It is difficult to comprehend how, in St. John, the Jews can say to Jesus: "We have never been slaves to any one"--they who were at that time subjected to the Romans; they who had been sold in the market after the taking of Jerusalem; they of whom ten tribes, led away as slaves by Shalmaneser, had disappeared from the face of the earth, and of whom two other tribes were held in chains by the Babylonians for seventy years; they who had been seven times reduced to slavery in their promised land, according to their own avowal; they who in all their writings speak of their bondage in that Egypt which they abhorred, but to which they ran in crowds to gain money, as soon as Alexander condescended to allow them to settle there. The reverend Dom Calmet says, that we must understand in this passage, "intrinsic servitude," an explanation which by no means renders it more comprehensible. Italy, the Gauls, Spain, and a part of Germany, were inhabited by strangers, by foreigners become masters, and natives reduced to serfs. When the bishop of Seville, Opas, and Count Julian called over the Mahometan Moors against the Christian kings of the Visigoths, who reigned in the Pyrenees, the Mahometans, according to their custom, proposed to the natives, either to receive circumcision, give battle, or pay tribute in money and girls. King Roderick was vanquished, and slaves were made of those who were taken captive. The conquered preserved their wealth and their religion by paying; and it is thus that the Turks have since treated Greece, except that they imposed upon the latter a tribute of children of both sexes, the boys of which they circumcise and transform into pages and janissaries, while the girls are devoted to the harems. This tribute has since been compromised for money. The Turks have only a few slaves for the interior service of their houses, and these they purchase from the Circassians, Mingrelians, and nations of Lesser Tartary. Between the African Mahometans and the European Christians, the custom of piracy, and of making slaves of all who could be seized on the high seas, has always existed. They are birds of prey who feed upon one another; the Algerines, natives of Morocco, and Tunisians, all live by piracy. The Knights of Malta, successors to those of Rhodes, formally swear to rob and enslave all the Mahometans whom they meet; and the galleys of the pope cruise for Algerines on the northern coasts of Africa. Those who call themselves whites and Christians proceed to purchase negroes at a good market, in order to sell them dear in America. The Pennsylvanians alone have renounced this traffic, which they account flagitious. SECTION II.