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During the Numantine war Rome was menaced by a new danger, which revealed one of the plague-spots in the Republic. We have already had occasion to describe the decay of the free population in Italy, and the great increase in the number of slaves from the foreign conquests of the state.[59] As slaves were cheap, in consequence of the abundant supply, the masters did not care for their lives, and treated them with great barbarity. A great part of the land in Italy was turned into sheep-walks. The slaves were made responsible for the sheep committed to their care, and were left to supply themselves with food as they best could. It was an aggravation of their wretched lot, that almost all these slaves had once been freemen, and were not distinguished from their masters by any outward sign, like the negroes in the United States. In Sicily the free population had diminished even more than in Italy; and it was in this island that the first Servile War broke out.
And yet there is one thing in the present war which I do in my heart of hearts feel to be worth fighting for, and that is for the hope of liberty. It is hard to say what liberty is, because the essence of it is the subjugation of personal inclinations. The Germans claim that they alone know the meaning of liberty, and that they have arrived at it by discipline. But the bitterness of this war lies in the fact that the Germans are not content to set an example of attractive virtue, and to leave the world to choose it; but that if the world will not choose it, they will force it upon them by violence and the sword. It is this which makes me feel that the war may be a vast protest of the nations, which have the spirit of the future in their hearts, against a theory of life that represents the spirit of the past. And I thus, with some seeming inconsistency, believe that the war may represent the hope of peace at bay. If the nations can keep this clearly before them, and not be tempted either into reprisals, or into rewarding themselves by the spoils of victory, if victory comes; if it ends in the Germans being sincerely convinced that they have been misled and poisoned by a conception of right which is both uncivilised and unchristian, then I believe that all our sufferings may not be too great a price to pay for the future well-being of the world. That is the largest and brightest hope I dare to frame; and there are many hours and days when it seems all clouded and dim.
The Dutch, too, as we have to some extent seen already, felt the horrors of Indian warfare. Kieft, the Dutch director-general, a man cruel, avaricious, and obstinate, angered the red men by demanding tribute from them as their protector, while he refused them guns or ammunition. The savages replied that they had to their own cost shown kindness to the Dutch when in need of food, but would not pay tribute. Kieft attacked. Some of the Indians were killed and their crops destroyed. This roused their revengeful passions to the utmost. The Raritan savages visited the colony of De Vries, on Staten Island, with death and devastation. Reward was offered for the head of anyone of the murderers. An Indian never forgot an injury. The nephew of one of the natives who twenty years before had been wantonly killed went to sell furs at Fort Amsterdam, and while there revenged his uncle's murder by the slaughter of an unoffending colonist. Spite of warlike preparations by Kieft and his assembly in 1641-42, the tribe would not give up the culprit. The following year another settler was knifed by a drunken Indian. Wampum was indeed offered in atonement, while an indignant plea was urged by the savages against the liquor traffic, which demoralized their young men and rendered them dangerous alike to friend and foe. But remonstrance and blood-money could not satisfy Kieft. At Pavonia and at Corlaer's Hook [footnote: now in the New York City limits, just below Broadway Ferry, East River] the Dutch fell venomously upon the sleeping and unsuspecting enemy. Men, women, and children were slaughtered, none spared. In turn the tribes along the lower Hudson, to the number of eleven, united and desperately attacked the Dutch wherever found. Only near the walls of Fort Amsterdam was there safety. The governor appointed a day of fasting, which it seems was kept with effect. The sale of liquor to the red men was at last prohibited, and peace for a time secured.
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