On the other hand, it provided that the master should be responsible for all damage done by his slave at any place where there was no Christian overseer, and required that any master giving freedom to his slave should pay the cost of his transportation out of the colony.
| The general object of the laws in respect to slaves. |
Such was substantially the law of negro slavery in all of the colonies at the beginning of the decade before the Revolution. It was perhaps more severe than this in South Carolina, and it was certainly less so in Massachusetts.
The objects which it had in view were to secure the master's property in the slave, to enable the master to hold the slave in obedience and force him, if necessary, to labor, and to protect the public peace and welfare against the abuse of the relation by the master, and against the vicious nature of the slave.
It does certainly appear that the century of law-making upon the subject had not ameliorated the condition of the slave. We must remember, however, that the first stages in the legalization of any relation sometimes make the situation appear worse than what obtained before the movement began, although it may not be worse in fact.
| Slavery and the Revolutionary ideas of the rights of man. |
But the period of the Revolution brought with it a great change of view in regard to the morality of slavery, and this change of idea produced great modifications in the law of slavery, all of which tended not only toward an improvement of the condition of the slave, but also toward the ultimate extinction of slavery.