The name is absent

Tacitus draws a great distinction between the
different degrees of servitude among the Germans.
He tells us that the unsuccessful gambler who had
staked and lost his liberty and the free disposal of
his own body upon one fatal cast of the dice, would
voluntarily submit to be bound and sold¹, but that
it was not usual for them to reduce their other serfs
to the condition of menials ; they only demanded
from them a certain amount of produce (or, un-
questionably, of labour in the field or pasture), and
then left them the enjoyment of their own dwell-
ings and property². The general duties of the
house, beyond such supplies, which were provided
for among the Romans by the ministeriaperfamiliæm
descripta, were left among the Germans to the wife
and children of the householder³. It will be de-
sirable to follow a somewhat similar distinction in

¹ “ Servos Conditionis huius per Commercia tradunt, ut se quoque
pudore victoriae exsolvant.” Germ, xxiv. The last member of the
sentence is a bit of imaginative morality which we shall acquit the
Germans of altogether. The very word caeteris in the next sentence
shows clearly enough that if they did sell some slaves Conditionis huius,
they kept others for menial functions.

² “ Caeteris servis, non in nostrum morem, descriptis per familiam
ministeriis, utuntur. Suam quisque sedem, suos penates régit. Fru-
menti modum dominus, aut pecoris, aut vestis, ut colono, iniungit ; et
servus hactenus paret.” Germ. xxv. This amounts to no more than
the description of a certain class of our own copyholders, of the Sla-
vonic holder in Bohemia or Galicia, and the peasant on a noble session
in Hungary.

³ This is the obvious meaning of the passage, which has however
been disputed, in defiance of sense and Latin : see Walther’s edition,
vol. iv. 58. The general rule in the text is true, but where there
were slaves they were used in the house, under the superintendence of
the family. This of course applies more strongly to later historical
periods, when the slaves (domestics) had become much more nume-
rous, and the ladies much less domestic.

treating of the different kinds of slaves ; and having
shown that one class of the unfree are those who
have been partially dispossessed by conquest, but
retain their personal freedom in some degree, to
proceed to those who are personally unfree, the
mere chattels of a lord who can dispose of them at
his pleasure, even to the extent of sale, mutilation
and death. The class we have hitherto been ob-
serving is that intended by the term Læt in Anglo-
saxon, Litus, Lito, Lazzo, etc. in German monu-
ments ɪ, and the Laeti of the Romans, applied by
them to the auxiliary Germans settled on imperial
land, and bound to pay tribute and perform military
service. They formed, as Grimm has well observed,,
a sort of middle class among the unfree ; compri-
sing the great majority of those who, without being
absolutely their own masters, were yet placed some-
what above the lowest and most abject condition
of man, which we call slavery. This condition
among our forefathers was termed Jieowet ; the ser-
vus was J>eow, the ancilla J>eowen ; or, as the origi-
nal serfs of the English were the vanquished Bri-
tons, Wealh and Wyln.

Without confining ourselves to the definition in
the law of Henry the First, we may distribute the
different kinds of slaves into classes, according to
the different grounds of slavery². Thus they are

ɪ DeutZRechtsalt. p. 306.

“Servi alii nature, alii facto, et alii empcione, et alii redempcione,
alii sua vel alterius dacione servi, et si quae sunt aliae species huius-
nɪodi ; q∏as tamen omnes volumus sub uno servitutis membro constitui,
quem casum ponimus appellari, ut ita dictum sit, servi alii casu, alii
genitura.” Leg. Hen. I. lɪɪvi. § 3.

VOL. I.                                    ₀

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