f society. But here a vast difference is to be noted. Just
as in England the aristocracy for centuries had made the laws and had
enforced the doctrine that it was they who should wield the police power
of the State, so in the United States, to which the English system of
jurisprudence had been transplanted, the propertied interests,
constituting the aristocracy, made and executed the laws. De Beaumont
and De Tocqueville passingly observed that while the magistrates in the
United States were plebeian, yet they followed out the old English
system; in other words, they enforced laws which were made for, and by,
the American aristocracy, the trading classes.

The views, aims and interests of these classes were so thoroughly
intrenched in law that the fact did not escape the keen notice of these
foreign investigators. "The Americans, descendants of the English," they
wrote, "have provided in every respect for the rich and hardly at all
for the poor.... In the same country where the complainant is put in
prison, the thief remains at liberty, if he can find bail. Murder is the
only crime whose authors are not protected[130].... The mass of lawyers
see in this nothing contrary to their ideas of justice and injustice,
nor even to their democratic institutions."[131]

THE SYSTEM--HOW IT WORKED.

The system, then, frequently forced the destitute into theft and
mendicancy. What resulted? Laws, inconceivably harsh and brutal, enacted
by, and in behalf of, property rights were enforced with a rigor which
seems unbelievable were it not that the fact is verified by the records
of thousands of cases. Those convicted for robbery usually received a
life sentence; they were considered lucky if they got off with five
years. The ordinary sentence for burglary was the same, with variations.
Forgery and grand larceny were punishable with long terms, ranging from
five to seven years. These were the laws in practically all of the
States with slight differences. But they applied to whites only. The
negro slave criminal had a superior standing in law, for the simple
reason that while the whites were "free" labor, negroes were property,
and, of course, it did not pay to send slaves to prison. In Maryland and
in most Southern States, where the slaveholders were both makers and
executors of law, the slaves need have no fear of prison. "The slaves,
as we have seen before, are not subject to the Penal Code of the
whites; they are hardly ever sent t