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accordingly. When the masters or managers of slaves shall be guilty of punishing them to excess, so as to occasion grievous contusions, the effusion of blood, or mutilation of men. bers, besides paying the above-mentioned fines, the offenders shall be prosecuted criminally, and punished according to the nature of the crime, in the same manner as if the injured person were free. And if the injured slave be able to work, he shall be confiscated and sold to another master; the price to be appropriated to the fund of fines. But if the slave cannot be sold, on account of being unable to work, he shall not be restored to his master, but the latter shall be obliged to allow him a daily sum, which shall be appointed by judicial authority, for his maintenance during the remainder of his life: and the said allowance shall be paid every three months in advance.

CHAPTER XI.

Proceedings against those who injure the slaves of others. NONE but the masters or managers of slaves have authority to chastise them. If any other person shall abuse, chastise, wound, or kill any slave, the offender shall be liable to the punishments ordained by law against those who commit the like misdemeanors or crimes against free persons. The master of the injured slave shall prosecute the offender: or if he fail to do so, the prosecution shall be conducted by the procurator syndic in his quality of protector of slaves. The said protector shall also intervene in the cause in the former case, although there be another prosecutor.

CHAPTER XII.

Of the Lists of Slaves.

The owners and masters of slaves shall be obliged to deliver annually to the justices of the city or town, in whose jurisdiction their plantations may be situated, lists, signed and sworn to by them, of all the slaves they have in those plantations, distinguishing the said slaves by their sexes and ages, in order that the notary of the municipal body may take account of them in a particular book, which shall be kept for that purpose, together with the lists aforesaid. And whenever any slave shall die, or be absent from the plantation, the master must give notice thereof to the judicial authority, within the term of three days, that it may be noted down in the said book; in order that all suspicion of the slave having been put to death by violence may be avoided. If the master fail in doing what is above required, he shall be obliged to prove fully either the absence or the natural death of the slave: or on default thereof, the procurator syndic shall institute a prosecution against him.

CHAPTER XIII.

Means of inquiring into the conduct of masters towards their

slaves.

THE distance of many plantations from the towns, the inconvenience which would result from permitting slaves to go from their plantations without an order from their masters or overseers, under the pretext of making complaints, and the just regulations of the law, which ordains that no fugitive slave shall be assisted, protected, or concealed; require that means be provided, conformably to all those circumstances, whereby it may be known how the said slaves are treated. One of those means is, that the priests, who go to the plantations to explain the Christian doctrine, and say mass to the slaves, shall obtain information from them how they are treated by their masters and overseers, and how the provisions of this instruction are observed: of all which the said priests shall give secret notice to the procurator syndics, in order that they may institute the necessary inquiries to ascertain whether the masters or their managers fail, in the whole or in part of their respective obligations. The priests, who shall give such secret notices or denunciations, shall not be in any wise answerable therefor, whether they be well or ill-founded: for these notices will only serve to empower the procurator syndic to require the competent judge to appoint a member of the municipal council, or some other person of approved character to investigate the affair, and to form the first summary proceeding thereon. The minutes of this proceeding shall be delivered to the said judge, who shall continue and determine the cause according to law. Besides those means, it will be expedient that one or more persons of good character and conduct be appointed by the judges, with the consent of the municipal bodies, to visit the plantations three times a year, and to inform themselves whether every thing prescribed by this instruction be observed. The said visiters shall give due notice of what they observe to the competent judges, who shall proceed thereon, according to law, as circumstances may require. And it is hereby declared that the popular action of denunciation is given against all those who shall fail in performing any thing directed in the preceding chapters; the name of the informer being always kept secret. And the informer shall receive his allotted portion of the fines, without being responsible, except in cases where it shall be most fully proven that the denunciation is false and calumnious. And lastly, it is likewise declared, that the judges and procurator syndics, as the official protectors of slaves, will be held responsible for all their faults of omission or commission, in not taking the necessary means whereby my royal intentions, explained in this instruction, might have their due effect.

CHAPTER XIV.

Appropriation of Fines.

In the cities and towns to which the preceding regulations are applicable, and whose tribunals and municipal councils are composed of Spaniards, there shall be provided and kept at the Town-Hall, a chest having three keys, one of which shall be delivered to the alcalde of the first election, No. XXIV.

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another to the senior regidor, and the third to the procurator syndic. In the said chest shall be kept the produce of all fines imposed in pursuance of this instruction. And the whole amount of the said fines shall be employed as may be most expedient in causing the provisions of these chapters to be faithfully observed. Not a single maravedi of the said fines shall be applied to any other purpose: nor shall any part thereof be drawn without an order signed by the three persons abovementioned who keep the keys, expressing the particular destination of the sum so drawn. And the said keepers of the keys shall remain responsible for the whole amount of the said fund and its due application; transmitting annually the accounts of the same, with due vouchers, to the intendant of the province.

In order that all the rules prescribed in this instruction may be duly and punctually fulfilled, I repeal and annul all Laws, Edicts, Decrees, Royal Orders, and Customs whatever, which are repugnant to them; and I command my Supreme Council of the Indies, Viceroys, Presidents, Judges of the Royal Audiences, Governors, Intendants, Ordinary Judges, Ministers, &c. &c. that they fulfil and cause to be executed, every thing decreed in this my royal order: for this is my will.

Published at Aranjuez the 31st May, 1789.

CIRCUIT COURT OF THE UNITED STATES. -NEW-YORK.

Benjamin Adams and Caleb Adams versus Augustus Storey.

THE act of the legislature of this state of the 3d of April, 1811, is an insolvent, and not a bankrupt law.

If it were a bankrupt law, it would not be void, the several states having a right to pass such laws, notwithstanding the power granted to the general government of establishing an uniform system of bankruptcy. Insolvent laws, although they may affect pre-existing debts, are not laws " impairing the obligation of contracts," within the meaning of the constitution.

A discharge under the insolvent law of the 3d of April, 1811, of a person residing within this state, may be pleaded to an action brought by a citizen of Massachusetts, although the debt was contracted in Boston, and payable there.

Livingston, J. This is an action brought on several promissory notes, made or indorsed by the defendant, then residing in Boston, to the plaintiffs, who were then and are yet residents of the same place. The notes are also made payable in Boston, and were dated prior to the passing of the insolvent law hereinafter mentioned.

The defendant pleaded the general issue, and on the trial offered in evidence, pursuant to a notice given for that purpose, a discharge by the recorder of the city of NewYork, dated the 13th Nov. 1811, which was granted in virtue of an act of the legislature of the state of New-York, entitled "An act for the benefit of insolvent debtors and their creditors," passed the 3d of April of the same year.

To the reading of this discharge the plaintiffs objectedbut it was admitted. A verdict, however, was taken by consent for the plaintiffs, subject to the opinion of the court on a case to be made by the parties. If the discharge was improperly admitted, judgment is to be entered on the verdict as it now stands but if the discharge shall be thought a good bar to the action, the present verdict is to be set aside, and a verdict and judgment thereon entered for the defendant. The defendant, at the time of obtaining his discharge, resided and yet resides in the city of New-York.

Few questions have ever been agitated, in any court of the United States, since the formation of the federal government, of more extensive consequence, or of more delicacy than those which are now to be decided. When the binding force of an act of the legislature of any state is drawn into question for its supposed repugnancy to the federal constitution, although no court can entertain any doubt of its right to pronounce it invalid, yet it is no more than becoming to proceed with caution, and with more than ordinary delibera

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