Is it applied then, that others may be deterred from the same proceedings, and that crimes may become less frequent?  No, but that avarice may be gratified; that the prince may experience the emoluments of the sale:  for, horrid and melancholy thought! the more crimes his subjects commit, the richer is he made; the more abandoned the subject, the happier is the prince!

Neither can we allow that the punishment thus applied, tends in any degree to answer publick happiness; for if men can be sentenced to slavery, right or wrong; if shadows can be turned into substances, and virtues into crimes; it is evident that none can be happy, because none can be secure.

But if the punishment is infinitely greater than the offence, (which has been shewn before) and if it is inflicted, neither to amend the criminal, nor to deter others from the same proceedings, nor to advance, in any degree, the happiness of the publick, it is scarce necessary to observe, that it is totally unjust, since it is repugnant to reason, the dictates of nature, and the very principles of government.

* * * * *

CHAP.  VII.

We come now to the fourth and last order of slaves, to prisoners of war.  As the sellers lay a particular stress on this order of men, and infer much, from its antiquity, in support of the justice of their cause, we shall examine the principle, on which it subsisted among the ancients.  But as this principle was the same among all nations, and as a citation from many of their histories would not be less tedious than unnecessary, we shall select the example of the Romans for the consideration of the case.

The law, by which prisoners of war were said to be sentenced to servitude, was the law of nations[043].  It was so called from the universal concurrence of nations in the custom.  It had two points in view, the persons of the captured, and their effects; both of which it immediately sentenced, without any of the usual forms of law, to be the property of the captors.

The principle, on which the law was established, was the right of capture.  When any of the contending parties had overcome their opponents, and were about to destroy them, the right was considered to commence; a right, which the victors conceived themselves to have, to recall their swords, and, from the consideration of having saved the lives of the vanquished, when they could have taken them by the laws of war, to commute blood for service.  Hence the Roman lawyer, Pomponius, deduces the etymology of slave in the Roman language.  “They were called servi[044], says he, from the following circumstance.  It was usual with our commanders to take them prisoners, and sell them:  now this circumstance implies, that they must have been previously