Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/399

 pregnant circumstances" or confession, was to be found guilty and sentenced. The same act, by another section, forbade slaves to keep horses, cattle, or hogs. It also provided that the owner should be liable for damage done "by any negro or other slave living at a quarter where there is no Christian overseer."

These laws indicate the start which the slave-trade had recently received, and the rapid increase in Virginia of slave population.

A fifth revision of the Virginia code, in progress for the last five years-by a committee of the council and burgesses, was completed in 1705. This code provided that "all servants imported or brought into this country by sea or land, who were not Christians in their native country, (except Turks and Moors in amity with her majesty, and others who can make due proof of their being free in England or any other Christian country before they were shipped in order to transportation thither,) shall be accounted, and be slaves, notwithstanding a conversion to Christianity afterward," or though they may have been in England; "all children to be bond or free, according to the condition of their mothers."

By a humane provision of this code, slaves are made real estate, and thus, 'as it were, attached to the soil. Nor can it be said that the sole object was to shield them from seizure for debt — they remained liable to that as before. They were also to descend like personal property, but provision was made by which the heir of the plantation could buy out the inherited interest of others in the slaves. Such continued to be the law so long as Virginia remained a British colony.

The export of Indian slaves from Carolina had been a subject of complaint in Pennsylvania. The importation of Indian slaves into that province, except such as had been a year domiciled in the family of the importer, had been prohibited, in 1705, by an act especially referring to this Carolina traffic, "as having given our neighboring Indians of this province some umbrage for suspicion and dissatisfaction." A new act, in 1712, "to prevent the importation of negroes and slaves," alleging plots and insurrections, and referring in terms to a recent plot in New York, imposed a prohibitory duty of £20 upon all negroes and Indians brought into the province by land or water, a drawback to be allowed in case of reëxportation within twenty days. Indulgence was also to be granted for a longer time, not exceeding six months, "to all gentlemen and strangers traveling in this province who may have negro or Indian slaves to attend them, not exceeding two for one person." Runaways from the neighboring provinces, if taken back within twenty days after identification, were to be free of duty; otherwise, or if not claimed within twelve months, they were to be sold, and the proceeds paid into the treasury, the owner being entitled only to what remained after paying the duty and expenses. Very large powers were given to the collector to break all doors, and seize and sell all slaves suspected to be concealed with intent to evade the duty. This act, however, within a few months after its passage, was disallowed and repealed by the queen.

A Massachusetts act on the same subject, August, 1712, recites "that