Christianity first mitigated, and then abolished slavery. Slavery is incompatible with the spirit of Christianity, not only on account of the maltreatment, injuries, and oppression to which it subjects men; not only on account of the dangers to which it exposes female virtue; but chiefly and especially, because the state of slavery is one inconsistent with the dignity of a being made after the likeness of God. This complete emancipation of the lower classes from the bonds of servitude pre-eminently distinguishes the modern Christian states from those of classical antiquity on the one hand, and those of the primitive oriental world on the other. In the former, domestic and predial slavery were carried to the last degree of harshness and severity--in the latter, especially in India, a totally different form of servitude existed. There the innocent descendants of those who had been guilty of certain crimes, or who had contracted unlawful marriages, were doomed to a state of irremediable oppression, debarred from all civil rights, and excluded from the very charities of life. The fate of these hapless beings was even harder than that of the slaves among the ancient Greeks and Romans. As the exclusion of a whole class from the rights of citizenship and the offices of religion is incompatible with the principles of Christian love; so the hereditary transmission of the sacerdotal dignity is inconsistent with the Christian doctrine, which inculcates the necessity of a divine call to the priesthood. Hence the incompatibility which exists between the system of castes and the Christian religion. The author shows that the various species of vassalage are clearly distinguishable from slavery; yet that even these have yielded to the benign spirit of Christianity. The existence of slavery in the Christian colonies no wise militates against the principle here laid down: for the slave-trade has ever been condemned by all Christian nations as wicked and unjust; and slavery, the introduction of which into the colonies the church had so strenuously opposed, was afterwards tolerated by her only as a necessary evil. For, as Schlegel observes with his characteristic wisdom, "the sudden abolition of an evil that has become an inveterate habit in society, is mostly attended with danger, and frequently works another wrong of an opposite kind."[13] But this is one of those truths, which the giddy, reckless spirit of a spurious philanthropy can never be made to comprehend.