Nor did any writer recognise the
fact that slaves were potentially moral beings, until Christianity
gave its sanction to dutiful submission as an act of morality that
might be consecrated by a Divine authority.[372]
Lastly, it is not difficult to realise the mischievous effects of such
a slave system as the Roman upon the slave-owning class itself. Even
those who themselves had no slaves would be affected by it; for
though, as we have seen, free labour was by no means ousted by it,
it must have helped to create an idle class of freemen, with all its
moral worthlessness. Long ago, in his remarkable book on _The Slave
Power_ in America before the Civil War, Professor Cairnes drew a
striking comparison between the "mean whites" of the Southern States,
the result of slave labour on the plantations, and the idle population
of the Roman capital, fed on cheap corn and ready for any kind of
rowdyism.[373] But in the case of the great slave-owners the mischief
was much more serious, though perhaps more difficult to detect.
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