many. And this was the condition of Europe during the Middle Ages, under what was termed the feudal system. There was, in fact, but one kind of property, and that consisted of land. Nearly all the useful arts had perished-commerce and manufactures could scarcely be said to exist at all, and a dark night of universal ignorance enshrouded the human mind.-The landholders of Europe, the feudal aristocrats, possessing all the property, necessarily and inevitably as fate itself, usurped all the power; and in consequence of the feebleness of government, and the resulting necessity that each one should do justice for himself, the laws of primogeniture and entails were resorted to, as a device to prevent the weakening of families by too great a subdivision or alienation of property, and from the same cause, small allodial proprietors were obliged to give up their small estates to some powerful baron, or large landholder, in consideration of protection, which he would be unable to procure in any other manner.* Moreover, the great landholders of those days had only one way of spending their estates, even when they were not barred by entails, and that was by employing a large number of retainers-for they could not then spend their estates as spendthrifts generally squander them, in luxuries and manufactures, in consequence of the rude state of the arts-all the necessities of man being supplied directly from the farms; and the great author of the Wealth of Nations has most philosophically remarked, that few great estates have been spent from benevolence alone. And the people of those days could find no employment except on the land, and, consequently, were entirely dependent on the landlords, subject to their caprices and whims, paid according to their pleasure, and entirely under their control; in fine, they were slaves complete.-Even the miserable cities of the feudal times were not independent, but were universally subjected to the barons or great landholders, whose powerful protection against the lawless rapine of the times, could only be purchased by an entire sur render of liberty.

Thus the property of the feudal ages was almost exclusively of one kind. The feebleness of government, together with the laws of primogeniture and entails, threw that property into the hands of a few, and the difficulty of alienation, caused by the absence of all other species of property, had a tendency to prevent that change of possession which we so constantly witness in modern times. Never was there, then, perhaps, so confirmed and so permanent an aristocracy as that of the feudal ages; it naturally sprang from the condition of property and the obstacles to its alienation. The aristocracy alone embraced in those days the freemen of Europe; all the rest were slaves, call them by what name you please, and doomed, by the unchanging

Upon this subject, see Robertson's 1st vol. Hist. Charles 5th, Hallam's Middle Ages, Gilbert Stuart on the Progress of Society, and all the writers on feudal tenures.

There is not a vestige to be discovered, for several centuries, of any considerable manufactures. Rich men kept domestic artisans among their servants; even kings in the ninth century, had their clothes made by the women upon their farms.'— Hallam's Middle Ages, vol. 2, pp. 260, 261, Phi'ad, edition.

Upon this subject, see both Hallam and Robertson.

laws of nature, to remain so, till commerce and manufactures had arisen, and with them had sprung into existence a new class of capitalists, the tiers etat of Europe, whose existence first called for new forms of government, and whose exertions either have or will revolutionize the whole of Europe. A revolution in the state property is always a premonitory symptom of a revolution in government and in the state of society, and without the one you cannot meet with permanent success in the other. The slave of southern Europe could never have been emancipated, except through the agency of commerce and manufactures, and the consequent rapid rise of cities, accompanied with a more regular and better protected industry, producing a vast augmentation in the products which administer to our necessities and comforts, and increasing in a proportionate degree the sphere of our wants and desires. In the same way we shall show, before bringing this article to a close, that if the slaves of our southern country shall ever be liberated, and suffered to remain among us, with their present limited wants and longing desire for a state of idleness, they would fall, inevitably, by the nature of things, into a state of slavery, from which no government could rescue them, unless by a radical change of all their habits, and a most awful and fearful change in the whole system of property throughout the country. The state of property, then, may fairly be considered a very fruitful source of slavery. It was the most fruitful source during the feudal ages—it is the foundation of slavery throughout the northeastern regions of Europe and the populous countries of the continent of Asia. We are even disposed to think, contrary to general opinion, that the condition of property operated prior to the customs of war in the production of slavery. We are fortified in this opinion, by the example of Mexico and Peru in South America. In both of these empires, certainly the farthest advanced and most populous of the new world, "private property," says Dr. Robertson, "was perfectly understood, and established in its full extent." The most abject slavery existed in both these countries; and what still farther sustains our position, it very nearly, especially in Mexico, resembled that of the feudal ages. "The great body of the people was in a most humiliating state. considerable number, known by the name of Mayeques, nearly resembling the condition of those peasants who, under various denominations, were considered, during the prevalence of the feudal system, as instruments of labor attached to the soil. Others were reduced to the lowest form of subjection, that of domestic servitude, and felt the utmost rigor of that wretched state."*

A

Now, slavery in both these countries must have arisen from the state of property, for the laws of war are entirely too cruel to admit of captives among the Mexicans. They fought," says Dr. Robertson, to gratify their vengeance, by shedding the blood of their enemies-no captive was ever ransomed or spared." And the Peruvians, though much milder in war, seem not to have made slaves of their

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* Robertson's America, pp. 105, 107. Ib. vol. 2, p. 114.

captives, though we must confess that there is great difficulty in explaining their great comparative clemency to prisoners in war, unless by supposing they were made slaves. We have no doubt, likewise, if we could obtain sufficient insight into the past history and condition of Africa, that slavery would be found to have arisen in many of those countries rather from the state of property than the laws of war; for even to this day, many of the African princes are too cruel and sanguinary in war to forego the barbarous pleasure of murdering the captives, and yet slavery exists in their dominions to its full extent.

We will not here pause to examine into the justice or injustice of that species of slavery, which is sure to arise from a faulty dis ribution of property, because it is the inevitable result of the great law of necessity, which itself has no law, and consequently, about which it is utterly useless to argue. We will, therefore, proceed at once to the third cause assigned for slavery-bargain and sale.

III. Cause of Slavery, Bargain and Sale.-This source of slavery might easily be reduced to that which depends on the state of property; but, for the sake of perspicuity, we prefer keeping them apart.Adam Smith has well observed, that there is a strong propensity in man "to truck, barter and exchange, one thing for another," and both the parties generally intend to derive an advantage from the exchange. This disposition seems to extend to everything susceptible of being impressed with the character of property or exchangeable value, or from which any great or single advantage may be derived— it has been made to extend at times to life and liberty. Generals, in time of war, have pledged their lives for the performance of their contracts. At the conclusion of peace, semi-barbarous nations have been in the habit of interchanging hostages-generally the sons of princes and noblemen--for the mutual observance of treaties, whose lives were forfeited by a violation of the plighted faith; and in all ages, where the practice has not been interdicted by law, individuals have occasionally sold their own liberty, or that of others dependent on them. We have already seen how the small allodial possessors, during the feudal ages, were obliged to surrender their lands and liberty to some powerful baron, for that protection which could be procured in no other manner. Throughout the whole ancient world, the sale of one's own liberty, and even that of his children, was common. The non-payment of debts, or failure to comply with contracts, frequently subjected the unfortunate offender to slavery, in both Greece and Rome. Instances of slavery from bargain and sale occur in Scripture. Joseph was sold to the Ishmaelites for twenty pieces of silver, and carried down to Egypt in slavery. But this was a black and most unjustifiable act on the part of his envious brothers. There

We are sorry we have not the means of satisfactorily investigating this subject. If slavery was established among them from the laws of war, it would be one of the most triumphant examples which history affords of the effect of slavery, in mitigating the cruelties of war; for it is a singular fact, that the Peruvians were the only people in the new world who did not murder their prisoners.

are other parts of Scripture where the practice of buying and selling slaves seems to be justified. The Hebrew laws permitted the selling of even the Jews into slavery for six years. "If thou buy a Hebrew servant, six years he shall serve, and in the seventh he shall go out free for nothing." And if the servant choose, at the expiration of six years, to remain with his master as a slave, he might do so on having his ear bored through with an awl. It seems fathers could sell their own children-thus: "and if a man sell his daughter to be a maid servant, she shall not go out as the men servants do."* An unlimited right to purchase slaves from among foreigners seems to have been granted, whether they had been slaves or not before the purchase; thus, in the twenty-fifth chapter of Leviticus, we find the fol lowing injunction: "Both thy bondmen and bondmaids which thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen that are round about you; of them shall ye buy bondmen and bondmaids. Moreover, of the children of strangers who sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy, and of the families that are with you, which they begat in your land; and they shall be your possession. And ye shall take them as an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit them for a possession-they shall be your bondmen forever." We may well suppose that few persons would ever be induced to sell themselves or children into slavery, unless under very severe pressure from want. Accordingly, we find the practice most prevalent among the most populous and the most savage nations, where the people are most frequently subjected to dearths and famines. Thus, in Hindostan and China, there is nothing more frequent than this practice of selling liberty. "Every year," said a Jesuit who resided in Hindostan, we baptize a thousand children whom their parents can no longer feed, or who, being likely to die, are sold to us by their mothers in order to get rid of them." The great legislator of Hindostan, Menu, in his ordinances, which are described by Sir William Jones, justifies this practice in time of scarcity. "Ajigarta," says Menu in one of his ordinances, "dying with hunger, was going to destroy his own son by selling him for some cattle; yet he was guilty of no crime, for he only sought a remedy against famishing.""" In China," says Duhalde, "a man sometimes sells his son, and even himself and wife, at a very moderate price. The common mode is to mortgage themselves with a condition of redemption, and a great number of men and maid servants are thus bound in a family." There is no doubt but at this moment, in every densely populated country, hundreds would be willing to sell themselves into slavery if the laws would permit them, whenever they were oppressed by famine. Ireland seems to be the country of modern Europe most subjected to these dreadful visitations. Suppose, then, we reverse the vision of the Kentucky Senator, and imagine that Ireland could be severed during those periods of distress from the Britannic isle, and could float like the

See 21st chapter of Exodus,

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† 42, 44 45, and 46 verses.

Mr. Clay, in the debate on his resolutions on the Tariff, 1832.

fabled island of Delos across the ocean, and be placed by our side, and our laws should inhumanly forbid a single son of Erin from entering our territory, unless as a slave, to be treated exactly like the African; is there any man, acquainted with the state of the Irish in years of scarcity, who would doubt for a moment, but that thousands, much as this oppressed people are in love with liberty, would enter upon this hard condition, if they could find purchasers? Indeed, the melancholy fact has too often occurred in Ireland, of individuals committing crimes merely for the purpose of being thrown into the houses of correction, where they could obtain bread and water!

ART. V.-NORTH CAROLINA.

COLONIAL, REVOLUTIONARY AND SUBSEQUENT HISTORY-PHYSICAL CONDITION-PRODUCTIVE INDUSTRY AND RESOURCES-POPULATION-CHIEF

TOWNS EDUCATION-RELIGIOUS SECTS-COURTS-CANALS AND RAILROADS, ETC. ETC.

COLONIAL HISTORY.-The first English settlement made in America was planted in the summer of 1585, on Roanoke, an island situate in the passage between the sounds of Pamlico and Albemarle, North Carolina. The patron of the infant colony, which numbered one hundred and seven, was Sir Walter Raleigh, to whom Queen Elizabeth had granted, in 1584, a patent for such lands as he might discover in America "not possessed by any Christian people." The same year he dispatched two small vessels to make discoveries; and these dropped their anchors early in July in Ocracoke Inlet. The adventurers landed on an island near Roanoke, called by the natives Wococon, where they were received by the inhabitants with every mark of hospitality. After visiting the region immediately around Wococon, they returned to England, and gave a highly favorable account of the salubrity of the climate, and fertility of the soil. The name Virginia was bestowed upon the country, and Raleigh's patent was confirmed by act of Parliament. Sir Walter sent out at once, under Ralph Lane as governor, the colony above mentioned. Soon, however, the settlers became entangled in difficulties with the natives -difficulties which, originating in the imprudent conduct of Grenville, the commander of the vessels in which the colonists had come from England, kept increasing under subsequent tyrannical acts on the part of the governor, befitting a conqueror rather than the head of a peaceful colony. Hostilities broke out. The English, who had been occupied chiefly in exploring the country, suffered soon from want of provisions. They became discouraged, and finally, in 1586,

1. The History of North Carolina, from the Earliest Period, by Francois Xavier Martin: New Orleans. 1829. 2 vois.

2. The History of North Carolina, by Hugh Williamson, M. D., LL. D., Philadelphia.

1812. 2 vols.

3. Late Documents, Journals, Records, etc.