constantly stimulated, by his own passions or the instigations of others, to give; or the consequent wrath of the master, prompting him to bloody vengeance upon the turbulent traitor; A VENGEANCE

GENERALLY PRACTISED WITH IMPUNITY, BY REASON

OF ITS PRIVACY. The Court, therefore, disclaims the power of CHANGING THE RELATION in which these parts of our people stand to each other." "I repeat that I would gladly have avoided this ungrateful question; but being brought to it, the Court is compelled to declare, that while slavery exists among us in its present state, or until it shall seem fit to the Legislature to interpose express enactments to the contrary, it will be the imperative duty of the Judges to recognize the full dominion of the owner over the slave, except where the exercise of it is forbidden by the statute And this we do on the ground, that this dominion is essential to the value of slaves as property, to the security of the master, and the public tranquillity, greatly dependent upon their subordination; and, in fine, as most effectually securing the general protection and comfort of the slaves themselves. Judgment below reversed, and judgment entered for the defendant." (Wheeler's Law of Slavery, pp. 244-8.")

Here is a document that will repay profound study. The moral wrong of slavery is distinctly and repeatedly admitted, along with the most resolute determination to support it, by not allowing the rights of the master to come under judicial investigation, betraying a consciousness that they would not abide the test of the first principles of legal science. The

struggle between the man and the magistrate, implying that slavery requires of its magistrates to trample upon their own manhood; the cool and deliberate decision to do this, and to elevate the law of slavery above the law of nature and of nature's God, are painful but instructive features of the exhibition. And so is the incidental testimony to the frequency of bloody outrages, "generally practised with impunity, by reason of their privacy."

But, in this chapter, we are chiefly concerned with this judicial decision that "a cruel and unreasonable battery on a slave by a hirer is not indictable," because such battery by an owner would not be; the testimony that the opposite doctrine has never been held by the Courts; "that he [the master] is so liable has never been decided, nor, so far as known, contended for;" that "there has been no prosecutions of the sort," that "the established habits and uniform practice of the country" prove that the whole community deem this power of the master "requisite to the preservation of his dominion," and that this must be so, while the slave system continues. The arguments of Judge Ruffin in proof of this, we deem impregnable. And it deserves notice that this decision, made in 1829, before there was any excitement raised on the slave question, was virtually endorsed in the midst of the anti-slavery agitation, in 1837, by Judge Hitchcock of Alabama, (through his recommendation of the volume for the use of the "Southern bar,") as containing the true Southern doctrine.

All this should be borne in mind, in the discussions of the next chapter. In order to understand, correctly and fully, any one phase or feature of the slave system, it must be studied in its natural and necessary connection with the other features of the system most nearly related to it, and, indeed, with all its features; for they are all mutually dependent upon and defined by each other.

CHAPTER XIV.

OF LAWS CONCERNING THE MURDER AND KILLING

OF SLAVES.

The structure of the Laws, and the condition of the Slaves, render adequate protection impossible.

WE come now to consider the laws purporting to restrain and punish the murderers of slaves.

The revelations of the last chapter establish clearly the principle and the fact that the authority of the master is unlimited, and that he is not indictable, and never has been indicted and punished for the "cruel and unreasonable battery of his slave." It seems difficult to conceive how, in such a condition of the statute book, the judiciary, and the community, there could be any effectual restraints upon the murderers of slaves, or how they could be convicted and punished, at least where the offenders were owners or hirers of the slaves they had murdered. If a man is not protected from cruel and unreasonable battery at the pleasure of his assailant, how can he be protected from the liability to be killed by such battery? And if the law permits the optional battery of a

man, what power can it retain to punish him for the natural effects of such battery? Will the law allow one man to beat another as much as he pleases, or shoot him, (as in the case last cited,) and then punish him because the man is thus killed?

In former times, the murder of a slave in most, if not all the slaveholding regions of this country, was, by law, punishable by a pecuniary fine only. At present, the wilful, malicious, and deliberate murder of a slave, by whomsoever perpetrated, is declared to be punishable with death, in every State. (See, Stroud's Sketch, p. 36.) The exclusion of all testimony of colored persons, bond or free, is a feature sufficient, of itself, to render these laws nugatory. The "owner" or "overseer" may command the slave to attend him to any secret spot, and there murder him with impunity. Or he may do it openly, (it has often been done,) in the sight of many colored persons, with equal impunity. But let us examine some of these laws.

SOUTH CAROLINA, 1740.-The Act, in its preamble, sets forth that "cruelty is not only highlyunbecoming those who profess themselves Christians, but is odious in the sight of all men who have any sense of virtue or humanity." [Therefore:] "To restrain and prevent barbarity being exercised towards slaves, Be it enacted, that if any person shall wilfully murder his own slave, or the slaves of any other person, every such person [i. e., the offender] shall, upon conviction thereof, forfeit and pay the sum of seven hundred pounds, current money, and

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