Now, there is hardly any ancient state or country we could name that has not had its revolutions, and that did not witness, at some period or other, a complete subversion of its government, laws, and institutes; yet do we find the institution of slavery survive in all. In no one instance do we find the slaves of a revolutionalized state avail themselves of such a crisis to establish _the rights of man as man_. Intestine commotions, military insurrections, foreign invasions, popular triumphs over kings and senates--these and all other like incidents in the life of nations invariably passed away without abolishing the curse of slavery. Why was this? How happened it? Why did not the slaves of the old pagan world take advantage of some popular insurrection, or of the overthrow of their rulers by some invader, to vindicate the rights of humanity in their own persons, by at once establishing a free government for all, and by abolishing slavery altogether? There is but one true and sufficient answer to these questions: it is this:--The doctrine of human equality, of equality in rights, duties, and responsibilities, was altogether unknown to the ancients: it was denied in theory; it was unheard of in practice. With the solitary exception before adverted to--that of the Essenes (of which more by-and-by), there is no historical record or monument extant to show that the slaves of antiquity, as a class, knew or cared anything about theories of government, much less that they comprehended what a Frenchman would understand by the words _république démocratique et sociale_, or what a member of the National Reform League understands by “the political and social rights of the people.” Nor does there appear to have been a single writer, teacher, philosopher, legislator, orator, or poet, amongst the whole heathen world, to inspire the slave-class with any such notions. On the contrary, the idea that one class were born to be slaves, and the other to be masters, was an idea as sedulously inculcated by the educators of ancient society, as it was implicitly believed in by the slaves themselves. The poet and the two philosophers who, more than any others of their class, exercised a moral influence upon the ancient world--to wit, Homer, Plato, and Aristotle--agreed, to a hair, in considering mankind as naturally divided into two classes--those made to command and those made to obey, _alias_ masters and slaves. Homer tell us, formally, in the “Odyssey,” that Jove gave to slaves but the half of a soul. Plato, when citing this passage in his “Treatise on Laws,” substitutes the word _mind_ for the Homeric word _virtue_, and adds his authority to that of the poet, to inculcate that the Father of the Gods bestowed _mind_ and _virtue_ but by halves upon the children of slavery. Plato is still more expressive elsewhere. In his dialogue entitled “Alcibiades,” he makes Socrates teach the same doctrine after his favourite fashion of question and answer.