The wilful killing of a slave by anyone, even the master, was accounted murder, and extraordinary tribunals, without a jury, were constituted for the protection of his person. The Code of 1705 even contained regulations which indicated that the trend of thought and of legislation, at that juncture, was toward attaching the slave to the soil, which would have been a step upward in a course, which, if consistently followed, would have made the slave a serf. But the still prevailing rules, which allowed the slave to be seized and sold for the debts of the master, and regulated the inheritance of slaves according to the {46} law governing the descent of personal property, seem to have completely neutralized that tendency before the middle of the century had been reached. [Sidenote: Public relations of the slave system.] Naturally the private law accidents of the relation were first developed and fixed, but very soon the rights and powers of the community in regard to the institution began to claim attention. The public peace and welfare must be safeguarded against the possible conduct of the slave, on the one hand, and of the master, on the other. The legislation of Virginia set the example in these respects also. That legislation provided that no slave should have, or carry arms, or go outside of the plantation of his master without a pass from his master, or lift his hand against a Christian; that a sheriff should arrest a runaway slave on the warrant of two justices, and might lawfully kill any slave who resisted arrest; and that no slave should be emancipated without the consent of the Governor and Council. On the other hand, it provided that the master should be responsible for all damage done by his slave at any place where there was no Christian overseer, and required that any master giving freedom to his slave should pay the cost of his transportation out of the colony. [Sidenote: The general object of the laws in respect to slaves.] Such was substantially the law of negro slavery in all of the colonies at the beginning of the decade before the Revolution. It was perhaps more severe than this in South Carolina, and it was certainly less so in Massachusetts. The objects which it had in view were to secure the master's property in the slave, to enable the master to hold the slave in obedience and force him, if necessary, to labor, and to protect the public peace and welfare against the abuse of the relation by the master, and against the vicious nature of the slave. {47} It does certainly appear that the century of law-making upon the subject had not ameliorated the condition of the slave. We must remember, however, that the first stages in the legalization of any relation sometimes make the situation appear worse than what obtained before the movement began, although it may not be worse in fact. [Sidenote: Slavery and the Revolutionary ideas of the rights of man.]