me my liberty!’ Alp Arslan was neither cruel nor vain–glorious: he released his prisoner, gave all his officers who were captives dresses of honour, and distinguished them by every mark of friendship and regard.”[112] Far from wishing to cast an undue reproach upon the past by these melancholy details of cruelty and suffering, we should have been glad to relieve the narrative by more numerous instances of generosity and mercy. But that these virtues are not the attributes of a savage race, will readily be granted by all: that they are not necessarily the fruit of refinement and civilization (if that term be applicable to an advanced stage of art and knowledge, without a corresponding improvement in moral wisdom) is shown by the universal experience of the past, and nowhere more forcibly than in the history of Greece and Rome. The progress of society seems only to have taught one lesson; that it is better to make the conquered subservient to the profit or amusement of the conqueror, than to put him to death, like any other formidable or offensive animal. In man’s earliest and rudest condition, as a hunter, slaves are worse than useless; for sustenance is of more value than labour, and the precarious supply of the chase is insufficient to provide permanently and plentifully for his own wants. The avenging or preventing encroachments upon each other’s hunting–ground is therefore a most frequent cause of warfare among neighbouring tribes, and the massacre of the conquered is prompted equally by revenge and policy. We find accordingly that in North America a prisoner’s only chance of escape lay in being adopted into the hostile tribe in the place of some one who had fallen in battle. The still more savage practice of feasting upon prisoners is sufficiently proved to have existed at a very recent period in New Zealand. In other heathen countries they have been reserved from indiscriminate slaughter, only to perish on the altars of false gods. But labour becomes valuable, and the command of labour an advantage, in proportion as men emerge from barbarism, and apply themselves to agriculture, or a pastoral life; and when it is found out that a prisoner’s services may be made worth more than his maintenance, the policy of the victor changes, and he preserves an enemy whom formerly he was almost compelled to destroy. Slavery, therefore, is, in the infancy of nations, an index of increasing civilization, and an amelioration of human misery, since the bulk of mankind have ever hailed with joy a respite from death, even though existence be attended with degradation and suffering. A generous spirit, indeed, would be little gratified at receiving life upon terms of hopeless servitude; yet even to such the introduction of slave labour lightened the evils of defeat. When men were detained merely for the value of their services, it was natural to release them if an equivalent for that value were paid, and hence arose the custom of admitting prisoners