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 negre, 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.
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