form.

Though the Romans added little to the theory of the fundamental
problem involved, their history proved rich in practical
experience. There were times, in parts of the Roman Empire, when
personal slavery either did not exist or was limited and
insignificant in extent. But the institution grew with Roman wars
and conquests. In rural districts, slave labor displaced free
labor, and in the cities servants multiplied with the
concentration of wealth. The size and character of the slave
population eventually became a perpetual menace to the State.
Insurrections proved formidable, and every slave came to be
looked upon as an enemy to the public. It is generally conceded
that the extension of slavery was a primary cause of the decline
and fall of Rome. In the American controversy, therefore, the
lesson to be drawn from Roman experience was utilized to support
the cause of free labor.

After the Middle Ages, in which slavery under the modified form
of feudalism ran its course, there was a reversion to the ancient
classical controversy. The issue became clearly defined in the
hands of the English and French philosophers of the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries. In place of the time-honored doctrine
that the masses of mankind are by nature subject to the few who
are born to rule, the contradictory dogma that all men are by
nature free and equal was clearly enunciated. According to this
later view, it is of the very nature of spirit, or personality,
to be free. All men are endowed with personal qualities of will
and choice and a conscious sense of right and wrong. To subject
these native faculties to an alien force is to make war upon