[Footnote O: A Commissioner's fee under the Fugitive-Slave Bill. History will repeat herself to emphasize the natural and inalienable rights of slave-catchers. In 1706 the planters organized a permanent force of maroon-hunters, twelve men to each quarter of the island, who received the annual stipend of three hundred livres. In addition to this, the owners paid thirty livres for each slave caught in the canes or roads, forty-five for each captured beyond the mornes, and sixty for those who escaped to more distant places. The hunters might fire at the slave, if he could not be otherwise stopped, and draw the same sums. In 1711 the maroons became so insolent that the planters held four regular chases or battues per annum.]
The Code Noir was the basis of all the colonial legislation which affected the condition of the slave, and it is important to notice its principal articles. We have only room to present them reduced to their essential substance.
Negroes must be instructed in the Catholic religion, and bozals must be baptized within eight days after landing. All overseers must be Catholic. Sundays and fête days are days of rest for the negro; no sale of negroes or any other commodity can take place on those days.
Free men who have children by slaves, and masters who permit the connection, are liable to a fine of two thousand pounds of sugar. If the guilty person be a master, his slave and her children are confiscated for the benefit of the hospital, and cannot be freed.
If a free man is not married to any white person during concubinage with his slave, and shall marry said slave, she and her children shall become enfranchised.
No consent of father and mother is essential for marriage between slaves, but no master can constrain slaves to marry against their will.
If a slave has a free black or colored woman for his wife, the male and female children shall follow the condition of the mother; and if a slave-woman has a free husband, the children shall follow his condition.
The weekly ration for a slave of ten years old and upwards consists of five Paris pints of manioc meal, or three cassava loaves, each weighing two and a half pounds, with two pounds of salt beef, or three of fish, or other things in proportion, but never any tafia[P] in the place of a ration; and no master can avoid giving a slave his ration by offering him a day for his own labor. Weaned children to the age of ten are entitled to half the above ration. Each slave must also have two suits of clothes yearly, or cloth in proportion.
[Footnote P: A coarse rum distilled from the sugar-cane.]
Slaves who are not properly nourished and clothed by their masters can lodge a complaint against them. If it be well-founded, the masters can be prosecuted without cost to the slave.