| The legal position of the slave. |
Of course it very soon became necessary that the legal position of the slave should be definitely fixed. The legislature of Virginia again set the precedents. Concisely stated, this legislation provided that a slave could have no standing in the ordinary courts, either as party or witness; that a slave could own no property; that a slave owed obedience to the master, who might force the slave to labor, and chastise the slave even to the extreme of so injuring the slave that the slave might die in consequence thereof, without incurring the penalties of felony; that the slave could be sold or inherited as personal property; and that the offspring of the female slave belonged to the master owning her at the time of its birth.
| Tendency toward serfage in the Code of 1705. |
The wilful killing of a slave by anyone, even the master, was accounted murder, and extraordinary tribunals, without a jury, were constituted for the protection of his person. The Code of 1705 even contained regulations which indicated that the trend of thought and of legislation, at that juncture, was toward attaching the slave to the soil, which would have been a step upward in a course, which, if consistently followed, would have made the slave a serf. But the still prevailing rules, which allowed the slave to be seized and sold for the debts of the master, and regulated the inheritance of slaves according to the law governing the descent of personal property, seem to have completely neutralized that tendency before the middle of the century had been reached.
| Public relations of the slave system. |
Naturally the private law accidents of the relation were first developed and fixed, but very soon the rights and powers of the community in regard to the institution began to claim attention. The public peace and welfare must be safeguarded against the possible conduct of the slave, on the one hand, and of the master, on the other.
The legislation of Virginia set the example in these respects also. That legislation provided that no slave should have, or carry arms, or go outside of the plantation of his master without a pass from his master, or lift his hand against a Christian; that a sheriff should arrest a runaway slave on the warrant of two justices, and might lawfully kill any slave who resisted arrest; and that no slave should be emancipated without the consent of the Governor and Council.