traitement du maitre," says Achille Murat, himself a Floridian slave-
holder, in his late work on the United States.

Gentlemen, is not this true? Does there exist even in Virginia any law
limiting the punishment of a slave? Are there any bounds prescribed,
beyond which the brutal, the revengeful, the intoxicated slave-master,
acting in the double capacity of judge and executioner, cannot pass?

You will, perhaps, tell me that the general law against murder applies
alike to master and slave. True; but will you point out instances of
masters suffering the penalty of that law for the murder of their slaves?
If you examine your judicial reports you will find the wilful murder of a
slave decided to be only a trespass!--[Virginia Reports, vol. v. p. 481,
Harris versus Nichols.]

It indeed argues well for Virginian pride of character, that latterly,
the law, which expressly sanctioned the murder of a slave, who in the
language of Georgia and North Carolina, "died of moderate correction,"
has been repealed. But, although the letter of the law is changed, its
practice remains the same. In proof of this, I would refer to
Brockenborough and Holmes' Virginia Cases, p. 258.

In Georgia and North Carolina the murder of a slave is tolerated and
justified by law, provided that in the opinion of the court he died "of
moderate correction!"

In South Carolina the following clause of a law enacted in 1740 is still
in force:--

"If any slave shall suffer in his life, limbs, or members, when no white