The Slave, being a Chattel, may be worked at the discretion of his Owner, as other working Chattels are.

     IF the Legislature of one of our Northern States should enact a law restricting farmers to a specified number of hours per day, in which their oxen and horses should be worked; and if the Act should be prefaced with a preamble, stating that many farmers were in the habit of over-working their cattle, it would be thought a severe reflection upon the farmers. A stranger would conclude that they were an inhuman as well as a short-sighted class of people, to treat their working beasts in that manner. They would eagerly read the Act, to see how many hours were allowed as a relief to the poor beasts. And they would necessarily infer that the practice had been to work the cattle a longer time than that prescribed by the law.

     Let us now look at some of the laws of the slave States.

     SOUTH CAROLINA, (Act of 1740.)—“Whereas, many owners of slaves, and others who have the

care, management, and overseeing of slaves, do confine them so closely to hard labor that they have not sufficient time for natural rest, Be it therefore enacted, That if any owner of slaves, or other persons, who shall have the care, management, or overseeing of slaves, shall work or put any such slave or slaves to labor more than fifteen hours in twenty-four hours, from the 25th day of March to the 25th day of September; or more than fourteen hours in twenty-four hours, from the 25th day of September to the 25th day of March, every such person shall forfeit any sum not exceeding twenty pounds nor under five pounds current money, for every time he, she, or they shall offend herein, at the discretion of the justice before whom the complaint shall be made.” (2 Brevard's Digest, 243.)

     How much longer than fourteen or fifteen hours per day, in winter and summer, the South Carolina planters had been in the habit of working their slaves, we are left to conjecture! But we know that “the laws of Maryland, Virginia, and Georgia forbid that the criminals in their penitentiaries shall be compelled to labor more than ten hours a day,” (Jay's Inquiry, p. 130;) and not exceeding nine hours in some portions of the year, and eight during the three other months, (Stroud's Sketch, p. 29.) In Jamaica, (before emancipation,) “besides many holidays which are by law accorded to the slave, ten hours a day is the extent of the time which the slave is compelled, ordinarily, to work.” (2 Edwards' W. Indies, book iv., chap. 5, &c.)

     GEORGIA, (Act of 1817.)—“Any owner of a slave or slaves, who shall cruelly treat such slave or slaves by unnecessary or excessive whipping, by withholding proper food and nourishment, by requiring greater labor from such slave or slaves than he or she or they may be able to perform, by not affording proper clothing, whereby the health of such slave or slaves may be injured or impaired, every such owner or owners of slaves shall, upon sufficient information being laid before the grand jury, be by said grand jury presented, whereupon it shall be the duty of the attorney or solicitor general to prosecute said owner or owners, who, on conviction, shall be sentenced to pay a fine, or be imprisoned, at the discretion of the Court.” (Prince's Digest, 376.)

     In this act, the “owner” only is specified, and not the overseer, or agent.

     LOUISIANA, (Act of July, 1806.)—“As for the hours of work and rest which are to be assigned to slaves in summer, the old usages of the territory shall be adhered to, to wit: The slaves shall be allowed half an hour for breakfast during the whole year; from the first day of May to the first day of November they shall be allowed two hours for dinner; and from the first day of November to the first day of May, one hour and a half for dinner: Provided, however, that the owners who will themselves take the trouble of causing to be prepared the meals of their slaves, be, and they are hereby authorized to abridge, by half an hour per day, the time fixed for their rest.” (1 Martin's Digest, 610-12.)

     This relic of “the old usages” under the Spanish and French laws may be considered, like the Louisiana laws before quoted, an exception to the general code of American Slavery. Yet even here the hours of beginning and ending the day's labor are not specified, and consequently, the hours of labor, per day, are not limited nor ascertained. The known custom of night-work in boiling sugar is not touched by this statute.

     In Georgia and in Mississippi, there are laws forbidding the unnecessary labor of slaves on the Sabbath.—This is all the information before us. In most of the slave States, there are no laws limiting slave labor. (See Stroud, p. 26.)

     One single consideration is sufficient to show that the limitations just quoted are of no practical value. NO SLAVE AND NO FREE COLORED PERSON, IN THE SLAVE STATES, CAN BE A WITNESS AGAINST A WHITE PERSON. (Ib., 27.) Slaveholders would not be forward to prosecute each other for ill treatment of slaves. And many of the non-slaveholding whites, at the South, are a servile and degraded class, not daring to offend the slaveholders.

     The celebrated George Whitefield, in a “Letter to the Inhabitants of Maryland, Virginia, North and South Carolina,” in 1739, (after having travelled among them,) says: “Your slaves, I believe, work as hard, if not harder, than the horses whereon you ride. These, after their work is done, are fed, and taken proper care of, but many negroes, when wearied with labor in your plantations, have been

obliged to grind their own corn, after their return home.”

     John Woolman, in his Journal, under date of 1757, speaks of the labor of slaves as “heavy, being followed at their business in the field by a man with a whip, hired for that purpose.” (Life of Woolman, p. 74.)

     The following are specimens of a great amount of similar testimony recorded in Weld's “Slavery as it is,” p. 35 and onward

     “So laborious is the task of raising, beating, and cleaning rice, that had it been possible to obtain European servants in sufficient numbers, thousands and tens of thousands of them must have perished.” (History of Carolina, vol. I. p. 30.)

     Hon. Alexander Smythe, of Va., in a speech in Congress on the Missouri question, January 28, 1820, argued, on the ground of humanity, in favor of extending slavery into Missouri, that the slaves would be more comfortable there than in the older States, where they are “forced to incessant toil,” “hard-worked,” &c. If you “hem them in where they are,” you “doom them to hard labor.” It would be “extreme cruelty to the blacks.”

     Henry Clay, in 1834, in a conversation with James G. Birney, expressed a belief (contrary to his former impressions) that at the far South, the births among the slaves were not equal to the deaths. He related what he had heard and believed, that an overseer in Louisiana “worked his hands so closely, that one of the women brought forth a child while engaged in

the labors of the field.” He was also told of a plantation containing from “twenty to thirty young women in the prime of life,” and the proprietor told him there had not been a child born among them for the last two or three years, although they all had husbands.

     We have before us much more testimony to the same point; also, to the fact, that the slaves are commonly “obliged to work from daylight till dark, or as long as they can see.”

     “Every body here (Natchez, Miss.) knows over-driving to be one of the most common occurrences. The planters do not deny it, except, perhaps, to Northerners.” (A. A. Stone, Theological Student.)

     In our Chapter V. on the “Uses of Slave Property,” it was shown how coolly and deliberately gangs of slaves are used up on the sugar plantations of Louisiana, once in seven or eight years. In Mr. Weld's book, before us, we have many testimonies that corroborate the general fact. We spare room for only one, which comes on the authority of Rev. John O. Choules, Baptist minister, once of New-Bedford, Mass., afterwards of Buffalo, New-York. “While attending the Baptist Triennial Convention at Richmond, Va., in 1835,” says Mr. C., “I had a conversation with an officer of the Baptist church in that city, at whose house I was a guest. I asked him if he did not apprehend that the slaves would eventually rise and exterminate their masters? ‘Why,' said the gentleman,' I did use to apprehend such a catastrophe, but God has made a providential opening, a

merciful safety valve, and now I do not feel alarmed, in the prospect of what is coming.' ‘What do you mean,' said Mr. Choules, ‘by Providence opening a merciful safety valve?' ‘Why,' said the gentle man, 'I will tell you. The slave-traders come from the cotton and sugar plantations of the South, and are willing to buy up more slaves than we can part with. We must keep a stock for the purpose of rearing slaves, but we part with the most valuable, and at the same time the most dangerous; and the demand is very constant, and is likely to be so, for when they go to those Southern States, the average existence is ONLY FIVE YEARS!”

     The people, including church members, are not better than their laws.