“Art. 183. Field labour shall commence on Monday morning, and shall never cease until Friday evening (legal holidays excepted); and in extraordinary cases, when the interest of the cultivator as well as of the proprietor appears to require it, work shall be continued until Saturday evening.
“Art. 184. On working days, the ordinary field labour shall commence at day-dawn, to continue until mid-day, with the interval of half an hour for breakfast, which shall be taken on the spot where the work is carrying on. After mid-day the field labour shall commence at two o’clock, and continue until sun-set.
“Art. 185. Pregnant females shall be employed on light work only, and after the fourth month of pregnancy they shall not be obliged to do any work in the field.
“Art. 186. Four months after delivery they shall be obliged to resume the labour in the field; but they shall not turn out to work until one hour after sun-rise; they shall continue to work until eleven o’clock, and from two o’clock until one hour before sun-set.
“Art. 187. No labourer attached to an estate in the country shall absent himself from the labour assigned him, without the permission of the overseer, in the absence of the proprietor or farmer; and no one shall give that permission unless the case be urgent.
“Art. 188. Gangs of labourers upon estates shall be obedient to their drivers, jobbers, sub-farmers, farmers, proprietors and managers, or overseers, whenever they are called upon to execute the labour they have bound themselves to perform.
“Art. 189. Every act of disobedience or insult on the part of a workman commanded to do any work, to which he is subjected, shall be punished by imprisonment, according to the exigency of the case, in the discretion of the justice of the peace of the commune.
“Art. 190. Saturdays, Sundays, and holidays being at the entire disposal of the labourers, they shall not be permitted on working days to leave their work, to indulge in dancing or feasting, neither by night nor by day. Delinquents shall be subject to imprisonment for three days for the first offence, for six days for the repetition of the offence.”
The remaining articles of the code relate to the making of roads and keeping them in repair.
“These clauses are given as more particularly exhibiting the effect of the code on the field labourer. To exhibit the whole system by which the driver is made answerable for the labourer, the overseer for his drivers and labourers, and the police, in its various grades, for the whole, it would be necessary to translate the entire code. During imprisonment, the labourer being absent from field work forfeits his wages; the pregnant women also appear to receive no wages during their exemption.”[9]