ed. But the African is more merciful than the conscience
of a slaveholder. Blessed are these meek ones: they shall yet inherit
earth in America!

France was always more humane than her colonies, for every rising sun
did not rekindle there the dreadful paradox that sugar and sweetness
were incompatible, and she could not taste the stinging lash as the
crystals melted on her tongue.[N] An ocean rolled between. She always
endeavored to protect the slave by legislation; but the Custom of Paris,
when it was gentle, was doubly distasteful to the men who knew how
impracticable it was. Louis XIII. would not admit that a single slave
lived in his dominions, till the priests convinced him that it was
possible through the slave-trade to baptize the Ethiopian again. Louis
XIV. issued the famous _Code Noir_ in 1685, when the colonists had
already begun to shoot a slave for a saucy gesture, and to hire
buccaneers to hunt marooning negroes at ten dollars per head.[O]

[Footnote N: There was a proverb as redoubtably popular as Solomon's
"Spare the rod"; it originated in Brazil, where the natives were easily
humiliated:--"_Regarder un sauvage de travers, c'est le battre; le
battre, c'es le tuer: battre un negre, c'est le nourrir_": Looking hard
at a savage is beating him: beating is the death of him: but to beat a
negro is bread and meat to him.]

[Footnote O: A Commissioner's fee under the Fugitive-Slave Bill. History
will repeat herself to emphasize the natural and inalienable rights of
slave-catchers. In 1706 the planters organized a permanent force of
maroon-hunters, twelve men to each quarter of the island, who received
the annual stipend of three hundred livres. In addition to this, the
owners paid thirty livres for each slave caught in the canes or roads,
forty-five for each captured beyond the _mornes_, and sixty for those
who escaped to more distant places. The hunters might fire at the slave,
if he could not be otherwise stopped, and draw the same sums. In 1711
the maroons became so insolent that the planters held four regular
chases or _battues_ per annum.]

The _Code Noir_ was the basis of all the colonial legislation which
affected the condition of the slave, and it is important to notice its
principal articles. We have only room to present them reduced to their
essential substance.

Negroes must be instructed in the Catholic religion, and _bozals_ must
be baptized within eight days after landing. All overseers must be