Vol. 12 · pages 766–770

745MISCELLANEOUS NOTES Every person is entitled without molestation to perform all lawful acts and to enjoy all the privileges which attach to him as a person. The most specific right of this kind is to be the unmolested pursuit of the occupation by which a man chooses to gain his livelihood. Under the same head falls the right of every person to the free use of the public highways, of navigable rivers and all public utilities. It also includes the right of every person that the machinery of the law, which is established for the protection of all persons shall not be maliciously set in motion to his detriment. Thirdly, there is the right of immunity from damage by fraud or coercion-it is a right not to be induced by fraud to assent to a transaction which causes damage, and not to be coerced into acting contrary to one’s desire by force. Fourthly, the rights of a person are those which are collectively called Family Rights. These family rights may be distinguished as ‘marital’, ‘parental’, ‘tutelary’, and ‘dominical’. The marital right, the right of a husband as against the world, is that no other man shall, by force or persuasion, deprive him of his wife’s society, still less be criminally intimate with her. An analogous right might conceivably be recognized as being vested in the wife and is recognized in parts of America. The parental right extends to the custody and control of children, to the produce of their labour till they arrive at the age of discretion without interference. The tutelary right is the right of the parent to act as the guardian not for the benefit of the guardian but for that of the ward. . . . . . . . . whose want of understanding he supplements and whose affairs he manages. The dominical right is the right to use labour of the ward. The right is infringed by killing, by injuring so as to make him less valuable or by enticing him away. Not being a person, a slave had, so far as law is concerned, none of these rights. The untouchable is a person in the eye of the law. It cannot therefore be said that he has none of the rights which the law gives to a ‘person’. He has the right to property, to life, liberty, reputation, family and to the free exercise of his liberties and his powers. Define the slave as one may, either as a piece of property or as one who is not a person, it appears that the slave was worse off than the untouchable.

746 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES This is so if we consider only the de jure position of the slave. Let us consider what was the de facto position of the slave in the Roman Empire and in the United States. I take the following extracts from Mr. Barrow 1 : “Hitherto, it is the repulsive side of household slavery that has been sketched. There is also another aspect. The literature reveals the vast household as normal. It is, of course, the exception. Large slave staffs undoubtedly existed, and they are generally to be found in Rome. In Italy and the Provinces there was less need of display ; many of the staff of the Villa were engaged in productive work connected with land and its produce. The old-fashioned relationship between foreman and slave remained there; the slave was often a fellow worker. The kindliness of Pliny towards his staff is well-known. It is in no spirit of self-righteousness and in no wish to appear in a favour able light in the eyes of the future generations which he hoped would read his. letters that he tells of his distress at the illness and death of his slaves. The household (of Pliny) is the salves’ republic. Pliny’s account of his treatment of his slaves is sometimes regarded as so much in advance of general or even occasional practice as to be valueless as evidence. There is no reason for this attitude. From reasons both of display and genuine literary interest, the rich families attached to their households, slaves trained in literature and art. Calvisices Sabinus is said by Seneca to have had eleven slaves taught to recite Homer, Hesioid, and nine lyric poets by heart. ‘Book cases would be cheaper’, said a rude friend. ‘No, what the household knows the master knows ‘was the answer. But, apart from such abuses, educated slaves must have been a necessity in the absence of printing;. . . . . The busy lawyer, the dilettante poet, the philosopher and educated gentlemen of literary tastes had need of copyists and readers and secretaries. Such men were naturally linquistic also; a librarius who dies at the age of twenty boasts that he was ‘literatus Graecis at Latinis ’. Amanuensis were common enough ; librarians are to be found in public and private 1 Slavery in the Roman Empire, pp. 47-49

747MISCELLANEOUS NOTES libraries. . . . .Shorthand writing was in common use under the Empire, and slave Notary were regularly employed. . . . Many freemen, rhetoricians and grammarians are collected by Snetonius in a special treatise. Verrius Flaccus was tutor to Austus’s grandsons, and at death was publicly honoured by a statue. Scribonius Aphrodisius was the slave and disciple of Orbilius and was afterwards freed by Scribenia. Hyginus was librarian of the Palatine Library, in which office he was followed by Jullius Modestus, his own freedman. We hear of freedmen historians of a slave philosopher who was encouraged to argue with his master’s, friends’ slaves and freed architects, Freemen as doctors occur frequently in the inscriptions, some of them specialists ; they had been trained in big households as slaves, as is shown by one or two examples; after Manumission they rose to eminence and became notorious for their high fees.” “The tastes of some section of society demanded that dancers, singers, musicians, montebanks, variety artists, athletic trainers and messeiurs should be forthcoming. All these are to be found in slavery, often trained by teachers who had acquired some reputation” 1. ** ** “The age of Augustus was the beginning of a period of commercial and industrial expansion. . . . . slaves had indeed been employed (in arts and crafts) before, but the sudden growth of trade. . . .their employment in numbers that would otherwise have been unnecessary. Romans engaged more freely and more openly in various forms of commercial and industrial venture. Yet, even so the agent became more important, for commercial activities became more widespread; and such agents were almost necessarily slaves.....(this is so) because the bonds of slavery (are elastic). They could be so relaxed as to offer an incentive (to the slave) to work by the prospect of wealth and freedom, and so tightened as to provide a guarantee to the master against loss from the misconduct of his slave. In business contracts between slave and master third person seem to have been common, and the work thus done, and no doubt, the profits 1 Slavery in the Roman Empire, p. 63.

748 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES were considerable. . . . . . . . Renting of land to the slave has already been noticed. . . . and in industry much the same system was used in various forms; the master might lease a bank, or a business of the use of a ship, the terms being a fixed return or the slave being paid on a commission basis” 1. “The earnings of the slave became in law his peculium. Once the peculium was saved it might be used to a variety of purposes. No doubt in many cases this fund was expended in providing food or pleasure...... But peculium must not be regarded merely as petty savings, casually earned and idly spent. The slave who made his master’s business yield profits, to his own profit too, very often, had a keen sense of the best use to make up his own money. Often he reinvested it in his master’s business or in enterprises entirely unrelated to it. He could enter into business relations with his master, from whom he came to be regarded as entirely distinct, or he could make contracts with a third person. He could even have procurators to manage his own property and interests. And so with the peculium may be found not only land, houses, shops but rights and claims. “The activities of slaves in commerce are innumerable; numbers of them are shopkeepers selling every variety of food, bread, meat, salt, fish, wine vegetables, beans, Aupineseed, honey, curd, ham, ducks and fresh fish, others deal in clothing—sandals, shoes, gowns and mantles. In Rome, they plied their trade in the neighbourhood of the Circus Maximus, or the Porticus Trigeminus; or the Esquiline Market, or the Great Mart (on the Caolian Hill) or the Suburra 2 . . . . . The extent to which slave secretaries and agents acted for their masters is shown very clearly in the receipts found in the house of Caecilius Jucundus at Pompei 3. That the State should possess slaves is not surprising; war, after all, was the affair of the State and the captive might well be State-property. What is surprising is the remarkable use made of public slaves under the Empire and the extraordinary social position occupied by them. . . . . ” 1 Slavery in the Roman Empire, pp. 101-102. 2 Ibid, p. 105. 3 Slavery in the Roman Empire, p. 106.

749MISCELLANEOUS NOTES “Public slave came to mean before the Empire a slave of the state employed in its many offices, and the term implied a given occupation and often social position. The work of slaves of the State, slaves of the townships, and slaves of Caesar comprises much of what would now fall to parts of the higher and the whole of the lower branches of the civil services and of the servants of Municipal Corporations, working both with head and hands... In the subordinate levels (of the Treasury) there worked numbers of clerks and financial officers, all freedmen and slaves. The business dealt with must have been of vast range. ... The Mint . . . the immediate head was a knight, in charge of the minting processes . . . . a freed man was placed under him, served freedmen and slaves.... From one branch of State service, at any rate, slaves were rigorously excluded, except on one or two occasions of exceptional stress. They were not allowed to fight in the Army because they were not thought worthy of honour. Doubtless other motives were present also; it would be dangerous experiment to train too many slaves systematically in the use of Arms. If, however, slaves served merely in the fighting line, they are regularly to be found in great numbers behind it employed as servants, and in the commissariat and transport. In the fleet slaves were common enough 1.” Such was the de facto position of the slave in Roman Society. Let us trun to the de facto position of the Negro in the United States during the period in which he was slave in the eye of the law. Here are some facts 2 which shed a good deal of light on his position : “Lafayette himself had observed that white and black seamen and soldiers had fought and messed together in the Revolution without bitter difference. Down in Granville County, North Carolina, a full blooded Negro, John Chavis, educated in Princeton University, was conducting a private school for white students and was a licentiate under the local Presbytary, preaching to white congregations in the State. One of his pupils became Governor of North Carolina, another the State’s most prominent Whig senator. Two of his pupils were sons of the Chief Justice 1 Ibid,, pp. 130-147. 2 Charles C. Johnson’s ‘ The Negro in American Civilisation ’.