The Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register for British India and Its Dependencies Volume 23 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1827 edition. Excerpt: ...is demonstrative of the fact that domestic offices were usually discharged by individuals in a mancipated state. Parkhurst derives the latter term from the Hebrew root bl, which denotes a state of exhaustion; and in those passages ff where the words nH and nibl occur, and which are rendered in eur version " the poorest and lowest sort of people," the context seems to shew that the persons spoken of were slaves. The condition of a slave must in those early days have been by no means so despicable, degraded, and full of suffering, as our present notions, formed upon i lib. I. fl. 6. 1. t Sext Pomp. Fert. lib. xl. % Gen. xill, 12, 13. See also Jer. IL 14. Gen. xlvii. "Buy us and our land for bread, and we and our land will be servants unto Pharoah.' c. V. 19, 20, 23. I See Exod. xxi. Levlu m. Deut. xv. t Clio, nj, cyrop. lib. Ir. tt 2 Kingi, xxiv, 14. Jer. xl. 7. IH; 15, 16. 4.-.. upon a knowledge of the scenes which have taken place in the WestIndies and Africa, lead us naturally to conclude. The mere fact of a disposition on the part of freemen to renounce their birthright, to contract voluntarily the relationship, and even after seven years' experience to forego the right of liberation, affords a pledge that the condition was at least very tolerable. Demosthenes tells us that, in Athens, the condition of a slave was preferable to that of a free man in many other countries. He even quotes a law which protected slaves from contumely. There were many incidents, however, in the state of slavery amongst the Greeks and Romans, which showed a lamentable want of regard towards the unhappy people who were subjected to it. The Spartan Helots, for example, experienced a very different treatment from that referred to by...