The former having conquered Troy, and having united themselves under one common name and interest, began, from that period, to distinguish the rest of the world by the title of _barbarians_; inferring by such an appellation, "that they were men who were only noble in their own country; that they had no right, from their _nature_, to authority or command; that, on the contrary, so low were their capacities, they were _destined_ by nature _to obey_, and to live in a state of perpetual drudgery and subjugation."[022] Conformable with this opinion was the treatment, which was accordingly prescribed to a _barbarian_. The philosopher Aristotle himself, in the advice which he gave to his pupil Alexander, before he went upon his Asiatick expedition, intreated him to "use the Greeks, as it became a _general_, but the _barbarians_, as it became a _master_; consider, says he, the former as _friends_ and _domesticks_; but the latter, as _brutes_ and _plants_;"[023] inferring that the Greeks, from the superiority of their capacities, had a _natural_ right to dominion, and that the rest of the world, from the inferiority of their own, were to be considered and treated as the _irrational_ part of the creation. Now, if we consider that this was the treatment, which they judged to be absolutely proper for people of this description, and that their slaves were uniformly those, whom they termed _barbarians_; being generally such, as were either kidnapped from _Barbary_, or purchased from the _barbarian_ conquerors in their wars with one another; we shall immediately see, with what an additional excuse their own vanity had furnished them for the sallies of caprice and passion. To refute these cruel sentiments of the ancients, and to shew that their slaves were by no means an inferiour order of beings than themselves, may perhaps be considered as an unnecessary task; particularly, as having shewn, that the causes of this inferiour appearance were _incidental_, arising, on the one hand, from the combined effects of the _treatment_ and _commerce_, and, on the other, from _vanity_ and _pride_, we seem to have refuted them already. But we trust that some few observations, in vindication of these unfortunate people, will neither be unacceptable nor improper.