slave [Ibidem.]. To administer medicine without the order or consent of
the master, unless it _appear not to have been done with an ill intent_;
to _consult_, advise, or conspire, to rebel or make insurrection; or to
_conspire_, or _plot_ to _murder_ any person, we have seen, are all
capital offences, from which the benefit of clergy is utterly excluded.
But a _bare intention_ to commit a felony, is not punishable in the case
of a free white man; and even the attempt, if not attended with an
actual breach of the peace, or prevented by such circumstance; only, as
do not tend to lessen the guilt of the offender, is at most a
misdemeanor by the common law: and in statutable offences in general, to
consult, advise, and even to procure any person to commit a felony, does
not constitute the crime of felony in the adviser or procurer, unless
the felony be actually perpetrated.

From this view of our jurisprudence respecting slaves, we are
unavoidably led to remark, how frequently the laws of nature have been
set aside in favour of institutions, the pure result of prejudice,
usurpation, and tyranny. We have found actions, innocent, or
indifferent, punishable with a rigour scarcely due to any, but the most
atrocious, offences against civil society; justice distributed by an
unequal measure to the master and the slave; and even the hand of mercy
arrested, where mercy might have been extended to the wretched culprit,
had his complexion been the same with that of his judges: for, the short
period of ten days, between his condemnation and execution, was often
insufficient to obtain a pardon for a slave, convicted in a remote part
of the country, whilst a free man, condemned at the seat of government,
and tried before the governor himself, in whom the power of pardoning
was vested, had a respite of thirty days to implore the clemency of the
executive authority.--It may be urged, and I believe with truth, that
these rigours do not proceed from a sanguinary temper in the people of
Virginia, but from those political considerations indispensibly
necessary, where slavery prevails to any great extent: I am moreover
happy to observe that our police respecting this unhappy class of
people, is not only less rigorous than formerly, but perhaps milder than
in any other country[17] where there are so many slaves, or so large a
proportion of them, in respect to the free inhabitants: it is also, I
trust, unjust to censure the present generation f