Court Opinion

ID: 9865434
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-25 17:41:36.315958+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:47:33.918275
License: Public Domain

Clayton, C. J.,
concurred in opinion that the petition should be dismissed; and it was so ordered.
Harrington, J.
—It was argued in this case that the condition of slavery was recognized by the common law of this State. That it conferred on the master an unlimited right to the services of the slave and subjected the issue to the same liability. A practice has grown up, recognized and authorized by law, of changing the condition of this species of property by manumission to be free at a future day: and an important question arises as to the condition of the offspring of female slaves thus manumitted, born between the act of manumission and the period of its taking full effect. By the act of manumission the mother acquires a vested right: the master has no longer an unlimited control over her service's, and it would seem to follow, that he had no longer an unlimited control over the Services of her offspring. The child follows the condition of the mother. At its birth the mother is not in the condition of absolute slavery, but only of limited slavery, owing services for a limited period; if the child be in the same condition it is that of limited slavery, measured by the term of its mother’s servitude. This is the view I take of the question as it stood before the act of 1810. The principle is no doubt prejudicial to the master and imposes a great hardship on him of maintaining the infant children of his manumitted slaves; but it follows from the principles assumed, and is a consequence of his own act of manumission. The injustice of such a case as it regards the master was probably the origin of the act of 1810. That act neither recognizes the unlimited right of the master to the services of the issue of his manumitted slave, nor confines his right to the period of the mother’s servitude, but assumes a reasonable medium based on the ground of the limited right of the master, and compensation to him for the expense of raising the slave. It makes the males slaves until 25; and the females until 21 years old. This act was passed on the recommendation of Governor Truitt; and it seems probable, from the terms he uses in bringing the subject to their notice, that the legislature proceeded rather on the ground of extending the time of service as a compensation to the master than on any idea of restricting any rights that he pos*85sessed. Gov. Truitt says (Journal H. R. 1810, vol. 3, p. 9.) “It has become a frequent practice for masters to execute deeds of manumission to their slaves by which they are permitted to go at liberty at a future period, and in the mean time their services are retained. So many negroes are now in this situation that it is a matter of great importance to ascertain what their condition is; for if it is slavery the issue of female parents are necessarily all slaves: on the contrary, if it is freedom, the issue at the moment of their birth are free and owe no service to the master. And is the master, having no right to command their services for a single moment, bound to maintain them in their infancy? the mother cannot; and must the public be burdened with the expense? The courts, foreseeing the inconveniences which would arise from a determination of this question in either way by them, have avoided, as far as I can learn;, making any decision; but whenever it shall come directly before* them they will be bound to decide let the inconveniences flowing from that decision be what they may; and the legislature being the only proper authority competent to make the necessary provisions to meet the exigency of the case, I have considered it my duty to recommend it to your notice. ” The report of the committee of the House of Representatives on this part of the message declares:—1st. That manumitted slaves are entitled to all the benefits of bound servants and not slaves; 2nd. That the issue shall be considered as bound servants until the age of-, and not as slaves— provided the master keeps and raises them.
It is true that slavery is tolerated by our laws; but it is going too far to say that this kind of property in slaves is precisely like every other species of property. The spirit of the age and the principles of liberty and personal rights as held in this country are equally opposed to a doctrine drawn from the ages and the countries of despotism, and founded either proximately or remotely in oppression. Sir William Blackstone remarks that pure and proper slavery is contrary to reason, and the principles of natural law; and he shows conclusively that the grounds on which slavery is placed by the civil law all rest on unsound foundations. 1 Black. Com. 450; 2 Kent C. 247. Accordingly it has long since been abolished in England; and in many, perhaps in most, of these United States it has either been done away or provision has been made for its prospective abolishment. In the state of New-York, an act of assembly declared all children born of slaves after the 4th July, 1799, should be born free, though liable to be held until 28 and 25 years of age; and a subsequent act declared that all negroes, &c., born before the 4th July, 1799, should be free after the 4th July, 1827, at which time slavery became extinct in that state. In Pennsylvania, by the act of 1780, masters were required to register their slaves and the issue of such slaves born after the acts were subjected to a servitude of only 28 years. Vide 1 Dal. R. 467. These provisions have been further extended in favor of liberty, so that there now remain in that state, as appears from a statement lately made by a committee of their legislature, less than one hundred slaves with a certainty of the speedy extinction of slavery there. These acts (and similar ones exist in many other states, our own included) deny *86to the master that unqualified ownership over his slave and her issue that he possesses over other property; and continuing unrepealed if not uncontroverted, upheld by the undoubted sentiment of the times and the extended spirit of liberty, they establish a right in the government to regulate this species of property in conformity with the acknowledged principles of reason and justice as well as the requirements of public policy. It was on this principle that our legislature in the act of 1810, declared that the children of manumitted slaves should not be considered slaves for life, and regulated the period of their slavery upon principles of justice as well to the master as the slave.
Robinson and Rodney, for petitioner.
J. td. Bayard, for respondent.
On the best consideration I have been able to give the case, I regret that I have not been able to bring my judgment into coincidence with that of the other members of the Court. I think the petitioner, being now 25 years of age, is entitled to his freedom.
.Petition dismissed.