Volume II Part 37 (1/2)

_ 110 Essais_, liv. ii. ch. xiii.

_ 111 Lettres persanes_, lxxvi.

_ 112 Nouvelle Helose_, partie iii. let. 21-22. Esquirol gives a curious ill.u.s.tration of the way the influence of Rousseau penetrated through all cla.s.ses. A little child of thirteen committed suicide, leaving a writing beginning: ”Je legue mon ame a Rousseau, mon corps a la terre.”-_Maladies mentales_, tome i. p. 588.

113 In general, however, Voltaire was extremely opposed to the philosophy of despair, but he certainly approved of some forms of suicide. See the articles ”Caton” and ”Suicide,” in his _Dict.

philos._

114 Lisle, _Du Suicide_, pp. 411, 412.

115 ”Le monde est vide depuis les Romains.”-St.-Just, _Proces de Danton_.

116 This fact has been often noticed. The reader may find many statistics on the subject in Lisle, _Du Suicide_, and Winslow's _Anatomy of Suicide_.

117 ”There seems good reason to believe, that with the progress of mental development through the ages, there is, as in the case with other forms of organic development, a correlative degeneration going on, and that an increase of insanity is a penalty which an increase of our present civilisation necessarily pays.”-Maudsley's _Physiology of Mind_, p. 201.

_ 118 Cod. Theod._ lib. ix. t.i.t. 12.

119 Some commentators imagine (see Muratori, _Antich. Ital. Diss._ xiv.) that among the Pagans the murder of a man's own slave was only a.s.similated to the crime of murdering the slave of another man, while in the Christian law it was defined as homicide, equivalent to the murder of a freeman. I confess, however, this point does not appear to me at all clear.

120 See G.o.defroy's _Commentary_ on these laws.

121 Exodus xxi. 21

122 ”Quas vilitates vitae dignas legum observatione non credidit.”-_Cod.

Theod._ lib. ix. t.i.t. 7. See on this law, Wallon, tome iii. pp. 417, 418.

Dean Milman observes, ”In the old Roman society in the Eastern Empire this distinction between the marriage of the freeman and the concubinage of the slave was long recognised by Christianity itself.

These unions were not blessed, as the marriages of their superiors had soon begun to be, by the Church. Basil the Macedonian (A.D.

867-886) first enacted that the priestly benediction should hallow the marriage of the slave; but the authority of the emperor was counteracted by the deep-rooted prejudices of centuries.”-_Hist. of Latin Christianity_, vol. ii. p. 15.

_ 123 Cod. Theod._ lib. ii. t.i.t. 25.

124 Ibid. lib. iv. t.i.t. 7.

125 Ibid. lib. ix. t.i.t. 9.

_ 126 Corpus Juris_, vi. 1.

_ 127 Cod. Theod._ lib. vi. t.i.t. 2.

128 See on all this legislation, Wallon, tome iii.; Champagny, _Charite chretienne_, pp. 214-224.

129 It is worthy of notice, too, that the justice of slavery was frequently based by the Fathers, as by modern defenders of slavery, on the curse of Ham. See a number of pa.s.sages noticed by Moehler, _Le Christianisme et l'Esclavage_ (trad. franc.), pp. 151-152.

130 The penalty, however, appears to have been reduced to two years'

exclusion from communion. Muratori says: ”In piu consili si truova decretato, 'excommunicatione vel pnitentiae biennii esse subjiciendum qui servum proprium sine conscientia judicis occiderit.' ”-_Antich. Ital._ Diss. xiv.

Besides the works which treat generally of the penitential discipline, the reader may consult with fruit Wright's letter _On the Political Condition of the English Peasantry_, and Moehler, p.