Custom, However, Has
Established Certain Rules With Regard To The Treatment Of Slaves, Which
It Is Thought Dishonourable To Violate.
Thus, the domestic slaves, or
such as are born in a man's own house, are treated with more lenity than
those which are purchased with money.
The authority of the master over
the domestic slave, as I have elsewhere observed, extends only to
reasonable correction; for the master cannot sell his domestic, without
having first brought him to a public trial, before the chief men of the
place.[20] But these restrictions on the power of the master extend not
to the case of prisoners taken in war, nor to that of slaves purchased
with money. All these unfortunate beings are considered as strangers and
foreigners, who have no right to the protection of the law, and may be
treated with severity, or sold to a stranger, according to the pleasure
of their owners. There are, indeed, regular markets, where slaves of this
description are bought and sold; and the value of a slave, in the eye of
an African purchaser, increases in proportion to his distance from his
native kingdom; for when slaves are only a few days' journey from the
place of their nativity, they frequently effect their escape; but when
one or more kingdoms intervene, escape being more difficult, they are
more readily reconciled to their situation. On this account, the unhappy
slave is frequently transferred from one dealer to another, until he has
lost all hopes of returning to his native kingdom.
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