the slain.1

The murder of another person's slave is of course largely regarded as an offence against the property of the owner, but, in many cases at least, it is not exclusively looked upon in this light. Where the master himself is not allowed to kill his slave, the slave possesses the right to live in the full sense of the term. Sometimes there is in this respect little difference between him and a freeman. Among the Beni Amer, whilst the murder of a slave who has been bought is merely compensated for by the payment of the purchase sum, the murder of a slave who belongs to his master by birth is avenged by his relatives, or, if he has none, by the master himself; should the murderer be too high a person, the matter drops, but there is no question of payment in any case." Where the system of blood-money prevails, the price paid for the life of a slave is less than that paid for the life of a freeman. Among the Kirghiz the former is only half of the latter. In Axim, on the Gold Coast, according to Bosman, the murderer of a slave was usually fined thirtysix crowns, whilst five hundred crowns were demanded for the murder of a free-born negro.*

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The rule that the life of a slave is held in less estimation than the life of a freeman applies to the nations of archaic culture; yet not even the master is among them in all circumstances allowed to put his slave to death. In ancient Mexico the murder of a slave, though committed by the master, was a capital offence. In Corea, a slave may not be killed by his owner before the latter has obtained the permission of the board of punishments, or of the high provincial authorities. According to the

1 Munzinger, Ostafrikanische Studien, p. 484.

2 Ibid. p. 309.

3 Georgi, op. cit. ii. 261.

Bosman, New Description of the Coast of Guinea, p. 141 sq.

5 Bancroft, op. cit. ii. 223.

6 Rockhill, Notes on some of the Laws, Customs, and Superstitions of Korea,' in American Anthropologist, iv. 180. Cf. Griffis, Corea, p. 239.

Chinese Penal Code, a master who, instead of complaining to a magistrate privately, beats to death a slave who has been guilty of theft, adultery, or any other similar crime, shall be punished with one hundred blows. If he beats to death, or intentionally kills, a slave who has committed no crime, he shall be punished with sixty blows and one year's banishment, and the wife or husband, as also the children, of the deceased slave shall be entitled to their freedom.1 Again, a freeman who kills another's slave shall be strangled."

According to Hebrew law, a master who smites his. slave so that he dies under his hand, "shall be surely punished"; but if the slave continues to live for a day or two after the assault, the master goes free on the score that the slave is "his money. Muhammed strongly enjoined the duty of kindness to slaves; yet, according to Muhammedan law, the master may even kill his own. slave with impunity for any offence, and incurs but a slight punishment-as imprisonment for a period at the discretion of the judge-if he kills him wantonly. The price of blood for a slave is his or her value; but by the Hanafee law a man is obnoxious to capital punishment for the murder of another man's slave."

Among the ancient Teutons the master was irresponsible in the eye of the law as to all dealings between himself and his slave; legally the slave was on a par with the horse and the ox, and to kill him was only to inflict a certain loss upon the owner." In ancient Wales the position of a slave seems to have been very similar; there was no galanas for a bondman, "only payment of his worth to his master, like the worth of a beast."7 Among the Greeks, in the Homeric age, the master evidently

1 Ta Tsing Leu Lee, sec. cccxiv. p. 340.

2 Ibid. sec. cccxiii. p. 336.

3 Exodus, xxi. 20 sq.

Lane, Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians, p. 115. Idem, Arabian Society in the Middle Ages, p. 251.

5 Idem, Modern Egyptians, p. 119. Idem, Arabian Society, p. 18 sq.

6 Grimm, Deutsche Rechtsalterthümer, p. 342 sqq. Brunner, Deutsche Rechtsgeschichte, i. 96. Kemble, Saxons in England, i. 208 sqq. Stemann, op. cit. p. 281 sqq. Keyser, op. cit. ii. pt. i. 289.

7 Dimetian Code, iii. 3. 8.

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could punish his slaves with death; but in later times, at least at Athens, he was obliged to hand over to the magistrate any slave of his who deserved capital punishment. What happened to a master who killed his own slave we do not know exactly, but at any rate he had to undergo a ceremony of purification. Plato says in his 'Laws,' that if a person kills the slave of another in anger, he shall pay twice the amount of the loss to his owner.1 But he adds, "If any one kills a slave who has done no wrong, because he is afraid that he may inform of some base and evil deeds of his own, or for any similar reason, in such a case let him pay the penalty of murder, as he would have done if he had slain a citizen." 5

In Rome, in ancient times, the master had by law the absolute power of life and death over his slaves; and he who killed another man's slave was not criminally prosecuted, but had merely to compensate the owner for the destruction of his property." Even during the Empire a slave was counted a thing, not a person; himself incapable of suffering an injuria, he was viewed as a mechanical medium only, through which an insult could be transmitted to his master. Yet this doctrine was not rigidly adhered to. After the publication of the Lex Cornelia, the change was introduced that he who killed a slave belonging to somebody else could be punished for murder; and later on even the master's power of life and death was restricted by law. Claudius declared that sick slaves who had been exposed by their owners in a languishing condition, and afterwards recovered, should be perfectly free and never more return to their former servitude; moreover, "if any one chose to kill at once, rather than expose, a slave, he should be liable for murder."9

By a constitution of Antoninus Pius he who put his slave to death without a sufficient cause (sine causa) was to be punished equally with him who killed the slave of another.' Hadrian even made an attempt to induce slave-owners to hand over to the authorities slaves who had been guilty of some capital crime, instead of themselves inflicting the punishment on the guilty.2

Faithful to her principle that human life is sacred, the Church made efforts to secure the life of the slave against the violence of the master; but neither the ecclesiastical nor the secular legislation gave him the same protection as was bestowed upon the free member of the Church and State. Various Councils punished the murder c a slave with two years' excommunication only, if the slave had been killed sine conscientia judicis "; and the same punishment was adopted by some Penitentials. Edgar made the penance last three years, whereas, if a freeman was killed, the penance was of seven years' duration.5 Facts do not justify Mr. Lecky's statement that, “in the penal system of the Church, the distinction between wrongs done to a freeman, and wrongs done to a slave, which lay at the very root of the whole civil legislation, was repudiated."

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Beyond a law of Constantine, to the effect that a master

3 Concilium Agathense, A.D. 506, canon 62 (Labbe-Mansi, Sacrorum Conciliorum collectio, viii. 335). Concilium Epaonense, A.D. 517, canon 34 (ibid. viii. 563). Concilium Wormatiense, A.D. 868, canon 38 (ibid. xv. 876).

4 Pænitentiale Cummeani, vi. 29 (Wasserschleben, Bussordnungen der abendländischen Kirche, p. 480). Pænit. Pseudo- Theodori, xxi. 12 (ibid. p. 587).

5 Canons enacted under Edgar, Modus imponendi poenitentiam, 4, II (Ancient Laws and Institutes of Eng

land, p. 405 sq.).

6 Lecky, History of European Morals, ii. 66. Mr. Lecky states (ibid. ii. 66 sq.) that the Council of Illiberis excluded for ever from the communion a master who killed his slave. I have only been able to find the following enactment made by a Council held at Illiberis in the beginning of the fourth century:-" Si qua domina furore zeli accensa flagris verberaverit ancillam suam, ita ut in tertium diem animam cum cruciatu effundat; eo quod incertum sit, voluntate, an casu occiderit; si voluntate, post septem annos; si casu, post quinquennii tempora, acta legitima pœnitentia, ad communionem placuit admitti" (Concilium Eliberitanum, ch. 5 [Labbe-Mansi, op. cit. ii. 6]).