The subtilties in the application of this rule appear in a decided case, where one of three accomplices was indicted for kidnapping a colored boy. The latter was opposed as a witness, on the ground that a competent white witness, an accomplice who had not been indicted, might be produced. But the court, considering that the statute was originally enacted to remedy injustice to free persons of color, construed it liberally, and admitted the testimony of the colored boy, on the ground that the commission of an offence by two or more persons ought not to render a witness incompetent, who would be competent, if the offence had been committed by only one person. It was further said, that the statute, when it speaks of a competent white witness, means not merely his competency in the common sense of the term, but the sufficiency of his evidence under ordinary circumstances to produce conviction,--although a jury was directed to acquit the prisoner, unless part of the accomplice’s testimony was confirmed by unimpeachable evidence.[10] In another case, where two white witnesses, not accomplices, were present at an assault, the court at first excluded the testimony of the colored person; but when it afterwards appeared that one of them was drunk and the other did not see the whole transaction, although both knew that a blow was struck, the testimony of the colored person was admitted.[11] Still further, it has been declared in Delaware, that, on indictment of a white man for kidnapping a free colored person, the latter is not competent to prove his freedom.[12] So, also, in an action against a stage-coach proprietor for aiding in the escape of a slave, the admission of the latter that he is slave of the plaintiff cannot be received.[13] But a free colored person may make oath to his book of original entries, and thus make it evidence even against a white person, on the declared ground that “it would be idle [for the law] to recognize in persons of color the right to hold property, and to obtain redress in law and equity for injuries to person or property, if the means of this redress be denied them.”[14] Prior to the statute originally passed in 1799, where a white person committed an assault on a colored woman, and there was no third person present, the latter was held as a witness;[15] but where several white persons were present, the colored person was held incompetent.[16]