It was a part of the universal law of slavery in the southern colonies that a slave should not be allowed to testify against a white person in the courts.[938] South Carolina, by the acts of 1712,[939] 1722[940] and 1735,[941] permitted “negroes and other slaves” to testify in the trial of any slave accused of specified crimes and offenses. Certain of the colonies, by express provision, forbade Indian slaves to give testimony in the trial of whites. North Carolina declared that “all negroes, mulattoes, bond and free to the third generation, and Indian servants and slaves, shall be deemed to be taken as persons incapable in law to be witnesses in any case whatever except against each other”.[942] Virginia, 1705, decreed that “popish recusants, convict negroes, mulattoes and Indian servants and others not being Christians, shall be deemed and taken to be persons incapable in law to be witnesses in any case whatsoever”.[943] In 1732, the same colony decreed that the evidence of any negro or Indian slave might be received in the trial of any slave, but was not valid in the trial of any other person.[944] Maryland declared, in 1717, that it would be dangerous to allow the evidence of any negro, mulatto or Indian slave in the trial of a freeman, but conceded that, if evidence was lacking in cases regarding any negro, mulatto or Indian slaves, that such slaves might give testimony for or against themselves and one another.[945] In some of the northern colonies, at least, acts were passed forbidding slaves to give testimony in the trial of white persons. The New York law of 1706 is a case in point.[946] This feature of the law of evidence was renewed from time to time in the various colonies and continued until the Revolution.