Slavery, properly so called, appears to have been from the earliest ages, and in almost every country, the condition of a large portion of the human race; the weakest had ever to serve the strong--whether the slave was a captive in battle, or an impecunious debtor unable to satisfy the claims of his creditor, save with his body. Climate made no difference. Slavery existed in Europe, Asia, and Africa, and in our own ‘right little, tight little island,’ our early annals show that a large proportion of the Anglo-Saxon population was in a state of slavery. These unfortunate bondsmen, who were called theows, thrœls, and esnes,[26] were bought and sold with land, and were classed in the inventory of their lord’s wealth, with his sheep, swine, and oxen, and were bequeathed by will, precisely as we now dispose of our money, or furniture.
The condition of the Anglo-Saxon slaves was very degraded indeed; their master might put them in bonds, might whip them, nay, might even brand them, like cattle, with his own distinguishing mark, a state of things which existed until Alfred the Great enacted some laws, whereby the time of the servitude of these unhappy people was limited to six years, and the institution of slavery received such a blow, that it speedily became a thing of the past. They were no longer slaves, but redemptioners, _i.e._, they had the hope of redemption from servitude, and the law gave them the power to enforce their freedom.
We have only to turn to the pages of holy writ to find slavery flourishing in rank luxuriance in the time of the patriarchs, and before the birth of Moses. Euphemistically described in Scripture history as servants, they were mostly unconditional and perpetual slaves. They were strangers, either taken prisoners in war or purchased from the neighbouring nations; but the Jews also had a class of servants who only were in compulsory bondage for a limited time, and they were men of their own nation.
These were men who, by reason of their poverty, were obliged to give their bodies in exchange for the wherewithal to support them, or they were insolvent debtors, and thus sought to liquidate their indebtedness, or men who had committed a theft, and had not the means of making the double, or fourfold, restitution that the law required. Their thraldom was not perpetual, they might be redeemed, and, if not redeemed, they became free on the completion of their seventh year of servitude.