For all of the many petty offenses of which the slave might be guilty the punishment was confined to "stripes,"--few or many in the discretion of the justice of the peace, though for every offense the maximum number was fixed by law. Nor could they be applied but by authority of the magistrate, after due examination, though there was almost invariably coupled with the designating of the number of stripes the injunction that they be "well laid on." The mode of procedure in all cases wherein the offense was punishable with stripes was for the justice to summon "two respectable slave-holders to assist him,"--the evidence for and against the accused being laid before them, the three determined his guilt and fixed the punishment,--within the limits of the law. The extent of this punishment varied all the way from ten stripes for "presuming to come upon the plantation of any person without leave from his master," up to thirty-nine for grand and petty larceny, between the punishment for which there was no difference, and for "buying or selling without a written permission from his master." This latter seems to have been regarded as quite an offense, as we have frequent references to it,--the punishment fixed being as great as that attached to misdemeanors which we would consider much graver. It merely consisted in the slave buying or selling anything whatever without his master's written permission,--such permission being necessary before he could lawfully carry on even the smallest of commercial exchanges. Even in our present state of boasted enlightenment it is questioned by many thinkers and criminologists whether we have been wise in anywhere substituting the jail for the whipping post for minor offenses. At all events, as a deterrent to petty crime among our colored brethren one sound thrashing, "well laid on," would most likely prove more efficacious than any jail sentence imposed by a latter day justice of the peace. It was unlawful for a slave to leave his master's premises without permission, and an offense for a negro, bond or free, to have in his possession any weapons of any kind. The penalty for engaging in any "riots, routs or unlawful assemblages" was the maximum thirty-nine lashes, and the same act provided that if any white person should be convicted in the Circuit Court of "being in company with slaves or free negroes at any unlawful meeting" he should be fined twenty dollars, to go to the informer, and, moreover, receive not exceeding twenty lashes on his bare back, at the discretion of the court.