He is not competent to be a party to any civil action, either as plaintiff or defendant; nor can he be received as informant or prosecutor against any person of free condition. He is protected only as a horse is protected in this country. His owner may bring an action against any person who may have occasioned the loss of his services. But it is plain that the slave may sustain many civil injuries, to which this circuitous mode of obtaining redress is not applicable; and even when it is applicable, the damages are awarded, not to the injured party, but to his master. The protection which indictments and criminal informations afford, is also of very narrow extent. Many crimes which, when committed against a white man, are considered as most atrocious, may be committed by any white man against a slave with perfect impunity. To rob a slave, for instance, is, in most of the islands, not even a misdemeanour. In this case, the grand principle of Colonial law is suspended. The property of a slave, it seems, is considered as belonging to his owner for the purpose {308}of oppression, but not for the purpose of protection. By the meliorating laws of some of the Colonies, the crime of highway robbery upon a Negro, is punished by fines, which, as far as we are informed, in no case exceed thirty pounds currency. But this is not all. The natural right of self-defence is denied to the slave. By the laws of almost all the islands, a slave who should defend himself from murder or torture, to the injury of a White person, though such White person should posess no authority whatever over him might be punished with death.