When the slave was convicted of an offense which was punishable by death but which was within the benefit of clergy the capital penalty was not pronounced, but the offender was burnt in the hand or inflicted with any other corporal penalty at the discretion of the court. Should the criminal be sentenced to suffer death, thirty days were to elapse before the execution, except where it was a case of conspiracy, insurrection or rebellion. When the court had decided to sentence the slave to the death penalty a valuation of the Negro was made. This statement was to be turned over to the State auditor of public accounts who was required to issue a warrant on the treasury for the amount in favor of the owner of the convicted party. The owner on his part was to turn over to the treasurer the certificate of the clerk of the court showing that the slave had been condemned and the statement of the sheriff that the offender had been executed or had died before execution.[294] This matter of the payment to the owner of the value of the executed slave appears never to have been questioned to any extent even by the abolitionists in the legislature until the session of 1830 when a bill was introduced for the repeal of the law. The bill was lost but in the course of the debate it was stated that while Kentucky contained over 160,000 slaves only about one fifth of the tax-paying whites were slaveholders and that $68,000 had already been paid out of the State treasury as indemnity for slaves executed. After the defeat of this bill there was offered a substitute which proposed that a tax of one fourth of one per cent should be levied upon the value of all slaves in the State for the creation of a fund out of which to make such disbursements, but this was likewise lost.[295] Until 1811 there were no special enactments on slave crimes and their punishments. The court had, therefore, more or less range in the exactment of penalties but the legislature of 1811 passed during the first fortnight of its session a specific law governing slave crimes. Only four offenses were to be regarded as punishable by death: (1) conspiracy and rebellion, (2) administering poison with intent to kill, (3) voluntary manslaughter and (4) rape of a white woman. If any slaves were to be found guilty of consulting or advising the murder of any one, every such consultation was to constitute an offense and be punishable by any number of stripes not exceeding one hundred.[296]