The principle underlying the admission of the declarations of a slave is plainly, but brutally, expressed by Judge Pearson, of North Carolina. We have already seen, that, according to this learned judge, who was for the time the voice of the law, the declarations of the slave are not to be regarded as his _testimony_, any more than the barking of a dog or the grunting of a hog “can be called the testimony of the dog or the hog.” The slave complains of his sickness in words, the dog moans, the hog squeals; but the law regards these expressions of suffering alike. They may be proved as facts by competent evidence; but the slave himself cannot testify what his complaints were, any more than the dog or the hog.[66] Such are eccentricities of judicial opinion on this important question. They are not to be regarded merely as curiosities, for they are all adopted and enforced in the national courts; so that even the most brutal language becomes not merely the voice of the law, but the voice of the nation also. CONSEQUENCES OF THIS EXCLUSION. Thus do decisions of courts, as well as statutes, conspire to exhibit this rule in revolting features. If we glance for one moment at its consequences, there will be new occasion to condemn it. Looking at it in a single aspect, consequences appear which baffle the imagination to picture. Throughout the States where this exclusion prevails, any white person may torture and maltreat a slave in any conceivable manner and to any extent, or he may overwork and starve him, or he may whip him to death, murder him in cold blood, or burn him alive; and so long as he is the only white person present, the laws afford him the most complete immunity from punishment, except in Delaware and Louisiana, where also he is safe, if only slaves are present. It is true that the same laws profess to punish the murder of a slave as a capital offence, and also to punish severely any mutilation or other cruel treatment of him. But such laws are nothing. So long as the slave himself is not allowed to testify, so long the laws will be justly obnoxious to the charge of actually authorizing a white person to inflict any outrage upon him, even to the extent of taking life with impunity. Every white person with only slaves about him, or, it may be, with only colored persons, slave or free, has _a letter of license_ to commit any outrage which passion or wickedness may prompt.