Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/407

 might be held as dares in that province, the whole system being left to rest on usage or the supposed law of England. Bat police laws for the regulation of slave-were enacted similar to Chose of Virginia, and the Virginia prohibition was also adopted of manumissions, except for meritorious services, to be adjudged by the governor and council.

Among the ten acts of the Virginia revision rejected by the king in 1751, was one "concerning servants and slaves," a consolidation and reënactment of all the old statutes on that subject, the substance of which has been given in former pages. It appears from the address of the Assembly to the king on the subject of this veto, to have been a standing instruction to the governor not to consent to the reënactment of any law once rejected by the king, without express leave first obtained upon representation of the reasons and necessity for it. Such a representation was accordingly made by the Assembly as to eight of the ten rejected laws. The act concerning servants and slaves was not of this number, yet we find it reënacted within a year after in the very same words. Why the royal assent had been refused does not appear. It could hardly have been from any scruples on the subject of slavery; for the acts expressly approved was one "for the better government of Indians, negroes, and mulattoes," which provided that the death of a slave under extremity of correction should not be esteemed murder, unless it were proved by the oath of at least one "lawful and credible witness" that the slave was willfully and maliciously killed; persons indicted for the murder of a slave, and found guilty of manslaughter only, to "incur no forfeiture or punishment." Slaves set free without leave from the governor and council might be sold at auction by the church-wardens of any parish in which such freed slave might reside for the space of a month. The same statute also continued the authority formerly given to the county courts to "dismember" disorderly slaves "notoriously guilty of going abroad in the night, or running away and laying out," and not to be reclaimed by the common methods — an authority very much abused, if we may judge by a subsequent statute, 1169, which declares this dismembering "to be often disproportioned to the offense, and contrary to the principles of humanity," and prohibits the castration of slaves except on conviction of an attempt to ravish a white woman.

The negroes imported from the African coast, whose descendants now constitute a sixth part of the population of the United States, were not by any means of one nation, language, or race. A single slave-ship often brought to America a great variety of languages and customs, a collection of unfortunate strangers to each other, or perhaps of hereditary enemies, with no common bond except that of servitude. Hence a want of union and sympathy among the slaves, which, joined to their extreme ignorance and simplicity, prevented cooperation, and rendered it easy to suppress such outbreaks as occasionally occurred. Even in complexion and physiognomy, the most obvious characteristic of the negroes, there were great differences. Some were of a jet black, often with features approaching the European standard; others of a mahogany or reddish black, with features less shapely and regular; and others yet of a