exes
kept apart, and a proper hospital provided for them. By another law,
marriage is inculcated on moral grounds, and the master of the slave is
required to purchase the wife, so that they may both be under one roof;
if he declines the honour, then the owner of the wife is to purchase the
husband; and if that fails, a third party is to buy both: failing all
these efforts, the law appears non-plused, and leaves their fate to
Providence. If the wife has any children under three years of age, they
must be sold with her. The law can compel an owner to sell any slave
upon whom he may be proved to have exercised cruelty; should any party
offer him the price he demands, he may close the bargain at once, but if
they do not agree, his value is to be appraised by two arbiters, one
chosen by each party, and if either decline naming an arbiter, a law
officer acts _ex officio_. Any slave producing fifty dollars (ten
pounds) as a portion of his ransom-money, the master is obliged to fix a
price upon him, at which his ransom may be purchased; he then becomes a
_coartado_, and whatever sums he can save his master is bound to receive
in part payment, and, should he be sold, the price must not exceed the
price originally named, after subtracting therefrom the amount he has
advanced for his ransom. Each successive purchaser must buy him subject
to these conditions. In all disputes as to original price or completion
of the ransom, the Government appoints a law officer on behalf of the
slave. The punishments of the slave are imprisonment, stocks, &c.; when
the lash is used, the number of stripes is limited to twenty-five.

The few regulations I have quoted are sufficient to show how carefully
the law has fenced-in the slave from bad treatment. I believe the laws
of no other country in regard to slaves are so merciful, excepting
always Peru; but, alas! though the law is as fair as the outside of the
whited sepulchre, the practice is as foul as the inside thereof; nor can
one ever expect that it should be otherwise, when we see that, following
the example of the treaty-breaking, slave-importing Queen Mother, every
official, from the highest government authority down to the lowest petty
custom-house officer, exposes his honesty daily in the dirty market of
bribery.

A short summary of the increase of slave population may be interesting,
as showing that the charges made against the Cubans of only keeping up
the numbers of the slaves by import