The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus

by American Anti-Slavery Society

Stroud, in his Sketch of the Laws of Slavery, page 100, thus comments on this monstrous barbarity.

"The hardened convict moves their sympathy, and is to be taught the laws before he is expected to obey them;[[36]] yet the guiltless slave is subjected to an extensive system of cruel enactments, of no part of which, probably, has he ever heard."

[Footnote [36]: "It shall be the duty of the keeper [of the penitentiary] on the receipt of each prisoner, to read to him or her such parts of the penal laws of this state as impose penalties for escape, and to make all the prisoners in the penitentiary acquainted with the same. It shall also be his duty, on the discharge of such prisoner, to read to him or her such parts of the laws as impose additional punishments for the repetition of offences."—Rule 12th, for the internal government of the Penitentiary of Georgia. Sec. 26 of the Penitentiary Act of 1816.—Prince's Digest, 386.]

Having already drawn so largely on the reader's patience, in illustrating southern 'public opinion' by the slave laws, instead of additional illustrations of the same point from another class of those laws, as was our design, we will group together a few particulars, which the reader can take in at a glance, showing that the "public opinion" of slaveholders towards their slaves, which exists at the south, in the form of law, tramples on all those fundamental principles of right, justice, and equity, which are recognized as sacred by all civilized nations, and receive the homage even of barbarians.

1. One of these principles is, that the benefits of law to the subject should overbalance its burdens—its protection more than compensate for its restraints and exactions—and its blessings altogether outweigh its inconveniences and evils—the former being numerous, positive, and permanent, the latter few, negative, and incidental. Totally the reverse of all this is true in the case of the slave. Law is to him all exaction and no protection: instead of lightening his natural burdens, it crushes him under a multitude of artificial ones; instead of a friend to succor him, it is his deadliest foe, transfixing him at every step from the cradle to the grave. Law has been beautifully defined to be "benevolence acting by rule;" to the American slave it is malevolence torturing by system. It is an old truth, that responsibility increases with capacity; but those same laws which make the slave a "chattel," require of him more than of men. The same law which makes him a thing incapable of obligation, loads him with obligations superhuman—while sinking him below the level of a brute in dispensing its benefits, he lays upon him burdens which would break down an angel.

2. Innocence is entitled to the protection of law. Slaveholders make innocence free plunder; this is their daily employment; their laws assail it, make it their victim, inflict upon it all, and, in some respects, more than all the penalties of the greatest guilt. To other innocent persons, law is a blessing, to the slave it is a curse, only a curse and that continually.

3. Deprivation of liberty is one of the highest punishments of crime; and in proportion to its justice when inflicted on the guilty, is its injustice when inflicted on the innocent; this terrible penalty is inflicted on two million seven hundred thousand, innocent persons in the Southern states.

4. Self-preservation and self-defence, are universally regarded as the most sacred of human rights, yet the laws of slave states punish the slave with death for exercising these rights in that way, which in others is pronounced worthy of the highest praise.

5. The safeguards of law are most needed where natural safe-guards are weakest. Every principle of justice and equity requires, that, those who are totally unprotected by birth, station, wealth, friends, influence, and popular favor, and especially those who are the innocent objects of public contempt and prejudice, should be more vigilantly protected by law, than those who are so fortified by defence, that they have far less need of legal protection; yet the poor slave who is fortified by none of these personal bulwarks, is denied the protection of law, while the master, surrounded by them all, is panoplied in the mail of legal protection, even to the hair of his head; yea, his very shoe-tie and coat-button are legal protegees.

6. The grand object of law is to protect men's natural rights, but instead of protecting the natural rights of the slaves, it gives slaveholders license to wrest them from the weak by violence, protects them in holding their plunder, and kills the rightful owner if he attempt to recover it.