of slaves only under the provision
that they should be guaranteed from becoming a public charge to the
county shows the comprehension of a difficulty that could not at such
an early date have developed to any great degree, but which in later
decades was a formidable problem. We may well say with John Mason
Brown, however, that "the system of slavery thus contemplated was
designed to be as mild, as human, and as much protected from traffic
evils as possible, but it was to be emphatically perpetual, for no
emancipation could be had without the assent of each particular owner
of each individual slave."[286]

The session of the State assembly which met in November, 1792, only
attempted to carry out the constitutional provision prohibiting
commercial transactions with slaves. No person was permitted to buy
of, or sell to, any slave, any manner of thing whatsoever without a
written permit descriptive of the article under the penalty of four
times the value of the thing bought or sold. The jurisdiction of such
cases was given to the county court, if they concerned values of more
than five pounds. The slave was to receive ten lashes, which by the
standards of those days was a meager punishment for any offense.[287]
Whenever possible the slave was not brought into consideration as an
offender. The theory seems to have been that the slave was better off
when left alone. It was only when some unscrupulous outsider came in
to use the slave either as a victim or as an object of profit that it
was necessary to draw the strings tighter on the Negro, not because of
any inherent tendency to crime so much as to keep the slave from
becoming unruly when in the power of a superior influence.

It was not until the session of 1798 that the legislature drew up the
fundamental slave code which was to carry out all the recommendations
of the constitutional convention and which remained the basis of all
legal action throughout the entire period of slavery. Among the early
acts of the State had been the temporary adoption of the statutes of
Virginia on the treatment of slaves and slavery problems, which were
then in force.[288] These remained as a slave code for Kentucky until
the enactment in 1798 of these new laws, which contained forty-three
articles and involved almost every question that could come up for
legal consideration in connection with the institution. The experience
of six years as a separate State had served to show that many
exi