case, as it is the doctrine of common sense. Lord Mansfield
said, "So high an act of dominion must be recognized by the law of the
country where it is used.* * * * The state of slavery is of such a
nature, that it is incapable of being introduced on any reasons, moral
or political--but only positive law, which preserves its force long
after the reasons, occasion, and time itself from whence it was created,
is erased from the memory. It is so odious that nothing can be suffered
to support it but positive law."

Slavery, then, being the creature of positive legislation alone, can be
created only by legislation that shall so particularly describe the
persons to be made slaves, that they may be distinguished from all
others. If there be any doubt left by the _letter_ of the law, as to the
persons to be made slaves, the efficacy of all other slave legislation
is defeated simply by that uncertainty.

In several of the colonies, including some of those where slaves were
most numerous, there were either no laws at all defining the persons who
might be made slaves, or the laws, which attempted to define them, were
so loosely framed that it cannot now be known who are the descendants of
those designated as slaves, and who of those held in slavery without any
color of law. As the presumption must--_under the United States
constitution_--and indeed under the state constitutions also--be always
in favor of liberty, it would probably now be impossible for a
slaveholder to prove, in one case in an hundred, that his slave was
descended, (through the maternal line, according to the slave code,)
from any one who was originally a slave within the description given by
the statutes.

When slavery was first introduced into the country, there were no laws
at all on the subject. Men bought slaves of the slave traders, as they
would have bought horses; and held them, and compelled them to labor, as
they would have done horses, that is, by brute force. By common consent
among the white race, this practice was tolerated without any law.--At
length slaves had in this way become so numerous, that some regulations
became necessary, and the colonial governments began to pass statutes,
which _assumed_ the existence of slaves, although no laws defining the
persons who might be made slaves, had ever been enacted. For instance,
they passed statutes for the summary trial and punishment of slaves;
statutes permitting the masters to chastise and baptise t