In order, however, that undue loss to
masters might be averted, it provided that if by theft or other trespass a
slave injured any person to the extent of not more than five pounds, the
slave was not to be sentenced to death as in some cases a freeman might
have been under the laws of England then current, but his master was to be
liable for pecuniary satisfaction and the slave was merely to be whipped.
Three years afterward a special act to check the fleeing to Canada provided
a death penalty for any slave from the city and county of Albany found
traveling more than forty miles north of that city, the master to be
compensated from a special tax on slave property in the district. And in
1706 an act, passed mainly to quiet any fears as to the legal consequences
of Christianization, declared that baptism had no liberating effect, and
that every negro or mulatto child should inherit the status of its mother.
The murder of a white family by a quartet of slaves in conspiracy not only
led to their execution, by burning in one case, but prompted an enactment
in 1708 that slaves charged with the murder of whites might be tried
summarily by three justices of the peace and be put to death in such manner
as the enormity of their crimes might be deemed to merit, and that slaves
executed under this act should be paid for by the public.
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