how could they affect it, when the same communities enact laws requiring their own legal officers to inspect minutely the persons and bodily marks of all slaves taken up as runaways, and to publish in the newspapers a particular description of all such marks and peculiarities of their persons, their size, appearance position on the body, &c.  Yea, verily, when the ’public opinion’ of the community, in the solemn form of law, commands jailors, sheriffs, captains of police, &c. to divest of their clothing aged matrons and young girls, minutely examine their naked persons, and publish the results of their examination—­who can marvel, that the same ‘public opinion’ should tolerate the slaveholders themselves, in doing the same things to their own property, which they have appointed legal officers to do as their proxies.[37]

[Footnote 37:  ’As a sample of these laws, we give the following extract from one of the laws of Maryland, where slaveholding ‘public opinion’ exists in its mildest form.’

“It shall be the duty of the sheriffs of the several counties of this state, upon any runaway servant or slave being committed to his custody, to cause the same to be advertised, &c. and to make particular and minute descriptions of the person and bodily marks, of such runaway.”—­Laws of Maryland of 1802, Chap. 96, Sec. 1 and 2.

That the sheriffs, jailors, &c. do not neglect this part of their official ‘duty,’ is plain from the minute description which they give in the advertisements of marks upon all parts of the persons of females, as well as males; and also from the occasional declaration, ‘no scars discoverable on any part,’ or ’no marks discoverable about her;’ which last is taken from an advertisement in the Milledgeville (Geo.) Journal, June 26, 1838, signed ‘T.S.  Denster, Jailor.’]

The zeal with which slaveholding ‘public opinion’ protects the lives of the slaves, may be illustrated by the following advertisements, taken from a multitude of similar ones in southern papers.  To show that slaveholding ‘public opinion’ is the same now, that it was half a century ago, we will insert, in the first place, an advertisement published in a North Carolina newspaper, Oct. 29, 1785, by W. SKINNER, the Clerk of the County of Perquimons, North Carolina.

“Ten silver dollars reward will be paid for apprehending and delivering to me my man Moses, who ran away this morning; or I will give five times the sum to any person who will make due proof of his being killed, and never ask a question to know by whom it was done.”

W. SKINNER.

Perquimons County, N.C.  Oct. 29, 1785.

The late JOHN PARRISH, of Philadelphia, an eminent minister of the religious society of Friends, who traveled through the slave states about thirty-five years since, on a religious mission, published on his return a pamphlet of forty pages, entitled ’Remarks on the Slavery of the Black People.’  From this work we extract the following illustrations of ‘public opinion’ in North and South Carolina and Virginia at that period.