The question as to the right of property in relation to one
who has lost his legal personality by a crime does not concern us
here.
This contract, then, of the master of a household with his
domestics, cannot be of such a nature that the use of them could
ever rightly become an abuse of them; and the judgement as to what
constitutes use or abuse in such circumstances the is not left
merely to the master, but is also competent to the servants, who ought
never to be held in bondage or bodily servitude as slaves or serfs.
Such a contract cannot, therefore, be concluded for life, but in all
cases only for a definite period, within which one party may
intimate to the other a termination of their connection. Children,
however, including even the children of one who has become enslaved
owing to a crime, are always free. For every man is born free, because
he has at birth as yet broken no law; and even the cost of his
education till his maturity cannot be reckoned as a debt which he is
bound to pay. Even a slave, if it were in his power, would be bound to
educate his children without being entitled to count and reckon with
them for the cost; and in view of his own incapacity for discharging
this function, the possessor of a slave, therefore, enters upon the
obligation which he has rendered the slave himself unable to fulfil.
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