A slave who is condemned to death shall be valued before execution, and the estimated price paid to the master, provided the latter has not made a pretended complaint.
Masters may chain and whip their slaves, but not mutilate, torture, or kill them.
If a master or overseer shall kill a slave, he shall be prosecuted; but if he can convince the court of cause, he may be discharged without pardon from the King.
Masters who are twenty years old can free their slaves at will or by testamentary act, without being held to give a reason for it; and if a slave is named by testament a general legatee, or an executor, or guardian of children, he shall be considered enfranchised.
An enfranchised slave shall be regarded as free as any person born in France, without letters of naturalization; he can enjoy the advantages of natives everywhere, even if he was born in a foreign country.
An enfranchised slave must pay singular respect to his ancient master, his widow, and children; an injury done to them will be punished more severely than if done to others. But he is free, and quit of all service, charge, and tenure that may be pretended by his former master, either respecting his person or property and succession.
An enfranchised slave shall enjoy the same rights, privileges, and immunities as if he had been born free. The King desires that he may merit his acquired liberty, and that it may confer upon him, as well in his person as estate, the same effects which the blessing of natural liberty confers upon French subjects.
The last article, and all that related to enfranchisement, are notable for their political effect upon the colony. The free mulattoes interpreted the liberal clauses of the Code into an extension of the rights of citizenship to them, as the natural inference from their freed condition. The lust of masters and the defencelessness of the slave-woman sowed thickly another retribution in the fated soil.
The custom of enfranchising children of mixed blood, and sometimes their mothers, commenced in the earliest times of the French colonies, when the labor of _engagés_ was more valuable than that of slaves, and the latter were objects of buccaneering license as much as of profit. The colonist could not bear to see his offspring inventoried as chattels. In this matter the nations of the South of Europe appear to atone for acts of passion by after-thoughts of humanity. The free descendants of mulattoes who were enfranchised by French masters in Louisiana, and who form a respectable and flourishing class in that State, now stand beneath the American flag at the call of General Butler. But the Anglo-American alone seems willing to originate a chattel and to keep him so. His passion will descend as low for gratification as a Frenchman's or a Spaniard's, but his heart will not afterwards mount as high.