Misery and Degradation of British Workmen-Slave Laws. 269

skum and froth may thus be floated to the surface; and lauds himself at last, like a Robespierre, or his petty imitators in revolutionizing, a Buxton, a Clarkson, or a Stevens, even in the chaotic ruin which his madness has effected. France rose from her ashes to run a new course of greatness and of madness. For Jamaica, alas! there seems no phoenix life."

Our reviewers and commentators generally lay a constant stress upon the "uncontrolled power" which they suppose the slave-owner to possess. We would fain convince them that in truth no such power exists. This bugbear is the offspring of their own distempered imagination.

that if slavery is a bad thing, there is no society, little heeding what poisonous alternative but something worse. Now, we happen to have ascertained, through the medium of a gentleman, who personally knew the author, that he set foot in Europe, but concocted his work partly from blue-books, and, perhaps, partly from imagination. It must however be added, in fairness to the author, that he was probably not aware of the amount of misrepresentation some of these bluebooks contain. They are the reports of the evidence taken before the committee on the ten-hours' bill; a work which too much resembled a supposed botanical examination of a certain farm and garden, resulting in a collection of a few nettles out of one field, and four or five thistles out of another, and a handful of groundsel from the garden, representing these as the produce of the estate." So much for legal documents. Excellent they are against the slave-holder, but o' the other side-bah! kick the stool over, and lo! your antagonist is sprawling on his back. And so Jamaica witnesses were right, and tenhours' bill witnesses were wrong. Documents here-documents there. White, they are; presto, black. True, they are; presto, false. Pretty jugglery! and worthy of all admiration!

"Although slaves, by the Act of 1740, are declared to be chattels personal, yet they are also, in our law, considered as persons with many rights and liabilities, civil and criminal." (Vide Negro Law of South Carolina, collected and digested by J. B. O'Neall, chapter 2d, section 11th.)

"By the Act of 1821, the murder of a slave is declared to be a felony, without the benefit of clergy." (Ib. ib. section 15.)

"To constitute the murder of a slave, no other ingredients are necessary than such as enter into the offence of murder at common law. So the killing on sudden heat and passion is the same as manslaughter." (Ib. ib. section 16.)

"An attempt to kill and murder a slave by shooting at him, held to be a misdemeanor (State vs. Mann), and indictable as assault with intent to kill and murder." (Ib. ib. section 17.)

"The unlawful whipping or beating of any slave, without sufficient provocation, by word, or act, is a misdemeanor, and subjects the offender, on conviction, to imprisonment not exceeding 6 months, and a fine not exceeding $500. (Ib. ib. section 18.)

Too truly has Mr. McQueen remarked in his work upon Jamaica, of which we but now made mention, that "the French Revolution, which, with its infamous principles, convulsed the world, boasted to have been built upon the very foundations on which Mr. Clarkson grounds his charge against the West India Colonies, namely, 'Nature and Reason! Nature and Reason are truly high authorities, but too often, like the cheating oracles of old, do they render a doubtful response, the erroneous interpretation of which becomes a snare to the feet, and a pit of destruction to the hasty interpreter of destiny. Long and laborious is the task of him who would read the truth. Like the worshipper at the cave of Trophonius, a life-long sadness, a wearing out of soul and body, in the eager pursuit of the great reality, is the price to be paid for its acquisition. The enthusiast seldom reaches it. Blindly zealous, ignorantly active, in proportion as he has the least certain "It is the settled law of this state,foundation for his opinions, he defends that an owner cannot abandon a slave them with impulsive fervor; stirs, in needing either medical treatment, care, fanatic haste, the bubbling cauldron of food, or raiment. If he does, he will be

"The Act of 1740, requires the owners of slaves to provide them with sufficient clothing, covering, and food; and if they should fail to do so, the owners, respectively, are declared to be liable to be informed against, subjected to fine, &c. (Ib. ib. section 25.)

liable to any one who may furnish the same." (Ib. ib. section 27.)

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can be inflicted on a man in this life worse than slavery in the fact that the punishment affixed to crimes committed by the slaves is always death. Cases of arson, theft, and burglary, which would be comparatively lightly dealt with, if committed by white men, are all death to the slave." And then comes a flourish from the "Cincinnati Herald," ending with a marvelously ferocious, "He can be killed. Let him be killed."

his article, too, a so-called work of fiction? Verily, whether or not he claim for it the merit, we must give our mite of approbation to the inventive genius therein displayed. Truly, it is full of "most quaint and admirable inventions." For fear, however, that some simple blockheads should really imagine that our talented brother of the quill meant these witty sallies to be taken as literal truth, we will, for the benefit of such dunderpates, answer his statements seriously. The reviewer will find, by a glance at the statutes of England, that arson and burglary are both in his own happy land punishable with death. In most of our states, we believe, and certainly in South Carolina, from which we write, -the old English law is for these crimes retained in force, alike for white

"By act of 1740, slaves are protected from labor on the Sabbath-day. The violation of the law in this respect subjects the offender to a fine of £5 current money, equal in value to $3.70 for every slave so worked." (Ib. ib. section 28.)* Surely these should suffice to show that the owner's power is not uncontrolled." However he may evade the law when he hides himself in the " "We should very much like to know," mote districts" of which the Barbadian as the old song saith, whether our reex-planter discourses, he is kept in check viewer means to claim exemption from so long as the arm of the law is long all response and dispute, for himself as enough to reach him. We presume that well as for Mrs. Stowe, on the plea of the every country has some point within its unattackableness of works of fiction. Is limits, where law penetrates with difficulty England, too, has her moors and her high-roads; aye, and-perhaps worse than either the purblind alleys of her great cities, where crime boldly treads, or cunningly hides herself. But surely not therefore shall we say, because her laws are sometimes inefficient, that all are iniquitous. Our reviewer triumphantly remarks that the opponents of Mrs. Stowe, in not denying the possibility, virtually admit the truth of her statements. Upon the same principle of argument, what fearful pictures might as possibilities be deduced from the institutions of every existing state of society! What law, what bond,-what tie, might not be abolished if possible abuse were sufficient to condemn it? Ruler and subject, servant and master,-parent and child,-husband and wife, and black. For theft, we have abolished cast all to the winds! These may be, the more severe punishment still retainnay, more, these are all abused, daily ed by English law, (which frequently, as abused, brutally abused. "Nature and the learned reviewer no doubt knows, Reason!" cries the old school of god- pronounces death as the penalty for the improvers. "Higher-law!" responds the purloining of a few shillings' worth of new. On! on! what next? Where property,) and have substituted, accordshall we destroy? Say ye, "what ing to the offence, lighter punishment, next?" Ask ye "where?" Nay, 'tis a alike for white and black. For both, the foolish prejudice to doubt. Sweep every legal penalty is the same. One differthing! everywhere! The Goth and the ence, however, we must acknowledge. Vandal of old found something to spare, While the law is the same for both, there -something to respect. Not so our in- is, it must be confessed, great inequality novators. Excelsior! Communism and in the administering of it. Justice is no Fraternity!-Barbarism and Brutality! longer even-handed. One side may God of Heaven! pity this world which often escape the law, which rigorously Thou hast made! pursues the other. But which is it? We fear our transatlantic friends will hardly credit us, when we answer: The negro. And yet the thing explains itself easily enough! The white man, encroaching upon the rights of society, becomes a public nuisance, which it is

The reviewer says "there is a plain admission on the part of the Slave State Legislatures that there is nothing that

But for the complete slave laws of South Caro

lina and other Southern States, see De Bow's Industrial Resources, Art. "Slavery."

Laws affecting American Slaves and British Subjects.

necessary to keep in check, and the only means of so doing is by such bodily restraint and suffering as shall hold him in fear of future transgression. It is, therefore, to the interest of society that he should be punished, and he is punished accordingly. The negro, under similar circumstances, will often have his master to stand between him and the law. For offences not too notoriously criminal, indemnification from the master to the injured person, oftenest ends the affair altogether. Where the state as prosecutor is not forced to take cognizance of the offence, the master can frequently buy off individual prosecution, and both interest and humanity incline him to do so. Interest, because the slave, unenfeebled by imprisonment and stripes, is a valuable property for which he is willing to pay; humanity, because the slave, in his childlike, dependent position, becomes to him a part of self, which he would rather correct with the mercy of a father than the severity of a judge. He buys him off therefore. Society is satisfied, because the master thus renders himself the virtual sponsor of the slave, making it his own interest to prevent further misdemeanor. The negro gets his whipping, goes home to warm himself by his fire, and perhaps laugh in his sleeve at "Massa," who thinks, "dat kind o' lashin ebber hut nigga," while the white man bears the double infliction of imprisonment and stripes. In England, for a similar offence, if mercy so tempered justice, (as we know it now oftenest does.) so far as to spare life, the offender is glad with that to escape, banished from hearth and home, wife and children, a disgraced exile to he knows not whither.

The reviewer gives what he calls a digest of our slave - laws,-containing thirteen propositions, almost every one of which either places things in their falsest light, or are in their grossest statements utterly untrue. His proposition that the labor of the slave is compulsory and uncompensated, we answer by saying that he receives a very much larger compensation in actual value, in housing, in food, and in raiment, than the halfstarved artisan of many a proud metropolis. He is, it is true, obliged, in proper weather and when in health, to do his work. He has not the right by idleness or drunkenness to starve his family for

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the indulgence of his own vices; but he is, in return for this constraint, insured a comfortable maintenance for himself and family under all circumstances; in sickness and in health; in feeble youth and in tottering age; through good report and through evil report. Even in his vices he is saved from that lowest degradation of unprotected misery which the white man must meet. The lowest slave cannot sink to the degradation of the outcast white.

"The amount of toil, the time allowed for rest, are dictated solely by the master."

This is untrue. The law, as we have shown, protects the slave from Sabbathday labor, and another section (vide O'Neall's Digest, chap. 2d, section 29), part of an old English act, limits his labor to from 14 to 15 hours per day. The time here allotted for labor is, however, so much more than is now required of the slave that the law is in fact of non-effect. The working hours are in South Carolina from 8 to 12, varying with the season and exigencies of the crop, with occasional intermission of holidays and half holidays, which, if "dictated solely by the master," are not, we presume, on that account to be considered as obnoxious. If the duchesses of Stafford-house could be instrumental in giving to each of their tenants an occasional merry holiday, it is scarcely to be presumed that their vassals would take it in dudgeon, because inconsistent with their dignity as men.

"He may be separated from his family" "He can make no contracts, has no legal right to property."

And yet, as a fact, there is less separation among negro families than among whites. Starvation drives harder than the hardest master. The property of the slave, for property he always to a certain extent has, he holds by a stronger tenure, upheld as he is by his master's protection, than many a poor freeman who, by taxes and tithes, individual trickery and legal frauds, finds himself juggled out of every right but that of dying unprotected, grateful to the disease which opens his prison door.

"He cannot bear witness against the white man."

Granted-and properly cannot-nor would the witness of a similar class be taken as of much weight in England against their aristocratic masters. Every

consists in the fact that his owner may bring suit and recover the price of his body, in case his life is taken."

man in England is, legally, free to say what he pleases, but dares any man say that there is not a gag upon the mouth of the ignorant and illiterate poor? that This is wilfully false. Our law neceshis witness is of material weight against sarily forbids, as a general rule, the strikhis lordly ruler? The word of the law ing of a white man by a negro, unless matters little, and whatever its letter under command, or in defence of his may be, the testimony of a lower and master. The negro, whether bond or therefore of necessity a jealous class- free, cannot therefore be guilty of manof an ignorant and therefore of necessity slaughter. In killing a white man, he an easily corruptible class-is and therefore becomes always guilty of murshould always be taken with a reserva- der, unless the case falls, as many are tion. Upon the same judicious principle judged to do, under the head of excusof guarding against jealousy, corruption able homicide. An express act too and prejudice, the English law requires gives to the courts, trying any negro unthat a man should be judged by his der the law of murder, the power, when peers. A man of the people cannot sit any favorable circumstances appear, to upon a jury to judge the guilt of a noble. mitigate his punishment. (Vide O'Neall's The jealousies of rank as well as the Digest, Chapter iii.) It is intentional prejudice of ignorance must be guarded misrepresentation of this law to say that against. So far we grant, but the re- a negro must stand still and be murderviewer adds, to the clause quoted by us, ed, that his master may recover the that slaves cannot bear witness against price of his body. No negro defending the white man when "such testimony himself against a murderous attack would be for the benefit of a slave; but would be held guilty. The case would they may give testimony against a fel- come under the act as excusable homlow-slave, or free colored man, even in icide. We have already shown that cases affecting life, if the master is to the murder of a negro is equally punishreap the advantage of it." able with that of a white man, and his master, or any other being proved guilty, may be hung for it.

Certainly we are hence to conclude, without any unfair reading, that he can give such testimony for the benefit of a white man, and that he can only give testimony against the slave when his master is to reap the advantage. Both propositions are equally false. He can never bear witness against a white man, and can always do so against a negro, although in either case his witnessing, or his abstinence from witnessing, might be to the utter ruin of his master.

"The slave may be punished at his master's discretion, without trial, with out any means of legal redress, whether his offence be real or imaginary, and the master can transfer the same despotic power to any person or persons he may choose to appoint."

We have above quoted an act showing that whipping without sufficient provocation is a punishable misdemeanor. Another act (vide O'Neall's Digest, chapter ii. section 21) prescribes the punishment for maiming or "any other cruel punishment." "This provision, it has been held, extends to any cruel beating of a slave."

"The slave (says the reviewer) not being allowed to resist a white man, under any circumstances, his only safety

The slave is entirely unprotected in his domestic relations.""

False again. He is protected by the master and through the master.

"The operation of the laws tends to deprive slaves of religious instruction and consolation."

smallest extent any such tendency, is to Utterly false. No law, having to the be found in our whole collection of statutes. The habit of our country is to admit slaves to all places of worship, certain parts of churches being generally set aside for them, though we have seen, in some of our handsomest and most frequented churches, old family servants

seated in front of their masters and mistresses along the aisles, or at the foot of the pulpit or the altar. Places of worship are, besides, frequently built by owners for their special accommodation.*

"What is a trifling fault in a white man is considered highly criminal in a slave. The same offences which cost a white man a few dollars only are punishable in the negro with death."

*There are many in New-Orleans. Our planters frequently employ regular chaplains to their slaves.

Slanderous Accusations of the North British Review.

False as the rest. We have already answered a similar accusation above. "The whole power of the law is exerted to keep slaves in a state of the lowest ignorance."

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ment, therefore, works entirely in our favor, but we think that such an assertion claims too much. Slavery does exist quite independently of law, and exists, too, in a form scarcely, we presume, False, again. There is a law of South more soothing than ours to the feelings Carolina, we do not know how far ex- of our friends and advisers the Staffordtending to other states, forbidding that house ladies and North British reviewslaves should be taught to read. For ers. They will hardly contend that it is ourselves, we consider this act as one law which gives his majesty of Dahomy which would be better repealed as use- the right to roast his slaves, as we have less and of non-effect. Its object was to noticed above. Law is the defence of prevent the circulation of incendiary the weak against the strong. What need writings. To this purpose, however, it of law, where power is supreme? is worse than ineffectual. It does not "Thus far shalt thou go and no farther," prevent and has the usual effect of ex- is the fiat of law. Bad laws are weak citing a desire for forbidden fruit. Still, laws, inefficient laws. They do not suf even with this impulse, book-learning is ficiently protect, and therefore are they so contrary to negro-nature, that there is bad. An oppressive law is so, not bethe smallest possible disposition to seek cause there is in the law any power of it, although it is notorious with us that oppression, but because the individual every negro, who chooses to take the or party imposing it, has the might which trouble to learn, may be taught to read he or they choose to abuse, and there is in spite of the law, and very generally no power in the law sufficiently strong by the children even of his owners. The to keep them in check. The despot who law is based upon a false principle, in- makes a law giving to himself the right asmuch as it was intended for an object of confiscating the property of his subto which it must necessarily prove inef- jects under certain circumstances, howficient, and, like all such, as an unfail- ever whimsical or tyrannical, does not ing consequence, falls of itself dead, exercise his confiscations in right of the without the legal form of repeal. Grant power given by the law, but by the ing, however, that it were in full force, power which is inherent in himself, his would it in fact do more than to place circumstances or position; and the law, the negro on a level with the corres- even such as it is, is a virtual acknowponding classes of other nations? How ledgment of some limit to that power. much book-learning does a man get, He does not confiscate under all circumwhen rest and sleep must be cheated of stances, but under such and such. The their dues to fill the hungry stomach by government imposing an unjust law does manual toil? Ignorance moreover does so, not through any power of the law, not consist in the mere deficiency of but because, having the superior might knowledge in one's spelling-book. The which enables it to enforce an unjust slave-negro of our United States, in spite demand, it will not allow the law to be of his inferiority of race, stands higher made sufficiently strong to check its rain the scale of being, is better informed pacity. The wolf robs, not through the in the duties of life, more polished and law, but through want of the law. Law humanized by association-in short, is is the voice of reason curbing the rule the higher man, than the wretched off of might. It is never a bestower of casts of a nobler race which crowd the power, but a check, however feeble streets and lanes of every densely po- and inefficient that check may be. The pulated metropolis. Our reviewer sneers nation which rebels against oppressive at us that slavery can only be sustained laws, combats not for the abolition, but by the help of the law; that law must for the better regulating of law. "come in to defend and maintain it." volution which seeks to abolish law, If this be so, he only proves that slavery must end necessarily in despotism. Peris not barbarism,-is not despotic power, fect codes of law are not to be looked -is not lawless might. Every institu- for in an imperfect world, and ours are tion of civilized society requires to be doubtless faulty enough. It is something, maintained and defended by law;- however, to know, that they are no maintained and defended against lawless worse than those of contemporary nabarbarism and brutal force. This argu- tions, and that in their results the sum

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