Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Slavery volume 5 .djvu/78

66 free, may be sold by order of the court, as a slave for ever. If an applicant for freedom is cast in bis suit, the court is "fully empowered to inflict sucb punishment not extending to life and limb, as they should think fit;" the "guardian "shall pay the costs; and in South Carolina, double those costs with damages to the owner of the slave. In Virginia, such a guardian, if defeated in his application, may be fined $100. In such a trial in Maryland, the master is allowed to challenge peremptorily twelve jurors. How difficult to find a "guardian" willing to incur the risk! how more than difficult to secure justice when a negro is wrongfully claimed as a slave! Yet notwithstanding the general spirit displayed by such legislation, some decisions have been made in the Southern States remarkable for the nicety of legal distinction and the exactness of their justice even to the slave.

Since the slave is a thing in many States, a conditional contract which the master has solemnly made with a slave, is not binding on the master, even after the slave has fulfilled the contract in spirit and letter. This is notoriously the law in South Carolina, and even in Virginia. A contract made with a spade or a mule binds no man—with a slave no more; the court cannot proceed to "enforce a contract between master and slave, even though the contract should be fully complied with on the part of the slave." This is a departure from the common law of England, and even from the customs of the Saxons and Germans.

The common law of England jealously defends the little property of the slave;—his Peculium. By the common law of Villainage, in England and Germany, he could acquire property as it was said above, and could transmit it to his heirs. Something of the sort was allowed even at Rome. But in all the slave States this is strictly forbidden. A slave cannot hold property solemnly devised to him by testament, even by that of his master. This provision, enforced by statute in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, Kentucky, and Tennessee, and perhaps all the slave States, is more rigorous even than the black codes of the Spanish and Portuguese colonies.