a brief season became slave-drivers
and slave-owners. With hearts reduced to flinty hardness in the fires
of unrestrained passions, the convict element, as it became absorbed
in the great free white population of the Province,[425] created a
most positive sentiment in favor of a cruel code for the government of
the Negro slave. There were two motives that inspired the ex-convict
to cruelty to the Negro: to divert attention from himself, and to
persuade himself, in his doubting mind, that the Negro was inferior to
him by _nature_. It was, no doubt, a great undertaking; but the
findings of such a court must have been comforting to an anxious
conscience! The result can be judged. Maryland made a slave-code,
which, for cruelty and general inhumanity, has no equal in the
South.[426] The Maryland laws of 1715 contained, in chapter
forty-four, an act with one hundred and thirty-five sections relating
to Negro slaves. A most rigorous pass-system was established. By
section six, no Negro or other servant was allowed to leave the county
without a pass under the seal of the county in which their master
resided; for which pass the slave or other servant was compelled to
pay ten pounds of tobacco, or one shilling in money. If such persons
were apprehended, a justice of the peace could impose such fines and
inflict such punishment as were fixed by the law applying to runaways.
By the Act of 1723, chapter fifteen, under the caption of "_An Act to
prevent the tumultuous meeting and other irregularities of negroes and
other slaves_," the severity of the laws was increased tenfold.
According to section four, a Negro or other slave who had the temerity
to strike a white person, was to have his ears "_cropt on order of a
Justice_." Section six denies slaves the right of possession of
property: they could not own cattle. Section seven gave authority to
any white man to kill a Negro who resisted an attempt to arrest him;
and by a supplemental Act of 1751, chapter fourteen, the owner of a
slave thus killed was to be paid out of the public treasury. In 1729
an Act was passed providing, that upon the conviction of certain
crimes, Negroes and other slaves shall be not only hanged, but the
body should be quartered, and exposed to public view. When slaves grew
old and infirm in the service of their masters, and the latter were
inspired by a desire to compliment the faithfulness of their servants
by emancipation, the law came in and forbade manumiss