g them to
work without pay, is not "humane treatment," and being constitutionally
bound "to _oblige_" masters to practise "humane treatment"--they have
the _power_ to _prohibit such_ treatment, and are bound to do it.

The law of Louisiana makes slaves real estate, prohibiting the holder,
if he be also a _land_ holder, to separate them from the soil.[A] If it
has power to prohibit the sale _without_ the soil, it can prohibit the
sale _with_ it; and if it can prohibit the _sale_ as property, it can
prohibit the _holding_ as property. Similar laws exist in the French,
Spanish, and Portuguese colonies. The law of Louisiana requires the
master to give his slaves a certain amount of food and clothing. If it
can oblige the master to give the slave _one_ thing, it can oblige him
to give him another: if food and clothing, then wages, liberty, his own
body. By the laws of Connecticut, slaves may receive and hold property,
and prosecute suits in their own name as plaintiffs: [This last was also
the law of Virginia in 1795. See Tucker's "Dissertation on Slavery," p.
73.] There were also laws making marriage contracts legal, in certain
contingencies, and punishing infringements of them, ["_Reeve's Law of
Baron and Femme_," p. 340-1.]

[Footnote A: Virginia made slaves real estate by a law passed in 1705.
(_Beverly's Hist. of Va._, p. 98.) I do not find the precise time when
this law was repealed, probably when Virginia became the chief slave
breeder for the cotton-growing and sugar-planting country, and made
young men and women "from fifteen to twenty-five" the main staple
production of the State.]

Each of the laws enumerated above, does, _in principle_, abolish
slavery; and all of them together abolish it _in fact_. True, not as a
_whole_, and at a _stroke_, nor all in one place; but in its _parts_, by
piecemeal, at divers times and places; thus showing that the abolition
of slavery is within the boundary of legislation.

In the "Washington (D.C.) City Laws," page 138, is "AN ACT to prevent
horses from being cruelly beaten or abused." Similar laws have been
passed by corporations in many of the slave states, and throughout the
civilized world, such acts are punishable either as violations of common
law or of legislative enactments. If a legislature can pass laws "to
prevent _horses_ from being cruelly abused," it can pass laws to prevent
_men_ from being cruelly abused, and if it can _prevent_ cruel abuse, it
can define _what