The national era. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1847-1860, 1858-06-10

race, that they are indebted to that country and
to that race for the Fundamental idea of their
politics and their political morals. before
quoted the opinion of Chief Justice Marshall
upon this point, and l give it again. After
showing that the enslayement OF captives was
once lawful, be adde: a. a
"Througbout Christendom this harsh rule
6 had been exploded, aud var was no longer
considered as giving q right to enslave cap
6 tives. Bat this triamph had not been univer-
sal The parties to the modern law of nations
do not propagate their PRINCIPLES by force
and Africa has not yet adopted them. Through
out the whole extent of that immense cont
nent, 80 far as We know It's history, it is still
the law of nations that prisoners are slaves
The question then was, could those who had
renounced this Law be permitted to participate
s in it's effects, by purchasing the human beings
who ere its victims y - Wheatons Law Q,
Nations, page 635. q t1) asss b S.W
The same idea seems to be recognised by
the Supreme Court Of Georgia in Neal us
Farmer, 70 Georgia Reports, page 555,) where
Nesbit, Justice, on page $50, says:
whence did he the Georgia plsnterl de.
rive title7 Either directly from the slave
dealer, or from those who held him, and he
e.trom tie slaue captor n A frica. The prop.
erty in the slave, 10 the planter. became thus
just the property Of the original captor."
The Senator from Virginia, Mr.. MASON, |
when pressed to the wall for the legal origin Of
| Slavery, claimed that it was established in the
colonies by the common law of England; and
| see how he makes it out: 80 I'd M
| "Ifthe honorable Senator from Maine desires
| to know what maxim or provision of the com
mon law treats slaves as property, will say
to him that the common law of England, so
Justly called the contamination of human
wisdom, recognised everything as property
which was the snbjecs of property in the coun.
8 try from which it was brought, unless pro-
hibited by some positive law of that realm ;
and thus it was, that when slaves were first
landed in Virginia, there being no law there
but the common Law, they were admitted as
other property, that law recognising that as
their condition in the country whence they
were brought. The condition of property did
s not attach to them after they reached the soil
of Virginia, but they brought ii soith them.
Such has been the law from tina. 49,, to
| this" *x .z.F
"How that property arose, it is ~. s; easy
to determine. The publicists tell II at, at
the dawn of civilization, priso;:r si war
held his life at the mercy of his C rt:n and,
as the latter might deprive his " -, ner OF
life, it lay at his discretion either to kll him
or to keep him in life as his property. Such was
certainly the practice in the earlier days of
the Romans. History tells us that such has
always been, and yet continues, the custom
among the negro tribes in Africa. Certainly
there the natives sell their own race as slaves
they sell to each other as they sold to the white
man while such sales were allowed by the laws
of the white man. Thus 1t soas that the an.
cestOrs of those noso held, in bondage on this
continent brought from a trica Nth them their
condition as property. How it was acquired
there, can now be q subject of conjecture
only, and would be an inquiry as fruitless as
vsgue."-Speech IN Senate March Is, 1853.
That is, the common Law of England made
men property in the colonies who we're held as
property in Africa, and, because they were 80
held. All who could be seized and sold, and
their descendants, we're, BY African law, proper.
ty; therefore, these persons, when brought to
the colonies, carried the African laws with them,
and they, and the descendants of their women
mistake of the Senator was not in the fact of
| the adoption of the African laws of servitude,
but in the statement that they are adopted by
the common law. The common law had moth.
ing to do with them. They were In derogation
of its first principles. The common law, as
expounded by its commentators and its courts,
adopted the law of nature, as given in Genesis,
as the basis of property; and it was only be-
cause corrupt ministers, mercenary corpora
tons. planters thirsting for wealth, and cruel
slave traders, conspired to substitute the Afri-
can code in the colonies for the common law,
that we find Slavery there and here.
Judge Tucker, the eminent Virginian, speak.
ing of the introduction of the common law into
the colonies, says:
"Local circumstances, likewise, gave an early
NC 70 Iaaa l. Al
principles of the common law in some of the
colonies, in the establishment of Slavery-a
measure not to be reconciled either to the
principles of the law of nature, nor either to
the moet arbitrary establishments in the Eng
lish Government at that period-absolute Sa
very, if it ever had any existence in England,
having been abolished long before fuckers
Blackstone, 388.
The celebrated Virginian should have known
that the common law naturalized the laws of
all countries, at least as to property brought
from them. Like the gods of the provinces in
corporated by the Romans into its concrete
hierarchy, the diverse laws of property of the
diverse types of civilization were adopted by
this all gathering common law. If the English
or French sailor, who had been captured by the
Algerine, and by his law enslaved, should be
brought by his purchaser to England or her
colonies, the common law continued him prop
erty, because he was 80 held whence he was
brought. So the French banker would have
carried his franchise, and john Law might
have flooded the world with his paper money
as we'll from London or Boston as from Paris.
To such absurdities are men driven.
The common law, indeed Why, the truth
simply is, that the common law did and does
not create property, but recognises and protects
as such everything that is-claimed as proper
ty? No; but everything that is property by
the laws of nature and the laws of Christian
States and never, as the merest tyro knows,
does it sanction the idea that man can be the
subject of property
True it is, aad pity It's tits true" that the
African codes in relation to the subjects Of
property we're naturalized in the colonies. True
it is, that those who were held as property by
those codes, were so held after transfer from
the prison ship to the slave plantation, and the
blunderbuss and the scourge became the en-
blems of authority there, as in their distant
home True it is, that every mothers child,
according to the law of the black and arid con.
tinent, became the merchandise of him who
had enslaved the mother. True it is, that these
codes we're at times, as revenge joined hands
| with avarice, extended to the Indian as to the
African captive; and it is equally true that
European blood was unable to dissolve the
chain thus wrought from foreign links. And
true, alas! It is, that these African codes have
30 banished the common law of property, have
80 overturned the fundamental idea of the civ.
ilization of Moses and of Christ, of modern
Roma and of Westminster, that in the juris
| prudence of this federation and Of half these
States, scarce anythingis sacred but the right
| of one man to enslave his fellow man.
l have said that the base idea of human
| ownership was FORCE. have shown it to be
| so in the ancient codes, and ask attention to