more intense; their treatment more severe; and there was no retreat at
pleasure, from the frowns and lashes of their despotick masters.

Having premised this, we may now proceed to a general division of
slavery, into _voluntary_ and _involuntary_. The _voluntary_
will comprehend the two classes, which we have already mentioned;
for, in the first instance, there was a _contract_, founded
on _consent_; and, in the second, there was a _choice_ of
engaging or not in those practices, the known consequences of which
were servitude. The _involuntary_; on the other hand, will
comprehend those, who were forced, without any such _condition_ or
_choice_, into a situation, which as it tended to degrade a part of
the human species, and to class it with the brutal, must have been, of
all human situations, the most wretched and insupportable. These are
they, whom we shall consider solely in the present work. We shall
therefore take our leave of the former, as they were mentioned only,
that we might state the question with greater accuracy, and, be the
better enabled to reduce it to its proper limits.


* * * * *


FOOTNOTES


[Footnote 004: Genesis, Ch. 47. Leviticus XXV. v. 39, 40.]


[Footnote 005: The _Thetes_ appear very early in the Grecian