flayed alive, or torn by dogs, or thrown as food for fishes, is something
worse than this quick exit of the thrall of Antiochus. You of these softer
climes are in your natures milder than we, and are more moved by scenes
like this. What would you think, Queen, to see not one, but scores or
hundreds of these miserable beings, upon bare suspicion of attempts
against their master's life, condemned, by their absolute irresponsible
possessors, to death in all its most revolting forms? Nay, even our Roman
women, of highest rank, and gentlest nurture, stand by while their slaves
are scourged, or themselves apply the lash. If under this torture they
die, it is thought of but as of the death of vermin. War has made with us
this sort of property of so cheap possession, that to destroy it is often
a useful measure of economy. By a Roman, nothing is less regarded than
life. And in truth, I see not how it can be otherwise.'

'But surely,' said Julia, 'you do not mean to defend this condition of
life. It is not like the sentiments I have heard you express,'

'I defend it only thus,' I replied: 'so long as we have wars--and when
will they cease?--there must be captives; and what can these be but
slaves? To return them to their own country, were to war to no purpose. To
colonize them were to strip war of its horrors. To make them freemen of
our own soil, were to fill the land with foes and traitors. Then if there
must be slaves, there must be masters and owners. And the absolute master
of other human beings, responsible to no one, can be no other than a
tyrant. If he has, as he must have, the power to punish at will, he will
exercise it, and that cruelly. If he has the power to kill, as he must
have, then will he kill and kill cruelly when his nature prompts. And this
his nature will prompt, or if not his nature absolutely, yet his educated
nature. Our children grow up within the sight and sound of all the horrors
and sufferings of this state of things. They use their slaves--with which,