Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Slavery volume 5 .djvu/76

64 in some cases even then. There was no hindrance to manumission.

In America the laws relating to slavery are in many respects more severe than the English laws, since the Norman conquest, respecting villains—regardant or in gross. The child's condition follows that of the mother. This American departure from the common law was early made by statute, and the opposite maxim, the rule of the civil law, extended over the slave States;—Partus sequitur ventrem. Illegitimate children of female slaves were of course slaves for ever, though the father was free. But for this alteration, many thousands of men now slaves would have been free.

Contrary to the old common law of England, but in obedience to the Roman code, the American slave, in law, is regarded merely as a thing; "doomed," as Judge Ruffin, of North Carolina, sorrowfully declares, "to live without knowledge and without the capacity to make anything his own, and to toil that another may reap the fruits." In some of the slave States trial by jury is allowed to him in all capital cases; sometimes with the concurrence of a grand jury, sometimes without. Sometimes he is allowed to challenge the jurors "for cause," though not peremptorily. But in South Carolina, Virginia, and Louisiana, the slave is not allowed a jury trial, even when his life is in peril. In some others he has the protection of a jury when arraigned for inferior offences. But in every slave State he may be beaten to the extent of "thirty-nine lashes well laid on," without the verdict of a jury, but by the decision of a body of justices of the peace, varying in number from two to five. In all cases he is tried by men who regard him only as a thing, never by a jury of his peers—not even by a mixed jury of slave-holders and slaves. Some States have made humane provisions to guard against popular excitement, removing the trial to another county; now and then humane decisions are made in their favour by just men. But these are exceptional spots of humanity amidst the general gloom of the slave-code. There is some difference in the legislation of the several States, justifying the remark long ago made in Europe, that the condition of slaves was mildest in the North—hardest in the South.