Page:A dissertation on slavery - with a proposal for the gradual abolition of it, in the state of Virginia. (IA dissertationonsl00tuckrich).pdf/56

 The inhuman rigour of this act was afterwards extended to the venial offence of going abroad by night, if the slave was notoriously guilty of it.—Such are the cruelties to which a state of slavery gives birth; such the horrors to which the human mind is capable of being reconciled, by its adoption. The dawn of humanity at length appeared in the year 1769, when the power of dismembering, even under the authority of a county court, was restricted to the single offence of attempting to ravish a white woman, in which case perhaps the punishment is perhaps not more than commensurate to the crime. In 1772 some restraints were laid upon the practice of outlawing slaves, requiring that it should appear to the satisfaction of the justices that the slaves were outlying, and doing mischief. These loose expressions of the act, left too much in the discretion of men, not much addicted to weighing their import.—In 1792, every thing relative to the outlawry of slaves was expunged from our code, and I trust will never again find a place in it. By the act of 1680, a Negroe, mulattoe, or Indian, bond or free, presuming to lift his hand in opposition to any Christian, should receive thirty lashes on his bare