Thereafter the recourse was again to specific enactments from time to
time to supplement this general or basic statute as the rise of new
circumstances or policies gave occasion. The likeness of conditions in the
several communities and the difficulty of devising laws to comply with
intricate custom and at the same time to guard against apprehended ills led
to much intercolonial and interstate borrowing of statutes. A perfect chain
of this sort, with each link a basic police law for slaves in a separate
colony or state, extended from Barbados through the southeastern trio of
commonwealths on the continent. The island of Barbados, as we have seen,
was the earliest of the permanent English settlements in the tropics and
one of the first anywhere to attain a definite regime of plantations
with negro labor. This made its assembly perforce a pioneer in slave
legislation. After a dozen minor laws had been enacted, beginning in 1644,
for the control of negroes along with white servants and for the recapture
of runaways, the culmination in a general statute came in 1688. Its
occasion, as recited in the preamble, was the dependence of plantation
industry upon great numbers of negro slaves whose "barbarous, wild and
savage nature .
Pages:
854
855
856
857
858
859
860
861
862
863
864
865
866
867
868
869
870
871
872
873
874
875
876
877
878