[494] In 1740 an Act was passed requiring masters to provide “sufficient clothing” for their slaves.

[495] Hist.  S.C. and Georgia, vol. ii. p. 73.

[496] Statutes of S.C., vol. vii. p. 416.

CHAPTER XXII.

THE COLONY OF NORTH CAROLINA.

1669-1775.

     THE GEOGRAPHICAL SITUATION OF NORTH CAROLINA FAVORABLE TO
     THE SLAVE TRADE.—­THE LOCKE CONSTITUTION ADOPTED.—­WILLIAM
     SAYLE COMMISSIONED GOVERNOR.—­LEGISLATURE CAREER OF THE
     COLONY.—­THE INTRODUCTION OF THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH OF
     ENGLAND INTO THE COLONY.—­THE RIGHTS OF NEGROES CONTROLLED
     ABSOLUTELY BY THEIR MASTERS.—­AN ACT RESPECTING
     CONSPIRACIES.—­THE WRATH OF ILL-NATURED WHITES VISITED UPON
     THEIR SLAVES.—­AN ACT AGAINST THE EMANCIPATION OF
     SLAVES.—­LIMITED RIGHTS OF FREE NEGROES.

The geographical situation of North Carolina was favorable to the slave-trade.

Through the genius of Shaftesbury, and the subtle cunning of John Locke, Carolina received, and for a time adopted, the most remarkable constitution ever submitted to any people in any age of the world.  The whole affair was an insult to humanity, and in its fundamental elements bore the palpable evidences of the cruel conclusions of an exclusive philosophy.  “No elective franchise could be conferred upon a freehold of less than fifty acres,” while all executive power was vested in the proprietors themselves.  Seven courts were controlled by forty-two counsellors, twenty-eight of whom held their places through the gracious favor of the proprietary and “the nobility.”  Trial by jury was concluded by the opinions of the majority.

“The instinct of aristocracy dreads the moral power of a proprietary yeomanry; the perpetual degradation of the cultivators of the soil was enacted.  The leet-men, or tenants, holding ten acres of land at a fixed rent, were not only destitute of political franchises, but were adscripts to the soil, ’under the jurisdiction of their lord, without appeal;’ and it was added, ’all the children of leet-men shall be leet-men, and so to all generations.’"[497]

The men who formed the rank and file of the yeomanry of the colony of North Carolina were ill prepared for a government launched upon the immense scale of the Locke Constitution.  The hopes and fears, the feuds and debates, the vexatious and insoluble problems, of the political science of government which had clouded the sky of the most astute and ambitous statesmen of Europe, were dumped into this remarkable instrument.  The distance between the people and the nobility was sought to be made illimitable, and the right to govern was based upon permanent property conditions.  Hereditary wealth was to go arm in arm with political power.

The constitution was signed on the 21st of July, 1669, and William Sayle was commissioned as governor.  The legislative career of the Province began in the fall of the same year; and history must record that it was one of the most remarkable and startling North America ever witnessed.  The portions of the constitution which refer to the institution of slavery are as follows:—­