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chapter five: The Fourth Difference - Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments [1815]

Edition used:

Principles of Politics Applicable to a all Governments, trans. Dennis O’Keeffe, ed. Etienne Hofmann, Introduction by Nicholas Capaldi (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2003).

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chapter five

The Fourth Difference

Fourthly, the universal practice of slavery among the ancients lent their mores something severe and cruel which made it easy for them to sacrifice the gentle affections to political interests. The existence of the slaves, that is, of a class of men who enjoy none of the rights of humanity, changes absolutely the character of the peoples among whom that class exists. The inevitable consequence of slavery is the weakening of pity, of sympathy for pain. The slave’s pain is a resource for the owner. At equal levels of civilization, a nation which has slaves must be much less compassionate than one which does not. Antiquity, even among the most orderly peoples, and the individuals most distinguished by their [429] rank, elevation, and enlightenment, supplies us with numerous and almost incredible examples of inhumanity inspired in the master by his untrammeled power over the enslaved.18 Reading the address by Lysias,19 we can scarcely conceive a social condition so ferocious that such an address could actually be articulated. Two men have bought a slave girl destined for their common pleasure, an initial outrage against decency and nature. She becomes fond of one to the other’s disadvantage. The latter comes before the judges, demanding publicly from the court his share of the slave whom he has legitimately bought. To establish the facts he alleges, he demands that she be subjected to torture, waxing indignant that his opponent objects to this, and seeing nothing in his objections save the illegal refusal of a litigant of bad faith perfidiously repudiating the best way of bringing out the truth. The torments of the slave, the profanation of everything holy in humanity and love, the horrible mix of torture and pleasures, which would revolt any modern mind, count for nothing, either with him who makes this shameful demand, or the judges to whom he appeals, or the spectators who listen to him, or Lysias, who cold-bloodedly composes a harangue in support of this claim.

The absence of slavery joined to the progress of civilization has given us more human mores. Cruelty, even to further our interest, has become generally alien. Abstract reasoning and the public good have made it impossible for us.

[18. ]See Constant’s Note N at the end of Book XVI.

[19. ]Le quatrième discours Au sujet d’une accusation pour blessures avec préméditation de meurtre. Lysias, Discours, text edited and translated by Louis Gernet and Marcel Bizos, Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 1924, t. I, pp. 80–84.

[N. [Refers to page 358.]]“Cum omnibus horis aliquid atrociter fieri videmus aut audimus, etiam qui natura mitissimi sumus, assiduitate molestiarum sensum omnem humanitatis ex animis amittimus.” Cicero, Pro Roscio.56 Cicero speaks in this passage about the mores of Romans in general. One could apply it, however, to the slave in particular. Everyone knows how little men who have lived for a long time in the colonies are susceptible to pity. Xenophon, his treatise on the Republic of Athens, goes as far as maintaining that people treated the slaves with too much consideration.57

[N. [Refers to page 358.]]“Cum omnibus horis aliquid atrociter fieri videmus aut audimus, etiam qui natura mitissimi sumus, assiduitate molestiarum sensum omnem humanitatis ex animis amittimus.” Cicero, Pro Roscio.56 Cicero speaks in this passage about the mores of Romans in general. One could apply it, however, to the slave in particular. Everyone knows how little men who have lived for a long time in the colonies are susceptible to pity. Xenophon, his treatise on the Republic of Athens, goes as far as maintaining that people treated the slaves with too much consideration.57

[56]“When all the time we see or notice some atrocity or other, for all our very sweet disposition, the repetition of these painful events drives any feeling of humanity away from our hearts.” Cicero, Pro Sex. Roscio Amerino, in Discours, t. I, text edited and translated by H. de la Ville de Mirmont, Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 1921, p. 126.

[57]This example and the reference come from Cornelius de Pauw, op. cit., t. I, p. 168.