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among which are the acts already described respecting slaves. 4 St. at L., 331, 348.'

1775. Nov.-to 1776 March-A Provincial Congress; adopts a constitution for the State, does not contain any declaration of private rights. Art. 11, of elections; "The qualification of electors shall be the same as required by law."

§ 230. LEGISLATION OF GEORGIA.

The district lying between the Savannah and St. John's rivers had been included in the grant to the Lords Proprietary of Carolina. The laws which were enacted under their government for the portion of "Carolina south of Cape Fear," may be supposed to have had territorial extent in the territory now occupied by the State of Georgia. The Proprietaries made retrocession of their territory and jurisdiction in 1729 (ante, p. 293.) By a charter dated 9th June, 1732, a body corporate called "the Trustees for establishing the Colony of Georgia," in the district south and west of the Savannah river, was created; their trust being limited to twenty-one years. This charter repealed the laws of South Carolina, in and for Georgia."

The importation of indented servants was especially contemplated by the Trustees, but they prohibited the introduction

The code of S. C., has been stringently coercive compared with those of the other colonies and slave-holding States; not only by the immunity of power which it has given to the owners; but also in the authority which it has conferred, and indeed imposed as an obligation, on each white inhabitant, in reference to the slaves and free persons of color. It illustrates, moreover, how, even in the superiority which is conferred upon him by law, the action of the free inhabitant, though not himself a slaveowner, may, in many respects, be restricted through the existence of a slave-class.

2 See the charter in Stevens' Hist. of Ga., and the State Digest. It declares that "all and every the persons which shall happen to be born within the said Province, and every one of their children and posterity, shall have and enjoy all liberties, franchises and immunities of free denizens and natural born subjects within any of our dominions, as if abiding and born within this our kingdom of Great Britain, or any other dominion." It also provided that "all and every person or persons who shall at any time hereafter inhabit or reside within our said Province, shall be and hereby are declared to be free, and shall not be subject to or be bound to obey any laws, orders, statutes or constitutions, which have been heretofore made, ordered and * enacted, or which hereafter shall be made, &c., by, for or as the laws, orders, statutes or constitutions of our said Province of South Carolina, but shall be subject to and bound to obey such orders, &c., as shall from time to time be made, &c., for the better government of the said Province of Georgia, in the manner herein after declared. And we do hereby, &c., &c., that for and during the term of twenty-one years, to

of slaves. It was soon however advocated by the wealthy planters. "A considerable number of negroes had been already introduced from Carolina, as hired servants, under indentures for life or a hundred years," and after a long controversy on the subject (2 Hildr. 360, 371,) the Trustees in 1747 "passed an ordinance allowing slavery with certain restrictions on their numbers, mode of employment, and with provisions for their religious instruction." Stevens' Georgia, p. 312. 2 Hildr. 418.

1754. The powers of the Trustees under the charter having been surrendered, or having expired in 1752, a form of government was organized under the Board of Trade. A governor and council were appointed by royal commission. Among the ordinances enacted by them was one that "all offences committed by slaves were to be tried by a single justice without a jury, who was to award execution, and, in capital cases to set a value on the slave, to be paid out of the public treasury." A local assembly was provided. Voters were "to possess fifty acres, but owners of town lots were presently admitted to the same privilege."

1755. The first session of the Assembly. An act was

commence from the date of these, &c., the said corporation, assembled for that purpose, shall and may form and prepare laws, statutes and ordinances fit and necessary for and concerning the government of the said colony, and not repugnant to the laws and statutes of England, &c.—such laws, &c., to be subject to the Royal approval in privy council; or, rather, that of the "Board of Trade and Plantations," established in 1696, "who succeeded to the authority and oversight hitherto exercised by Plantation committees of the Privy Council." 2 Hildr. 197.

'The British government, or the majority of the Trustees, appear not to have been actuated by any moral objection to slavery, in making this prohibition. But Oglethorpe, according to authorities cited by Mr. Bancroft, vol. 3, p. 426, said, "Slavery is against the Gospel as well as the fundamental law of England. We refused, as trustees, to make a law permitting such a horrid crime." Mr. Bancroft also gives the 'governmental view," together with the praises which "so humane a plan excited in England. Neale v. Farmer, 9 Geo. R., p. 575. "The introduction of slaves was prohibited to the colony of Georgia for some years, not from motives of humanity, but for the reason it was encouraged elsewhere, to wit: the interest of the mother country. It was a favorite idea with the "mother country," to make Georgia a protecting barrier for the Carolinas, against the Spanish settlements south of her, and the principal Indian tribes to the west; to do this, a strong settlement of white men was sought to be built up, whose arms and interests would defend her northern plantations. The introduction of slaves was held to be unfavorable to this scheme, and hence its prohibition. During the time of the prohibition, Oglethorpe himself was a slaveholder in Carolina." Stevens, Hist. of Ga. p. 288, says that in the official publications of the Trustees, its inhibition is based only on political and prudential, and not on humane or liberal grounds, and it seems that every negro "found in the place was sold back into Carolina," if not claimed by some owner. Stevens, p. 299, refers for instance, 1789 -1741, in Stephens' Journal. See also Impartial Inquiry, &c., London, 1741, in vol 1, Coll. of Geo. Hist. Soc, pp. 166–173,

passed, "for the regulation and government of slaves." 2 Hildr. 455.

1765. An act for the establishing and regulating Patrols, and for preventing any person from purchasing provisions or any other commodities from, or selling such to any slave, unless such slave shall produce a ticket from his or her owner, manager or employer.

1768. An act to amend and continue the foregoing.

1770. An act for ordering and governing slaves within this province, and for establishing a jurisdiction for the trial of offences committed by such slaves and other persons therein mentioned, and to prevent the inveighling and carrying away slaves from their masters, owners or employers. This act was a copy of the act of South Carolina of 1740.

The sections are, for the greater part almost literal copies of corresponding sections in the Carolina act. Sec. 14, 15, 16, 17, relate to poisoning by slaves, teaching to poison, and forbid the administering of medicines by slaves. Sec 39, forbids teaching slaves to "read writing," in addition to the injunction of the Carolina act, sec. 45.2

'Neale v. Farmer, 9 Geo. R. 582, concludes, that, as in S. Carolina, ante, p. 306, n. 2, killing a slave is not felony by common law.

2 The statutes above named are given in Prince's and Cobb's Digests, except as they have been repealed or modified in parts, by later statutes.

CHAPTER VII.

OF THE PRIVATE INTERNATIONAL LAW EXISTING FOR THE SEVERAL PARTS OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE, DURING THE COLONIAL PERIOD, AND RELATING TO FREEDOM AND BONDAGE OF THE CONDITIONS UNDER WHICH SUCH A LAW MIGHT EXIST.

§ 231. Public international law being based on the necessity for a rule of action between the possessors of sovereign power, and private international law on the recognition of persons as having been at different times subject to the jurisdiction of different possessors of that power, either of these divisions of international law may come into existence, or be applied, wherever any portion of that power is independently vested or manifested.

While there is little difference of opinion, among writers on public law, as to the abstract nature of that authority which, in their conception, is the characteristic of any one of those political bodies or persons known as sovereign states or independent national polities, there has been much contrariety among them in the recognition of the entirety of that power in the various visible and concrete forms in which political authority or dominion has been manifested.

§ 232. It seems to have been commonly assumed for an axiomatic principle, that sovereignty or supreme national power is always manifested as the prerogative of a unity, as indivisible in its existence; that, if regarded as made visible in distinctly separate acts of power, those acts, in order to be acts of sovereign power, must ultimately depend upon, or proceed from

INDIVISIBLE SOVEREIGNTY.

313

one and the same possessor of power; that the sovereignty which marks or characterizes states is not to be regarded as an aggregation of various distinct and separate powers, each of which may be independently exercised by different political bodies or persons.1

It is undoubtedly true that in the international recognition of sovereignty which is made by political bodies, or persons themselves claiming to constitute a state or nation, the only other possessors of sovereign power are persons or bodies each holding, within its own domain, all the powers which can be attributed to a state or nation. For the persons or bodies so recognized must be equal in the nature of their power; that is, equally sovereign in all respects; and therefore it is true, that, as regards each other, the manifestation of any single act of sovereign power proceeds from a person or body possessing all other attributes of sovereign power. In view of the international intercourse of nations or states, properly and strictly so called, any person or body, manifesting authority over persons and things, must either possess all the powers of a sovereign state, or be a subordinate person or body, in reference to some one such possessor of sovereignty. It is a basal fact in public law, that states or nations respectively recognize only themselves as the possessors of any portion of sovereign power, and can know themselves, respectively, as the only persons or entities who are absolute and independent of law in the strict and proper sense; although in certain exceptional cases, states may be known as being in an inferior or limited position in reference to other states, though still being politically distinct and it may be difficult, in matters of public law, to distinguish clearly between a technical and a virtual sovereignty.2

'Calhoun's Essay on Gov., 1 Works, p. 146. "There is no difficulty in understanding how powers appertaining to sovereignty may be divided, and the exercise of one portion delegated to one set of agents and another portion to another; or how sovereignty may be vested in one man or in a few, or in many. But how sovereignty itself the supreme power-can be divided, how the people of the several states can be partly sovereign and partly not sovereign, partly supreme and partly not supreme, it is impossible to conceive. Sovereignty is an entire thing; to divide it is to destroy

it."

2

* Vattel, B. 1, c. 1. Phillimore, International Law, Part 2, c. 2.