Chapter 17-18 Enfranchisements; Eunuchs

Chapter 17: Enfranchisements

Many slaves, in a republican government, create a need of making many free.

• The evil is, if they have too many slaves, they cannot keep them bound.
• If they have too many freed-men, they cannot live, and must become a burden to the republic.
• Besides, many freed-men may be the same danger as that of slaves.
• The law should have an eye to these two inconveniences.

The several laws and decrees of the senate, made at Rome both for and against slaves, sometimes to limit, and at other times to facilitate, their infranchisement.

• They show their embarrassment in this respect.
• There were even times in which they durst not make laws.
• During Nero’s reign, the Romans demanded that the senate allow the masters to enslave the ungrateful freed-men.
  • Nero declared, that it was their duty to decide the affairs of individuals, and to make no general decree.

I also cannot determine what should be the regulations of a good republic in such a case.

• This depends on too many circumstances.
• Let us however make some reflections.

Many freed-men should not suddenly to be made by a general law.

• Among the Volsinienses∥, the freed-men become masters of the suffrages.
  • They enacted an abominable law, which gave them the right of sleeping the first night with the young women married to the free-born.

There are several ways of insensibly introducing new citizens into a republic.

• The laws may favour the acquiring a peculium, and put slaves into a condition of buying their liberty.
• They may prescribe a term of servitude, like those of Moses, which limited that of the§ Hebrew slaves to six years.
• It is easy to enfranchise, every year, a certain number of those slaves, who, by their age, health, or industry, can get a subsistence.
• The evil may be even cured in its root.
• Many slaves are connected with the several employments which are given them, to divide amongst the free born a part of these employments, for example, commerce or navigation, is reducing the number of slaves.

When there are many freed-men, the civil laws should determine what they owe to their patron, or that these duties should be fixed by the contract of infranchisement.

Their condition should be more favoured in the civil than in the political state; because, even in a popular government, the power ought not to fall into the hands of the vulgar.

Rome had so many freed-men.

• The political laws on freed-men were admirable.
• They gave them very little, and excluded them almost from nothing.
• They had even a share in the legislature.
• But the resolutions they were capable of taking were almost of no weight.
• They might bear a part in the public offices, and even in the dignity of the priesthood¶;
• but this privilege was in some sort rendered useless, by the disadvantages they had to encounter in the elections.
• They had a right to enter into the army.
• But they were to be registered in a certain class of the census before they could be soldiers.
• Nothing hindered the freedmen from being united by marriage with the families of the free-born.
• But they were not permitted to mix with those of the senators.
• In short, their children were free-born, though they were not so themselves.

Chapter 18: Freed-men and Eunuchs

THUS, in a republican government, it is advantageous, that:

• the situation of the freed-men be but little below that of the free-born, and
• the laws be calculated to remove a dislike of their condition.

But, in a despotic government luxury and arbitrary power prevail.

• They have nothing to do in this respect.
• The freed-men generally find themselves above the free-born.
• They rule in the court of the prince, and in the palaces of the great.
• They study the foibles, and not the virtues, of their master.
  • They lead him entirely by the former, not by the latter.
• Such were the freedmen of Rome in the times of the emperors.

 

When the principal slaves are eunuchs, let never so many privileges be granted them, they can hardly be regarded as freed-men:

• They are incapable of having a family of their own.
  • So they are naturally attached to the family of another.
• It is only by a kind of fiction that they are considered as citizens.

And yet there are countries where the magistracy is intirely in their hands.

• Dampier says:
  • “In† Tonquin, says ‡, all the mandarins, civil and military, are eunuchs.”
    • They have no families.
    • They are naturally avaricious.
    • The master or the prince benefits, in the end, by this very passion.
    • In Vietnam, the eunuchs cannot live without women, and therefore marry.
    • The law which permits their marriage may be founded partly on:
      • their respect for these eunuchs, and
      • their contempt of women.

Thus they are trusted with the magistracy because they have no family, and permitted to marry because they are magistrates.

Then it is that the sense which remains would fain supply that which they have lost

The enterprises of despair become a kind of enjoyment.

So, in Milton, that spirit, who has nothing left but desires, enraged at his degradation, would make use of his impotency itself.

We see, in the history of China, many laws to deprive eunuchs of all civil and military employments.

but they always returned to them again.

It seems as if the eunuchs of the East were a necessary evil.