in attempting the extirpation of it, yet is others, it hath taken such deep root, as to require the most strenuous exertions to eradicate it. [Footnote 9: See the various tracts on this subject, by Granville Sharpe, Esq. of London.] [Footnote 10: The condition of a _villein_ had most of the incidents I have before described in giving the idea of _slavery_, in general. His services were uncertain and indeterminate, such as his lord thought fit to require; or as some of our ancient writers express it, he knew not in the evening what he was to do in the morning, he was bound to do whatever he was commanded. He was liable to beating, imprisonment, and every other chastisement his lord could devise, except killing and maiming. He was incapable of acquiring property for his own benefit; he was himself the subject of property; as such saleable and transmissible. If he was a villein regardant he passed with the land to which he was annexed, but might be severed at the will of his lord; if he was a villein in gross, he was an hereditament, or a chattel real, according to his lord's interest; being descendible to the heir, where the lord was absolute _owner_, and transmissible to the executor where the lord had only a term of years in him. Lastly, the slavery extended to the issue, if the father was a villein, our law deriving the condition of the child from that of the father, contrary to the Roman law, in which the rule was, _partus sequitur ventum_. Hargrave's Case of Negroe Somerset, page 26 and 27. The same writer refers the origin of vassalage in England, principally to the wars between the British, Saxon, Danish, and Norman nations, contending for the sovereignty of that country, in opposition to the opinion of judge Fitzherbert, who supposes villeinage to have commenced at the conquest. Ib. 27, 28. And this he proves from Spelman and other antiquaries. Ib. The writ _de nativo habendo_, by which the lord was enabled to recover his villein that had absconded from him, creates a presumption that all the natives of England were at some period reduced to a state of villeinage, the word _nativus_, which signified a villein, most clearly designating the person meant thereby to be a _native_: this etymon is obvious, as well from the import of the word _nativus_, as from the history of the more remote ages of Britain. Sir Edward Coke's Etymology, "_quia plerumque nascuntur servi_," is one of those puerile conceits, which so frequently occur in his works, and are unworthy of so great a man.