MISCELLANEOUS NOTES 753
The explanation of this paradox is quite simple. It will be easily understood if one bears in mind the relation between law and public opinion, Law and public opinion are two forces which govern the conduct of men. They act and react upon each other. At times law goes ahead of public opinion and checks it and redirects in channels which it thinks proper. At times public opinion is ahead of the law. It rectifies the rigour of the law and moderates it. There are also cases where law and public opinion are opposed to each other and public opinion being the stronger of the two forces, disregards or sets at naught what the law - prescribes. Whether through compulsion arising out of convenience of commerce and industry or out of the selfish desire to make the best and the most profitable use of the slaves or out of considerations of humanity, public opinion and law were not in accord with regard to the position of the slave either in Rome or in the United States. In both places the slave was not a legal person in the eye of the law. But in both places he remained a person in the sense of a human being in the eye of the society. To put it differently the personality which the law withheld from the slave was bestowed upon him by society. There lies a profound difference between slavery and untouchability. In the case of the untouchable just the opposite has happened; The personality which the law bestowed upon the untouchables is withheld by society. In the case of the slave the law by refusing to recognize him as a person could do him no harm because society recognized him more amply than it was called upon to do. In the case of the untouchables the law by recognising him as a person failed to do him any good because Hindu society is determined to set that recognition at naught. A slave had a personality which counted notwithstanding the command of the law. An untouchable has no personality in spite of the command of the law. This distinction is fundamental. It alone can explain the paradox—the social elevation of the slave loaded though he was with the burden of legal bondage and the social degradation of the untouchable aided as he has been with the advantages of legal freedom.
Those who have condemned slavery have no doubt forgotten to take into consideration the fact that in a sense slavery was