onform their
proceedings to its provisions, which depart in many essential features
from the principles of the Common Law and some of the settled rules of
evidence. The Court, however, determined to adopt those rules, whenever
they were not repugnant to nor expressly excepted by that statute, nor
inconsistent with the local situation and policy of the State; and laid
down for their own government the following regulations: First, that
no slave should be tried except in the presence of his owner or his
counsel, and that notice should be given in every case at least one day
before the trial; second, that the testimony of one witness, unsupported
by additional evidence or by circumstances, should lead to no conviction
of a _capital_ nature; third, that the witnesses should be confronted
with the accused and with each other in every case, except where
testimony was given under a solemn pledge that the names of the
witnesses should not be divulged,--as they declared, in some instances,
that they apprehended being murdered by the blacks, if it was known that
they had volunteered their evidence; fourth, that the prisoners might be
represented by counsel, whenever this was requested by the owners of
the slaves, or by the prisoners themselves, if free; fifth, that the
statements or defences of the accused should be heard in every case,
and they be permitted themselves to examine any witness they thought
proper."

It is singular to observe how entirely these rules seem to concede that
a slave's life has no sort of value to himself, but only to his master.
His master, not he himself, must choose whether it be worth while to
employ counsel. His master, not his mother or his wife, must be present
at the trial. So far is this carried, that the provision to exclude
"persons who had no particular interest in the slaves accused" seems to
have excluded every acknowledged relative they had in the world, and
admitted only those who had invested in them so many dollars. And yet
the very first section of that part of the statute under which they were
tried lays down an explicit recognition of their humanity. "And whereas
natural justice forbids that any _person_, of what condition soever,
should be condemned unheard." So thoroughly, in the whole report, are
the ideas of person and chattel intermingled, that, when Governor
Bennett petitions for mitigation of sentence in the case of his slave
Batteau, and closes, "I ask this, gentlemen, as an