Page:English laws for women in the nineteenth century.djvu/30

18 poured down their throats. Yet when this subject of King. George of England was tried, it was pleaded for him in open, court that a negro being property, it was no greater offence, in law for his owner to kill him than to kill a dog: the jury, though they returned a verdict of "guilty," by a majority, of their number, recommended Hodge to mercy: and Governor Elliott wrote home in his despatches, that he was obliged to be present, as Commander-in-chief,—to call out the militia,—and to proclaim martial law,—in order to secure the execution of the sentence. It is a remarkable additional, fact, and shows the state of feeling at that time, that although these and a thousand other horrors were perfectly well known,, Esq., was well received, in the society of the island, and retained his rank as "one of the Members of his Majesty's Council" up to the day of his arrest,

But these are things of the past: horrible shadows, remembered like bad dreams: events that never can occur again where England's law has sway. For England is just and merciful; and if she is also a little proud and preaching, it is no more than all converts to, good causes are apt to be, in the fresh earnestness of their desire that truths lately brought home to themselves, should be brought home to others; and if she finds fault with the laws, that permit oppression in the code of other countries, it is that she has no law which permits oppression in her own.

I beg the attention of both my American and English readers to a case I find copied, from, a report in a "Cincinnati Gazette," into the columns of our own "Times" newspaper, in the month of November, 1853. It was a case tried in the Covington Circuit Court; and, by the report it appears, that a, slave named; Sam Norris, belonging to a Mr J. N. Patton, of Virginia, had been permitted to work in Covington, on condition of paying each year a certain sum to his master; which sum was accordingly paid: that two years ago, Mr Patton proposed that the slave should purchase his freedom by the payment of