tising,
beforehand, courts and juries, that the fact of any infliction
_producing death_, was no evidence that it was _immoderate_, and that
beating a man to death came within the legal meaning of 'moderate
correction!' The _design_ of the legislature of North Carolina in
framing this law is manifest; it was to produce the impression upon
the world, that they had so high a sense of justice as voluntarily to
grant adequate protection to the lives of their slaves. This is
ostentatiously set forth in the preamble, and in the body of the law.
That this was the most despicable hypocrisy, and that they had
predetermined to grant no such protection, notwithstanding the pains
taken to get the _credit_ of it, is fully revealed by the _proviso_,
which was framed in such a way as to nullify the law, for the express
accommodation of slaveholding gentlemen murdering their slaves. All
such find in this proviso a convenient accomplice before the fact, and
a packed jury, with a ready-made verdict of 'not guilty,' both
gratuitously furnished by the government! The preceding law and
proviso are to be found in Haywood's Manual, 530; also in Laws of
Tennessee, Act of October 23, 1791; and in Stroud's Sketch, 37.

Enough has been said already to show, that though the laws of the
slave states profess to grant adequate protection to the life of the
slave, such professions are mere empty pretence, no such protection
being in reality afforded by them. But there is still another fact,
showing that all laws which profess to protect the slaves from injury
by the whites are a mockery. It is this--that the testimony, neither
of a slave nor of a free colored person, is _legal_ testimony against
a white. To this rule there is _no exception_ in any of the slave
states: and this, were there no other evidence, would be sufficient to
stamp, as hypocritical, all the provisions of the codes which
_profess_ to protect the slaves. Professing to grant _protection_,
while, at the same time, it strips them of the only _means_ by which
they can make that protection available! Injuries must be legally
_proved_ before they can be legally _redressed_: to deprive men of the
power of _proving_ their injuries, is itself the greatest of all
injuries; for it not only exposes to all, but invites them, by a
virtual guarantee of impunity, and is thus the _author_ of all
injuries. It matters not what other laws exist, professing to throw
safeguards round the slave--_this_ m