_Montesinos_.--A planter, who notwithstanding this curious specimen of his taste and sensibility, was a man of humane studies and humane feelings, describes the refined and elegant manner in which the operation is performed, by way of mitigating the indignation which such a usage ought to excite. He assures us that the stamp is not a branding iron, but a silver instrument; and that it is heated not in the fire, but over the flame of spirits of wine. _Sir Thomas More_.--Excellent planter! worthy to have been flogged at a gilt whipping-post with a scourge of gold thread! The practice of marking slaves had fallen into disuse; probably it was only used at first with captives, or with those who were newly-purchased from a distant country, never with those born upon the soil. And there was no means of raising a hue and cry after a runaway slave so effectually as is done by your colonial gazettes, the only productions of the British colonial press. _Montesinos_.--Include, I pray you, in the former part of your censure the journals of the United States, the land of democracy and equal rights. _Sir Thomas More_.--How much more honourable was the tendency of our laws, and of national feeling in those days, which you perhaps as well as your trans-Atlantic brethren have been accustomed to think barbarous, when compared with this your own age of reason and liberality! The master who killed his slave was as liable to punishment as if he had killed a freeman. Instead of impeding enfranchisement, the laws, as well as the public feeling, encouraged it. If a villein who had fled from his lord remained a year and a day unclaimed upon the King's demesne lands, or in any privileged town, he became free. All doubtful cases were decided _in favorem libertatis_. Even the established maxim in law, _partus sequitur ventrem_, was set aside in favour of liberty; the child of a neif was free if the father were a freeman, or if it were illegitimate, in which case it was settled that the free condition of the father should always be presumed. _Montesinos_.--Such a principle must surely have tended to increase the illegitimate population.