Volume I Part 20 (2/2)
It may be remarked here, that the political and other disabilities of the Strangers, which were the distinctions growing out of a different national descent, and important to the preservation of national characteristics, and to the purity of national wors.h.i.+p, do not seem to have effected at all the _social_ estimation, in which this cla.s.s of servants was held. They were regarded according to their character and worth as _persons_, irrespective of their foreign origin, employments, and political condition.
The common construction put upon the expression, ”_rule with rigor_,”
and an inference drawn from it, have an air so oracular, as quite to overcharge risibles of ordinary calibre, if such an effect were not forestalled by its impiety. It is interpreted to mean, ”you shall not make him an article of property, you shall not force him to work, and rob him of his earnings, you shall not make him a chattel, and strip him of legal protection.” So much for the interpretation. The inference is like unto it, viz. Since the command forbade such outrages upon the _Israelites, it permitted and commissioned_ the infliction of them upon the _Strangers_. Such impious and shallow smattering, captivates two cla.s.ses of minds, the one by its flippancy, the other by its blasphemy, and both, by the strong scent of its unbridled license. What boots it to reason against such rampant affinities!
In Exodus, chap. i. 13, 14, it is said that the Egyptians ”made the children of Israel to _serve_ with rigor,” ”and all their _service_ wherein they made them _serve_, was with rigor.” The rigor here spoken of, is affirmed of the _amount of labor_ extorted from them, and the _mode_ of the exaction. This form of expression, ”_serve with rigor_,”
is never applied to the service of servants either under the Patriarchal, or the Mosaic systems. Nor is any other form of expression ever used, either equivalent to it, or at all similar. The phrase, ”thou shalt not RULE over him with rigor,” used in Leviticus xxv. 43, 46, does not prohibit unreasonable exactions of labor, nor inflictions of personal cruelty. _Such were provided against otherwise_. But it forbids, confounding the distinctions between a Jew and a Stranger, by a.s.signing the former to the same grade of service, for the same term of time, and under the same national and political disabilities as the latter.
We are now prepared to survey at a glance, the general condition of the different cla.s.ses of servants, with the modifications peculiar to each cla.s.s. I. In the possession of _all fundamental rights, all cla.s.ses of servants were on an absolute equality_, all were _equally protected_ by law in their persons, character, property and social relations. All were _voluntary_, all were _compensated_ for their labor. All were released from their regular labor nearly _one half of the days in each year_, all were furnished with stated _instruction_; none in either cla.s.s were in any sense articles of _property_, all were regarded as _men_, with the rights, interests, hopes, and destinies of _men_. In these respects the circ.u.mstances of _all_ cla.s.ses of servants among the Israelites, were not only similar but _identical_, and so far forth, they formed but ONE CLa.s.s.
II. DIFFERENT CLa.s.sES OF SERVANTS.
1. _Hired Servants_.--This cla.s.s consisted both of Israelites and Strangers. Their employments were different. The _Israelite_, was an agricultural servant. The Stranger was a _domestic_ and _personal_ servant, and in some instances _mechanical_; both were _occasional_, procured _temporally_ to serve an emergency. Both lived in their own families, their wages were _money_, and they were paid when their work was done. As a _cla.s.s of servants_, the hired were less loved, trusted, honored and promoted than any other.
2. _Bought Servants, (including those ”born in the house.”)_--This cla.s.s also, was composed both of Israelites and Strangers, the same general difference obtaining in their kinds of employment as was noticed before.
Both were paid in advance[A], and neither was temporary.
[Footnote A: The payment _in advance_, doubtless lessened considerably the price of the purchase; the servant thus having the use of the money from the beginning, and the master a.s.suming all the risks of life, and health for labor; at the expiration of the six years' contract, the master having experienced no loss from the risk incurred at the making of it, was obliged by law to release the servant with a liberal gratuity. The reason a.s.signed for this is, ”he hath been worth a double hired servant unto thee in serving thee six years,” as if it had been said, he has now served out his time, and as you have experienced no loss from the risks of life, and ability to labor which you incurred in the purchase, and which lessened the price, and as, by being your permanent servant for six years, he has saved you all the time and trouble of looking up and hiring laborers on emergencies, therefore, ”thou shalt furnish him liberally,” &c.]
The Israelitish servant, in most instances, was released after six years. (The _freeholder_ continued until the jubilee.) The Stranger, was a _permanent_ servant, continuing until the jubilee. Besides these distinctions between Jewish and Gentile bought servants, a marked distinction obtained between different cla.s.ses of Jewish bought servants. Ordinarily, during their term of service, they were merged in their master's family, and, like the wife and children of the master, subject to his authority; (and of course, like them, protected by law from its abuse.) But _one_ cla.s.s of the Jewish bought servants was a marked exception. The _freeholder_, obliged by poverty to leave his possession, and sell himself as a servant, did not thereby affect his family relations, or authority, nor subject himself as an inferior to the control of his master, though dependent upon him for employment. In this respect, his condition differed from that of the main body of Jewish bought servants, which seems to have consisted of those, who had not yet come into possession of their inheritance, or of those who were dislodging from it an inc.u.mbrance.
Having dwelt so much at length on this part of the subject, the reader's patience may well be spared further details. We close it with a suggestion or two, which may serve as a solvent of some minor difficulties, if such remain.
I. It should be kept in mind, that _both_ cla.s.ses of servants, the Israelite and the Stranger, not only enjoyed _equal natural and religious rights_, but _all the civil and political privileges_ enjoyed by those of their own people, who were _not_ servants. If Israelites, all rights belonging to Israelites were theirs. If from the Strangers, the same political privileges enjoyed by those wealthy Strangers, who bought and held _Israelitish_ servants, _were theirs_. They also shared _in common with them_, the political disabilities which appertained to _all_ Strangers, whether the servants of Jewish masters, or the masters of Jewish servants.
II. The disabilities of the servants from the Strangers, were exclusively _political_ and _national_.
1. They, in common with all Strangers, _could not own the soil_.
2. They were _ineligible to civil offices_.
3. They were a.s.signed to _employments_ less honorable than those in which Israelitish servants engaged; agriculture being regarded as fundamental to the prosperity and even to the existence of the state, other employments were in far less repute, and deemed _unjewish_.
Finally, the condition of the Strangers, whether servants or masters, was, as it respected political privileges, much like that of unnaturalized foreigners in the United States; no matter how great their wealth or intelligence, or moral principle, or love for our inst.i.tutions, they can neither go to the ballot-box, nor own the soil, nor be eligible to office. Let a native American, who has always enjoyed these privileges, be suddenly bereft of them, and loaded with the disabilities of an alien, and what to the foreigner would be a light matter, to _him_, would be the severity of _rigor_.
The recent condition of the Jews and Catholics in England, is a still better ill.u.s.tration of the political condition of the Strangers in Israel. Rothschild, the late English banker, though the richest private citizen in the world, and perhaps master of scores of English servants, who sued for the smallest crumbs of his favor, was, as a subject of the government, inferior to the veriest scavenger among them. Suppose an Englishman, of the Established Church, were by law deprived of power to own the soil, made ineligible to office, and deprived unconditionally of the electoral franchise, would Englishmen think it a misapplication of language, if it were said, ”The government rules over that man with rigor?” And yet his life, limbs, property, reputation, conscience, all his social relations, the disposal of his time, the right of locomotion at pleasure, and of natural liberty in all respects, are just as much protected by law as the Lord Chancellor's. The same was true of all ”the strangers within the gates” among the Israelites: Whether these Strangers were the servants of Israelitish masters, or the masters of Israelitish servants, whether sojourners, or bought servants, or born in the house, or hired, or neither--_all were protected equally with the descendants of Abraham._
Finally--As the Mosaic system was a great compound type, made up of innumerable fractional ones, each rife with meaning in doctrine and duty; the practical power of the whole, depended upon the exact observance of those distinctions and relations which const.i.tuted its significancy. Hence, the care everywhere shown to preserve inviolate the distinction between a _descendant of Abraham_ and a _Stranger_, even when the Stranger was a proselyte, had gone through the initiatory ordinances, entered the congregation, and become incorporated with the Israelites by family alliance. The regulation laid down in Exodus xxi.
2-6, is an ill.u.s.tration, _”If thou buy an Hebrew servant, six years shall he serve: and in the seventh he shall go out free for nothing. If he came in by himself, he shall go out by himself: if he were married, then, his wife shall go out with him. If his master have given him a wife, and she have borne him sons or daughters; the wife and her children shall be her master's, and he shall go out by himself. And if the servant should plainly say, I love my master, my wife, and my children, I will not go out free: then his master shall bring him unto the judges; he shall also bring him to the door, or unto the door-post; and his master shall bore his ear through with an awl, and he shall serve him forever.”_ In this case, the Israelitish servant, whose term expired in six years, married one of his master's _permanent female domestics_; but the fact of her marriage, did not release her master from _his_ part of the contract for her whole term of service, nor absolve him from his legal obligation to support and educate her children. Nor could it do away that distinction, which marked her national descent by a specific _grade_ and _term_ of service. Her marriage did not impair her obligation to fulfil _her_ part of the contract. Her relations as a permanent domestic grew out of a distinction guarded with great care throughout the Mosaic system. To permit this to be rendered void, would have been to divide the system against itself. This G.o.d would not tolerate. Nor, on the other hand, would he permit the master, to throw off the responsibility of instructing her children, nor the care and expense of their helpless infancy and rearing. He was bound to support and educate them, and all her children born afterwards during her term of service. The whole arrangement beautifully ill.u.s.trates that wise and tender regard for the interests of all the parties concerned, which arrays the Mosaic system in robes of glory, and causes it to s.h.i.+ne as the sun in the kingdom of our Father. By this law, the children had secured to them a mother's tender care. If the husband loved his wife and children, he could compel his master to keep him, whether he had any occasion for his services or not, and with such remuneration as was provided by the statute. If he did not love them, to be rid of him was a blessing; and in that case, the regulation would prove an act for the relief of an afflicted family.
It is not by any means to be inferred, that the release of the servant from his service in the seventh year, either absolved him from the obligations of marriage, or shut him out from the society of his family.
He could doubtless procure a service at no great distance from them, and might often do it, to get higher wages, or a kind of employment better suited to his taste and skill, or because his master might not have sufficient work to occupy him. Whether he lived near his family, or at a considerable distance, the great number of days on which the law released servants from regular labor, would enable him to spend much more time with them than can be spent by most of the agents of our benevolent societies with _their_ families, or by many merchants, editors, artists, &c., whose daily business is in New York, while their families reside from ten to one hundred miles in the country.
We conclude this Inquiry by touching briefly upon an objection, which, though not formally stated, has been already set aside by the whole tenor of the foregoing argument. It is this,--
_”The slavery of the Canaanites by the Israelites, was appointed by G.o.d as a commutation of the punishment of death denounced against them for their sins.”_--If the absurdity of a sentence consigning persons to _death_, and at the same time to perpetual _slavery_, did not sufficiently laugh in its own face, it would be small self-denial, in a case so tempting, to make up the deficiency by a general contribution.
For, _be it remembered_, the Mosaic law was given, while Israel was _in the wilderness_, and only _one_ statute was ever given respecting _the disposition to be made of the inhabitants of the land._ If the sentence of death was first p.r.o.nounced against them, and afterwards _commuted_, when? where? by whom? and in what terms was the commutation? And where is it recorded? Grant, for argument's sake, that all the Canaanites were sentenced to unconditional extermination; as there was no reversal of the sentence, how can a right to _enslave_ them, be drawn from such premises? The punishment of death is one of the highest recognitions of man's moral nature possible. It proclaims him _man_--intelligent accountable, guilty _man,_ deserving death for having done his utmost to cheapen human life, and make it worthless, when the proof of its priceless value, lives in his own nature. But to make him a _slave,_ cheapens to nothing _universal human nature,_ and instead of healing a wound, gives a death stab. What! repair an injury done to rational being in the robbery of _one_ of its rights, not merely by robbing it of _all,_ but by annihilating the very _foundation_ of them--that everlasting distinction between men and things? To make a man a chattel, is not the _punishment,_ but the _annihilation_ of a _human_ being, and, so far as it goes, of _all_ human beings. This commutation of the punishment of death, into perpetual slavery, what a fortunate discovery!
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