[23] Emin Pasha in Central Africa, p. 338.
As a husband often has “the power of life and death” over his wife, so we may expect to find, even more often, that a master has the same power over his slave. The latter, as a rule, can hardly count on the support of his family, and when, as is frequently the case, he is a prisoner of war, the right of killing an enemy easily passes into the right of killing the slave. In the literature dealing with the lower races we repeatedly meet with the statement that the owner may kill his slave at pleasure, or that he is not accountable for killing him.[24] Yet this seems to mean rather that, if he does so, no complaint can be brought against him, or no vengeance taken on him, than that he has an unconditional moral right to put to death a slave whom he no longer cares to keep; we shall see that savage custom very commonly requires that slaves should be treated with kindness by their masters. In many cases the master is expressly denied the right of killing his slave at his own discretion.[25] Among the Bataks, the owner, though allowed to punish his slave, must take care that the latter does not succumb to the punishment.[26] Among the Rejangs, if a man kills his slave, he pays half his price as compensation to the feudal chief of the country.[27] In Madagascar “masters have full power over their slaves, excepting as to life”;[28] and the same is said of the Tshi-speaking peoples of the Gold Coast.[29] The Mandingoes allow the owner to do what he likes to a prisoner of war and to a person who has lost his freedom through insolvency, but he is forbidden to kill a house-slave.[30] Among the Barea and Kunáma, by putting to death a slave who is a native of the country, the master even exposes himself to the blood-revenge of the family of the slain.[31]
[24] Monrad, Bidrag til en Skildring af Guinea-Kysten, p. 42 (Negroes of Accra). Bowdich, Mission to Ashantee, p. 258 (people of Ashanti). Ward, Five Years with the Congo Cannibals, p. 105 (Bolobo). Macdonald, Africana, i. 168 (Eastern Central Africans). Burton, Zanzibar, ii. 95 (Wanika). Cooper, Mishmee Hills, p. 238. Glimpses of the Eastern Archipelago, p. 106 (Highlanders of Palembang). Hale, U.S. Exploring Expedition. Vol. VI. Ethnography and Philology, p. 33 (Maoris). Gibbs, loc. cit. p. 189 (Thlinkets). Steinmetz, Studien, ii. 308 sqq.
[25] Steinmetz, Rechtsverhältnisse von eigeborenen Völkern in Afrika und Ozeanien, p. 43 (Banaka and Bapuku). Mademba, ibid. p. 83 (natives of the Sansanding States). Lang, ibid. p. 241 (Washambala). Desoignies, ibid. p. 278 (Msalala).
[26] Glimpses of the Eastern Archipelago, p. 114.
[27] Marsden, op. cit. p. 222.
[28] Ellis, History of Madagascar, i. 196.
[29] Ellis, Tshi-speaking Peoples of the Gold Coast, p. 291.
[30] Post, Afrikanische Jurisprudenz, i. 95.
[31] Munzinger, Ostafrikanische Studien, p. 484.