“ART. 3.  If any individual of African race, whether slave or free, shall insult, menace, or maltreat, in any way, a white person, he will be condemned to five years of penal servitude, if a slave, and according to the circumstances of the case, if free.

“ART. 4.  The owners of slaves are hereby authorized to correct and chastise them for slight misdemeanors, without any civil or military functionary having the right to interfere.

“ART. 5.  If any slave shall rebel against his master, the latter is authorized to kill him on the spot.

“ART. 6 orders the military commanders of the 8 departments of the island to decide all cases of offenses committed by colored people within twenty-four hours of their denunciation.”

This Draconic decree is signed, Puerto Rico, May 31, 1843.

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 66:  Treaty of Madrid, March 16, 1713, ratified by the treaty of Utrecht.  There were two kinds of silver crowns, one of 8 pesetas, the other of 10, worth respectively 4 and 5 English shillings.]

[Footnote 67:  Flinter, p. 211.]

CHAPTER XXXII

INCREASE OF POPULATION

ALL statements of definite numbers with respect to the aboriginal population of this island are essentially fabulous.  Columbus touched at only one port on the western shore.  He remained there but a few days and did not come in contact with the inhabitants.  Ponce and his men conquered but a part of the island, and had no time to study the question of population, even if they had had the inclination to do so.  They did not count the enemy in time of war, and only interested themselves in the number of prisoners which to them constituted the spoils of conquest.  Any calculation regarding the numbers that remained at large, based on the number of Indians distributed, can not be correct.

The same may be said of the computations of the population of the island made by Abbad, O’Reilly, and others at a time when there was not a correct statistical survey existing in the most civilized countries of Europe.  None of these computations exceed the limits of mere conjecture.

With regard to the attempts to explain the causes of the decay and ultimate disappearance of the aboriginal race, this subject also appears to be involved in considerable doubt and obscurity, notwithstanding the positive statements of native writers regarding it.  It has been impossible to ascertain in what degree they became amalgamated by intermarriage with the conquerors; yet, that it has been to a much larger degree than generally supposed, is proved by the fact that many of the inhabitants, classed as white, have, both in their features and manners, definite traces of the Indian race.[68]