France was always more humane than her colonies, for every rising sun did not rekindle there the dreadful paradox that sugar and sweetness were incompatible, and she could not taste the stinging lash as the crystals melted on her tongue.[N] An ocean rolled between. She always endeavored to protect the slave by legislation; but the Custom of Paris, when it was gentle, was doubly distasteful to the men who knew how impracticable it was. Louis XIII. would not admit that a single slave lived in his dominions, till the priests convinced him that it was possible through the slave-trade to baptize the Ethiopian again. Louis XIV. issued the famous _Code Noir_ in 1685, when the colonists had already begun to shoot a slave for a saucy gesture, and to hire buccaneers to hunt marooning negroes at ten dollars per head.[O]
[Footnote N: There was a proverb as redoubtably popular as Solomon's "Spare the rod"; it originated in Brazil, where the natives were easily humiliated:--"_Regarder un sauvage de travers, c'est le battre; le battre, c'es le tuer: battre un nègre, c'est le nourrir_": Looking hard at a savage is beating him: beating is the death of him: but to beat a negro is bread and meat to him.]
[Footnote O: A Commissioner's fee under the Fugitive-Slave Bill. History will repeat herself to emphasize the natural and inalienable rights of slave-catchers. In 1706 the planters organized a permanent force of maroon-hunters, twelve men to each quarter of the island, who received the annual stipend of three hundred livres. In addition to this, the owners paid thirty livres for each slave caught in the canes or roads, forty-five for each captured beyond the _mornes_, and sixty for those who escaped to more distant places. The hunters might fire at the slave, if he could not be otherwise stopped, and draw the same sums. In 1711 the maroons became so insolent that the planters held four regular chases or _battues_ per annum.]
The _Code Noir_ was the basis of all the colonial legislation which affected the condition of the slave, and it is important to notice its principal articles. We have only room to present them reduced to their essential substance.
Negroes must be instructed in the Catholic religion, and _bozals_ must be baptized within eight days after landing. All overseers must be Catholic. Sundays and _fête_ days are days of rest for the negro; no sale of negroes or any other commodity can take place on those days.