Page:Notices of Negro slavery as connected with Pennsylvania.djvu/21

Rh his Life of Penn, to various reasons, viz.: the hostility which then prevailed in the Assembly to all projects emanating from the executivethe jealousies which existed between the province and territoriesthe influx of emigrants of a lower tone of moral feeling than the first settlers of the colony, and the diminution of Quaker influence in the Assembly; the executive council, composed wholly of members of this society, having concurred with Penn in proposing the bill. The same causes appear to have been in operation for several years after; and we accordingly find a degree of severity and rigor in the legislative enactments of 1705, entirely at variance with the humane policy of Penn and with the benevolent laws of a very few years later date. The law of 1705 was entitled "an act for the trial and punishment of negroes." The act provided that negroes convicted of heinous crimes, such as murder, manslaughter, burglary, rape, &c., should be tried by three justices of the peace and six freeholders of the vicinage; that the punishment of death should be awarded to such offences; that any negro convicted of carrying arms without his master's consent, should, on conviction before a magistrate, receive twenty-one lashes; and finally, that not more than four negroes should meet together without their master's permission, on the penalty of receiving any number not exceeding thirty-nine lashes, on conviction before one justice of the peace. This law was intended as a substitute for William Penn's act of 1700, for the "trial and punishment of negroes." In this same year a 25