Page:An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans.djvu/67

Rh treated is forfeited to the crown; and the court, which judges the offence, has power to confer freedom on the sufferer. In the Spanish and Portuguese colonies, a slave on complaint of ill-usage obtains public protection; he may be manumitted, or change his master.

9.—Slave unprotected in his domestic relations. In proof of this it is only necessary to repeat that the slave and his wife, and his daughters, are considered as the property of their owners, and compelled to yield implicit obedience—that he is allowed to give no evidence—that he must not resist any white man, under any circumstances, which do not interfere with his master's interest—and finally, that public opinion ridicules the slave's claim to any exclusive right in his own wife and children.

In Athens, the female slave could demand protection from the magistrates; and if her complaints of insulting treatment were well founded, she could be sold to another master, who, in his turn, forfeited his claim by improper conduct.

10.—The laws obstruct emancipation.

In nearly all slave-holding States, a slave emancipated by his master's will, may be seized and sold to satisfy any debt. In Louisiana, fraud of creditors is by law considered as proved, if it can be made to appear that the master, at the moment of executing the deed of enfranchisement, had not sufficient property to pay all his debts; and if after payment of debts, there be not personal estate enough to satisfy the widow's claim to one third, his slaves, though declared to be free by his last will, are nevertheless liable to be sold for the widow's portion.—In South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, a valid emancipation can only be gained by authority of the Legislature, expressly granted. A slave owner cannot manumit his slaves without the formal consent of the Legislature. "In Georgia, any attempt to free a slave in any other manner than the prescribed form, is punished by a fine of two hundred dollars for each offence; and the slave or slaves are still, to all intents and purposes, in a state of slavery." A new act was passed in that State in 1818, by which any person, who endeavors to