This law reveals the heart of slaveholders towards their slaves, their diabolical indifference to the most excruciating and protracted torments inflicted on them by ‘any person;’ it reveals, too, the relative protection afforded by ‘public opinion’ to the person of the slave, in appalling contrast with the vastly surer protection which it affords to the master’s property in the slave.  The wretch who cuts out the tongue, tears out the eyes, shoots off the arms, or burns off the feet of a slave, over a slow fire, cannot legally be fined more than five hundred dollars; but if he should in pity loose a chain from his galled neck, placed there by the master to keep him from escaping, and thus put his property in some jeopardy, he may be fined one thousand dollars, and thrust into a dungeon for two years! and this, be it remembered, not for stealing the slave from the master, nor for enticing, or even advising him to run away, or giving him any information how he can effect his escape; but merely, because, touched with sympathy for the bleeding victim, as he sees the rough iron chafe the torn flesh at every turn, he removes it;—­and, as escape without this incumbrance would be easier than with it, the master’s property in the slave is put at some risk.  For having caused this slight risk, the law provides a punishment—­fine not exceeding one thousand dollars, and imprisonment not exceeding two years.  We say ‘slight risk,’ because the slave may not be disposed to encounter the dangers, and hunger, and other sufferings of the woods, and the certainty of terrible inflictions if caught; and if he should attempt it, the risk of losing him is small.  An advertisement of five lines will set the whole community howling on his track; and the trembling and famished fugitive is soon scented out in his retreat, and dragged back and delivered over to his tormentors.

The preceding law is another illustration of the ‘protection’ afforded to the limbs and members of slaves, by ‘public opinion’ among slaveholders.

Here follow two other illustrations of the brutal indifference of ‘public opinion’ to the torments of the slave, while it is full of zeal to compensate the master, if any one disables his slave so as to lessen his market value.  The first is a law of South Carolina.  It provides, that if a slave, engaged in his owner’s service, be attacked by a person ‘not having sufficient cause for so doing,’ and if the slave shall be ‘maimed or disabled’ by him, so that the owner suffers a loss from his inability to labor, the person maiming him shall pay for his ‘lost time,’ and ’also the charges for the cure of the slave!’ This Vandal law does not deign to take the least notice of the anguish of the ‘maimed’ slave, made, perhaps, a groaning cripple for life; the horrible wrong and injury done to him, is passed over in utter silence.  It is thus declared to be not a criminal act.  But the pecuniary interests of the master are not to be thus neglected by ‘public opinion’.  Oh no! its tender bowels run over with sympathy at the master’s injury in the ‘lost time’ of his slave, and it carefully provides that he shall have pay for the whole of it.—­See 2 Brevard’s Digest, 231, 2.