and other

forfeitures.

respectively, shall and may be seized by any officer of his seize vessels Majesty's Customs or Excise, or by the commanders or officers of any of his Majesty's ships or vessels of war: and whereas ships and vessels, slaves, goods, and effects, liable to seizure and forfeiture under the said Acts, for offences committed on the coast of Africa, may be safely navigated, carried or kept, upon or near to the said coast, or in the ports, havens or rivers thereof, in contempt of the said acts, by reason of the want of officers of the Customs or Excise, or of his Majesty's ships or vessels of war stationed on the said coast, or on such parts thereof as may be visited by such offenders; be it therefore further enacted by the authority aforesaid, that it shall and may be lawful for all governors, or persons having the chief command, civil or military, of any of the colonies, settlements, forts or factories, belonging to his Majesty, or to the African Company in Africa, or any African island, and for all persons deputed and authorized by any such governor or commander in chief, to seize and prosecute all ships and vessels, slaves, or natives of Africa, carried, conveyed, or dealt with as slaves, and all goods and effects whatsoever that shall or may become, forfeited for any offence committed against the said Acts of Parliament, or either of them, and which shall be found upon or near to the said coast, or in any port, haven, or river thereof, or within the limits of any of the said colonies, settlements, forts or factories, which governor or commander in chief, and all persons by them so deputed and authorized, shall, in making and prosecuting any such seizures, have the benefit of all the provisions made by the said Acts of Parliament, or by, an Act of the fourth year of his present Majesty therein recited, or by any other Act of Parliament for the protection of officers seizing and prosecuting for any offence against the said last mentioned Act, or any other Act of Parliament relating to the trade and revenues of the British colonies or plantations in America.

IX. Provided also, and be it further enacted by the Persons sail

ing invessels authority aforesaid, that if any person or persons, sailing giving infor- or being in the capacity of a petty officer, or petty officer's

mation of

offences committed

servant or servants, seaman or seamen, on board of any ship or vessel fitted out for or engaged in the unlawfully not to be liable to carrying, removing, trading, or dealing in slaves, shall, punishment. within three months after the arrival of the said vessel at any port belonging to his Majesty, give information on oath, before any competent magistrate, against any owner or part owner, or any captain, mate, surgeon, or supercargo of such ship or vessel, who shall have committed any offence against this Act, and shall give evidence on oath against such owner or part owner, captain, mate, surgeon, and supercargo, before any magistrate or court before whom such offender may be tried; or if such person or persons so sailing as aforesaid, in the capacity of a petty officer or petty officers, mariner or mariners, servant or servants, shall, within three months after his or their arrival at any port or place not within his Majesty's dominions, give information to any of his Majesty's ambassadors, ministers plenipotentiary, envoys, chargés d'affaires, consuls, residents, or other agents, so that any person or persons owning such ship or vessel, or navigating or taking charge of the same, as captain, mate, surgeon or supercargo, may be apprehended, such per son or persons so giving such information and evidence, shall not be liable to any of the pains or penalties of this Act, or any fine or other punishment under the said Acts of the forty-sixth and forty-seventh years of his present Majesty, or either of them, but shall be wholly discharged therefrom; and his Majesty's ambassadors, ministers plenipotentiary, envoys, chargés d'affaires, consuls, residents or other agents, are hereby required to receive any such information as aforesaid, and to transmit the particulars thereof, without delay, to one of his Majesty's principal secretaries of state, and to transmit copies of the same to the commanders of his Majesty's ships or vessels then being in the said port or place.

U.

Case of The King v. Edward Huggins, sen. Esq.

THE defendant, Edward Huggins, sen. Esq. is an eminent planter in the island of Nevis; has been peculiarly successful of late years, while other planters have in general had very opposite fortune; and has in consequence been extending his possessions progressively, by new purchases of estates and slaves so that at present he is said to own above six hundred negroes..

Unfortunately, he is an instance of the frequent, though short-lived, success that attends a rigid exaction from the slaves, by means of severe discipline, of more than ordinary labour. Among other abuses, of which, during the Abolition controversy, the existence was denied in Parliament, this gentleman has practised that of compelling his unfortunate slaves to perform night-work in the field when the moonlight makes it practicable; and the kind of labour in which on those occasions they are employed, is that of carrying out dung from the home stall to the fields, in wicker baskets, on their heads. (See a description of this work in the Parliamentary Evidence on the Slave Trade; especially that of Sir Ashton Byam, attorney-general of Grenada, a witness called on the part of the anti-abolitionists.)

Night-work (except in crop time, for the purpose of more speedily cutting and grinding the canes) is prohibited by a recent law of the islands composing the Leeward Island government. A General Council and Assembly of those islands were convened at St. Kitt's in 1798, in consequence of the earnest applications of his Majesty's Government (pursuant to a Parliamentary Address) to the colonial governors and legislatures to obtain laws for the protection of slaves, and

the melioration of their state; and an Act was passed for those purposes, by the tenth section of which it is enacted, that the slaves shall not be turned out to work before five o'clock in the morning, nor after seven in the evening, except crop time, or from some evident necessity, under the penalty of five pounds.

in

Whether Mr. Huggins's slaves had heard of this law, or whether the repugnance of injured nature to his oppressions produced involuntary opposition, is not known; but so it was that some desertions, or some appearances of insubordination, were asserted to have been produced by the illegal exaction of night-work in carrying out dung. No insurrection, nor any forcible resistance of the master's authority, was proved, or even pretended, on the part of Mr. Huggins; and had such crimes been committed, the civil magistrate in the West Indies is always ready enough to punish them; nor is the bringing slaves to judicial punishment attended with any trouble, expense, or delay. Mr. Huggins had therefore no excuse for taking the law into his own hands, if the offence had been of a public kind. But it is understood to have amounted to no more than the private fault of non-obedience to the master or his agents, or, at most, to desertion from the

estate.

This gentleman, however, was resolved on a vengeance, not only extra-judicial, but such as no magistrate, even in cases of the most heinous public offences, is empowered by law to inflict.

Here it is necessary to say something of the mode of corporeal punishment to which Mr. Huggins had resort, and its limitation by the colonial law.

The ordinary punishment of slaves, is a whipping with the cart whip, or, as it is called in Jamaica, the cattle whip, because it is the same which the drivers of carts or waggons in the West Indies apply to their mules or other cattle when working in a team. The same instrument coerces the labour of slaves in the field; but when applied as a punishment for past faults, and in a solemn way, its inflictions are

much more severe.

The slave, instead of receiving a lash or two horizontally or obliquely, over his jacket, shirt, or trowsers (which, nevertheless, is sufficiently painful), is laid down on the ground, his arms and legs being extended, and generally held down, and his body laid bare from the back downwards. The lash is then applied vertically, by the driver or executioner, who stands at the proper distance to make the sufferer feel the full power of his torturing instrument. The report of the lash is louder than that of the long whalebone whips of our London carmen; and its effect so severe (except when the drivers are humanely forbid to cut, as the phrase is), that blood is drawn, and the skin stripped off, by every lash; till at length, if they are numerous, the poor victim's flesh, from the small of the back or hips down to the middle of the thigh, is not only excoriated, but cruelly mangled and torn. Such deep incisions are often made, that the parts, after they are healed, retain a shocking appearance during the rest of life.

From this account of the punishment, it will not seem strange that the number of lashes has been limited, by general practice as well as law, to a number less than forty. In most of the penal slave laws of the colonies, there is no medium in the scale of punishments, when inflicted by judgment of law, between thirty-nine lashes of the cart whip, and mutilation, banishment, or death; and ten or twelve lashes are in general held an adequate punishment for common domestic offences at least by merciful masters. The meliorating acts, as they are called, for the protection of slaves, have in this respect attempted, or affected, to controul the master's authority; and the Act of the Leeward Islands already referred to, in the fourteenth section, has enacted, That if any person shall" cruelly whip" his slave, he shall be liable to an indictment in the superior court of criminal jurisdiction of the island, and, on conviction, shall be punished by fine or imprisonment, or both, at the discretion of the court. The slave, so cruelly whipped, is also, if it be thought necessary for his protection, to be sold to another master.