Again, under the more despotic system of government which was established in the French islands before the revolution, the Code Noir, and various other edicts, which from time to time had been issued, concerning the treatment of Slaves, were become a mere dead letter. It is a curious proof, how much the practice and the opinions and feelings produced by it may differ from the law, that the free coloured people had for an entire century been legally entitled to that equality of rights and privileges with the whites, the granting of which, by the national assembly of the mother country, produced so violent a ferment among the white inhabitants of St. Domingo; and the retractation of which, after its having been granted, followed by fresh grants and fresh retractations, produced the confusion which terminated in the loss of that flourishing colony. But besides that fundamental objection to statutes, for regulating the treatment of Slaves, and securing for them, to use the words of the colonists themselves, the _certain, immediate, and active protection of the law_, that they must prove utterly inefficient; [Sidenote: Legal protection of Slaves in an abject state of slavery either impracticable or unsafe.] I must frankly acknowledge my opinion, that all those legal regulations which, in the various particulars of treatment, interfere between the Master and Slave; which interpose between them some external authority to which the Slave, when ill used, is to have a right to apply for protection and redress; unless, as I before observed, they are not executed, must prove in practice unspeakably dangerous. This is true at least where Slaves are in a state of such abject slavery as that which has so long prevailed in our West Indian islands, and where the Slaves so greatly outnumber the free men, and the difference between Slave and Freeman, is marked and palpable. In extreme cases of ill-treatment, or rather in cases of enormous cruelty, it might be practicable to apply some remedy, by the means of that regulation which was established in Athens, and which, with additions most grateful to a humane mind, prevails, we are assured, in the Spanish islands, of allowing the Slave when extremely ill treated, to be transferred to another owner. But this regulation is not applicable to those particulars of treatment, which are constant and systematic, such as underfeeding, overworking, and other general vices of management, whether arising out of degradation, absenteeship, speculation, the pressure of the times, or any other of the causes which have been above specified. And it is these systematic vices which constitute the real evils in the condition of the bulk of our Slaves.