Keowee courier. [volume] (Pickens Court House, S.C.) 1849-current, 1868-07-03

preference for Mr. Adams for tho sake of
what we conceive the best interests of the
party.
[.1"yustu Chronicle & Sentinel.
~------ ~
The Antiquity and Unversality of Slavery
AS matter Of history VIC shall be pardon
cd for quoting from an essay by lato French
writcr-ADoLpH GRASlER DE CAsSAdNAC-
the following extract, which, if it had cma>
mated from tho pen of Southern writer,
would at once have been dscrcdtcd. AS
CAssAaNAc was, however, himself an aboi.
tionist, his testimony must be accepted. The
book was published in 1888, tho year of tho
abolition Of slavery in the British West In
dies.
There wcrc masters and slaves among the
Hebrews; among tho Greeks; among the
Romans; among the Guuls; in Franco in the
twelfth century; in Prussia in 1850; they
exist still in the United States Of America
in all hIahomctan countries, and in all the
kingdoms,aud empires of India.
When the institutions of all peoples began,
slavery was already established. Moses foun.
dcd the institutions of the Hebrews, and
slavery is found i'll tho books Of Moses. IIo-
NOR was many centuries anterior to tho listo.
rio times Of Greece, and slavery is found in
the books of Homer. The Twelve Tables
were tho basis Of Roman institutions, and
Romulus long anterior to tho Twelve Tables
opened at Rome an asylum for the fugitive
slaves of latium. The Salio law, tho law Of
Che Sa&ohs, of the Thuringians, of tho Ger
mans and of the Angles, arc tho prints of do.
parture Of tie institutions of all modern peo.
pies, and slavery is found in all tho codes of
tho Invasion. We add another very impor-
tant consideration, which is, that in all tho
legislative, poetic and historical monuments,
which we have mentioned, slavery is not in
stituted for the first time, but is mentioned
as fact, existing, known, accepted, fiycd.-
Neither Moses, nor Homer, nor tho Twelve
Tables, nor the laws of tho invasion founded
slavery. They mention and regulate it. It
was, before they existed.
Ncxt-and what VIC arc about to say is, as
it were, the consequence of what we have
said: it now here appears by the study of all
traditions that slavery was ever instituted,
founded, created, or that it was enacted by
statute, to usc the expression Of tho jurists.
The statute law took hold of the fact Of sla-
very, as it did of oil other social facts, when
it regulated society; it has taken it, in it's
turn, under its control: 1T has shaped and dc.
fined it, and so cnticroly taken it under its
power, that whom tho institutions Of nations
began, slavery had become part Of tho stat
ute law but it had proper, and, so to speak,
personal existence, before falling under tho
action of tho civil and political law; and it is
this primitive existence of which wo say that
it does not appear to have beon the handi-
work Of man. More than that. Returning
hereafter to Tho Hebrew, Greek, Roman and
barbarian legislation, which mention slayory
and evidently do not create it, wo believe that
We can say thatwe have in reserve irresisti-
BILE mathematical considerations, which will
be produced in their place, and which will
establish in manner that admits Of no doubt,
not only that slavery, in Lovitious, in tho
Iliad, in the laws of tho Twelve Tables and
in tho codes Of tho invasion, was not thing
actually or cycn newly crcatcd but that it
was an old thing, deorepit thing, q worn
out thing, dccaying thing, already past tho
half Of its time, half way to agreat social me-
tamorphosis and to its own annihilation; so
that, far from owing its cxistonooto human
institutions, slavery was already greatly shak-
en-, and declining, whom tho most ancicnt In
t;odns. al lsi.l,t ts, ~. EfEa t&Y