spectators. What is marvellous, playing at dice is one of their most
serious employments; and even sober, they are gamesters: nay, so
desperately do they venture upon the chance of winning or losing, that
when their whole substance is played away, they stake their liberty and
their persons upon one and the last throw. The loser goes calmly into
voluntary bondage. However younger he be, however stronger, he tamely
suffers himself to be bound and sold by the winner. Such is their
perseverance in an evil course: they themselves call it honour.

Slaves of this class, they exchange in commerce, to free themselves too
from the shame of such a victory. Of their other slaves they make not
such use as we do of ours, by distributing amongst them the several
offices and employments of the family. Each of them has a dwelling of
his own, each a household to govern. His lord uses him like a tenant,
and obliges him to pay a quantity of grain, or of cattle, or of cloth.
Thus far only the subserviency of the slave extends. All the other
duties in a family, not the slaves, but the wives and children
discharge. To inflict stripes upon a slave, or to put him in chains, or
to doom him to severe labour, are things rarely seen. To kill them they
sometimes are wont, not through correction or government, but in heat
and rage, as they would an enemy, save that no vengeance or penalty
follows. The freedmen very little surpass the slaves, rarely are of
moment in the house; in the community never, excepting only such nations
where arbitrary dominion prevails. For there they bear higher sway
than the free-born, nay, higher than the nobles. In other countries the
inferior condition of freedmen is a proof of public liberty.

To the practice of usury and of increasing money by interest, they are
strangers; and hence is found a better guard against it, than if it
were forbidden. They shift from land to land; and, still appropriating