[90] Section 5 of the act. Poore's Charters & Constitutions Vol. II. [91] McMaster Vol. III. [92] McMaster Vol. III. [93] Art. 2: "To prevent all disputes on the subject of boundaries which separate the territories of the two high contracting parties, it is hereby declared and agreed as follows, to wit: The southern boundary of the United States, which divides this territory from the Spanish Colonies of East and West Florida, shall be designated by a line beginning on the river Mississippi, at the northernmost part of the thirty-first degree of latitude north of the equator which from thence shall be drawn due east to the middle of the river Apalachicola or Chattahoochee," etc. [94] The Public Domain. [95] Public Land Commissioner Parts 1 & 4 pp. 88 and 105. THE EARLY SLAVE LAWS OF MISSISSIPPI. BEING SOME BRIEF OBSERVATIONS THEREON, IN A PAPER READ BEFORE THE MISSISSIPPI HISTORICAL SOCIETY, AT A MEETING HELD IN THE CITY OF NATCHEZ, APRIL 20-21, 1899. BY ALFRED H. STONE, ESQ. Probably no institution with which history deals has been the centre of more momentous events, or the subject of more earnest and acrimonious discussion than that of human slavery. To the study of whatever of the states of civilization we may devote ourselves, we find that, regardless of its present position of advancement, at some period of its history the personal ownership of human beings was a recognized feature of its social fabric. Nor is it true that the existence of this institution at any certain period of a people's history can be taken as an evidence of a low state of intellectual, moral or social development during such period. Quite the contrary was often the case,--despite the fact that we have heard so much of "the demoralizing and degrading effects of slavery" and are told that it was ever a curse upon any people who tolerated it,--for both biblical and secular history are replete with testimony to the magnificent achievements of nations whose most glorious epochs were those during which slavery flourished. It is foreign, however, to our purpose to engage in a discussion of slavery as a civil institution, or to question whether its toleration was of good or evil effect, or yet to inquire whether it could ever have justifiably existed. We propose to look at but one of its many features,--and that merely from the standpoint of an investigator of what has already passed into the realm of ancient history,--become something "flat, stale and unprofitable" to all save the curiously inclined.