The system, then, frequently forced the destitute into theft and mendicancy. What resulted? Laws, inconceivably harsh and brutal, enacted by, and in behalf of, property rights were enforced with a rigor which seems unbelievable were it not that the fact is verified by the records of thousands of cases. Those convicted for robbery usually received a life sentence; they were considered lucky if they got off with five years. The ordinary sentence for burglary was the same, with variations. Forgery and grand larceny were punishable with long terms, ranging from five to seven years. These were the laws in practically all of the States with slight differences. But they applied to whites only. The negro slave criminal had a superior standing in law, for the simple reason that while the whites were "free" labor, negroes were property, and, of course, it did not pay to send slaves to prison. In Maryland and in most Southern States, where the slaveholders were both makers and executors of law, the slaves need have no fear of prison. "The slaves, as we have seen before, are not subject to the Penal Code of the whites; they are hardly ever sent to prison. Slaves who commit grave crimes are hung; those who commit heinous crimes not punishable with death are sold out of the State. In selling him care is taken that his character and former life are not known, _because it would lessen his price_." Thus wrote De Beaumont and De Tocqueville; and in so writing they handed down a fine insight into the methods of that Southern propertied class which assumed so exalted an opinion of its honor and chivalry. But the sentencing of the criminal was merely the beginning of a weird life of horror. It was customary at that period to immure prisoners in solitary confinement. There, in their small and reeking cells, filled with damps and pestilential odors, they were confined day after day, year after year, condemned to perpetual inactivity and silence. If they presumed to speak, they were brutally lashed with the whip. They were not allowed to write letters, nor to communicate with any member of their family. But the law condescended to allow a minister to visit them periodically in order to awaken their religious thoughts and preach to them how bad a thing it was to steal! Many were driven stark mad or died of disease; others dashed their brains out; while others, when finally released, went out into the world filled with an overpowering hatred of Society, and all its institutions, and a long-cherished thirst for vengeance against it for having thus so cruelly misused them.