m to
require unconditional submission abroad as well as at home.

The endeavor to prevent insurrections in this way, is as wise as to
attempt to extinguish fire with spirits of wine. The short-sighted
policy defeats itself. A free colored sailor was lately imprisoned with
seven slaves: Here was a fine opportunity to sow the seeds of sedition
in their minds!

The upholders of slavery will in vain contend with the liberal spirit
of the age; it is too strong for them. They may as well try to bottle
up the sunshine for their own exclusive use, as to attempt to keep
knowledge and freedom to themselves. We all know that such an experiment
would result in bottling up darkness for themselves, while exactly the
same amount of sunshine remained abroad for the use of their neighbors.

In North Carolina, free negroes are whipped, fined, and imprisoned, at
the discretion of the court, for intermarrying with slaves.

In Georgia, free colored persons when unable to pay _any_ fine, may be
sold for a space of time not exceeding five years. This limitation does
not probably avail much; if sold to another master before the five years
expired, they would never be likely to be free again.

Several other laws have been passed in Georgia, prohibiting slaves from
living apart from their master, either to labor for other persons, or to
sell refreshments, or to carry on any trade or business although with
their master's consent. Any person of color, bond or free, is forbidden
to occupy any tenement except a _kitchen_ or an _outhouse_, under
penalty of from twenty to fifty lashes. Some of these laws are
applicable only to particular cities, towns, or counties; others to
several counties.

Sundry general laws of a penal nature have been made more penal; and the
number of offences, for which a colored person may suffer _death_, is
increased.

A law passed in Tennessee, in 1831, provides that negroes for conspiracy
to rebel, shall be punished with whipping, imprisonment and pillory, at
the discretion of the court; it has this curious proviso--"Householders
_may_ serve as jurors, if _slaveholders_ cannot be had!"[S] The Southern
courts need to have a great deal of _discretion_, since so much is
trusted to it.

[Footnote S: The Common Law assigns for the trial of a foreigner, six
jurors of his own nation, and six native Englishmen.]

_Class Second._--In Virginia, _white_ persons who teach any colored
person to read or write, are fined not e