Page:A dissertation on slavery - with a proposal for the gradual abolition of it, in the state of Virginia. (IA dissertationonsl00tuckrich).pdf/51

 his master, succeed to those hasty prejudices, which even the best dispositions are not exempt from contracting, upon subjects where there is a deficiency of information.

We are next to confider the condition of slaves in Virginia, or the legal consequences attendant on a state of slavery in this commonwealth; and here it is not my intention to notice these laws, which confider slaves, merely as property, and have from time to time been enacted to regulate the disposition of them, as such; for these will be more properly considered elsewhere: my intention at present is therefore to take a view of such laws, only, as regard slaves, as a distinct class of persons, whose rights, if indeed they possess any, are reduced to a much narrower compass, than those, of which we have been speaking before.

Civil rights, we may remember, are reducible to three primary heads; the right of personal security; the right of personal liberty; and the right of private property. In a state of slavery the two last are wholly abolished, the person of the slave being at the absolute disposal of his master; and property, what he is incapable, in that state, either of acquiring,