Page:William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (3rd ed, 1768, vol I).djvu/441

 Ch. 14. more than the ame tate of ubjecton for life, which every apprentice ubmits to for the pace of even years, or ometimes for a longer term. Hence too it follows, that the infamous and unchritian practice of withholding baptim from negro ervants, left they hould thereby gain their liberty, is totally without foundation, as well as without excue. The law of England acts upon general and extenive principles: it gives liberty, rightly understood, that is, protection, to a jew, a turk, or a heathen, as well as to thoe who profes the true religion of Chrit; and it will not diolve a civil obligation between mater and ervant, on account of the alteration of faith in either of the parties: but the lave is entitled to the ame protection in England before, as after, baptim; and, whatever ervice the heathen negro owed to his American mater, the ame is he bound to render when brought to England and made a chritian.

1. firt ort of ervants therefore, acknowleged by the laws of England, are menial ervants; o called from being intra moenia, or dometics. The contract between them and their maters aries upon the hiring. If the hiring be general without any particular time limited, the law contrues it to be a hiring for a year ; upon a principle of natural equity, that the ervant hall erve, and the mater maintain him, throughout all the revolutions of the repective eaons; as well when there is work to be done, as when there is not : but the contract may be made for any larger or maller term. All ingle men between twelve years old and ixty, and married ones under thirty years of age, and all ingle women between twelve and forty, not having any viible livelihood, are compellable by two jutices to go out to ervice in hubandry or certain pecific trades, for the promotion of honet indutry: and no mater can put away his ervant, or ervant leave his mater, after being o retained, either before or at the end of his term, without a quarter's warning; unles upon Rh