below the common
level. Consistently with this prejudice, is it to be credited that
parity of rank would be allowed to such a race? Let the question be
answered by the statute of 1726, which denominated it an idle and a
slothful people; which directed the magistrates to bind out free negroes
for laziness or vagrancy; which forbade them to harbour Indian or
mulatto slaves, on pain of punishment by fine, or to deal with negro
slaves, on pain of stripes; which annexed to the interdict of marriage
with a white, the penalty of reduction to slavery; which punished them
for tippling with stripes, and even a white person with servitude for
intermarriage with a negro. If freemen, in a political sense, were
subjects of these cruel and degrading oppressions, what must have been
the lot of their brethren in bondage? It is also true, that degrading
conditions were sometimes assigned to white men, but never as members of
a caste. Insolvent debtors, to indicate the worst of them, are
compelled to make satisfaction by servitude; but that was borrowed from
a kindred, and still less rational, principle of the common law. This
act of 1726, however, remained in force, till it was repealed by the
Emancipating Act of 1789; and it is irrational to believe, that the
progress of liberal sentiments was so rapid in the next ten years,--as
to produce a determination in the convention of 1790 to raise this
depressed race to the level of the white one. If such were its purpose,
it is strange that the word chosen to effect it should have been the
very one chosen by the convention of 1776 to designate a white elector.
`Every freeman,' it is said, (chap. 2, sect. 6,) `of the full age of
twenty-one years, having resided in this State for the space of one
whole year before the day of election, and paid taxes during that time,
shall enjoy the rights of an elector.' Now, if the word freeman were
not potent enough to admit a free negro to suffrage under the first
constitution, it is difficult to discern a degree of magic in the
intervening plan of emancipation sufficient to give it potency, in the
apprehension of the convention, under the second.

"The only thing in the history of the convention which casts a doubt
upon the intent, is the fact, that the word _white_ was prefixed to the
word freeman in the report of the committee, and _subsequently struck_
out--probably because it was thought superfluous, or still more
probably, because it was feared