SLAVERY AS A PUNISHMENT FOR CRIME.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1031, 16 November 1882, Page 3

SLAVERY AS A PUNISHMENT FOR CRIME.

The recent sale of a negrc into temporary slavery in Kentucky has surprised many persons, who were not aware or had forgotten that the Constitution of the Wnited States distinctly recognises the lawfulness of slavery or involuntary servitude as a punishment for crime, ' Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.' So says the Thirteenth Amendment. There is nothing in the prohibition to p/event a State from making slavery the penalty for very trivial offences. The fact that this has not been more generally at tempted in the Southern States shows how the sentiments of the people have grown away from the old slave system. Besides, if a law was passed imposing slavery &s a punishment for black culprits, it would have to apply to white culprits also, and the possibility of a negro owning a white slave would seem unpleasant to the ordinary legislator, Slavery to-day is maintained as a penalty for the non-payment of debt in one of the native States under British protection ou th<? Malay peninsula. The British official resident at Perak actually signs warrants for the arrest of fugitive slaves whose only crime is that they have run away from a perpetual captivity incurred by the fadure to pay an amount which may not exceed five dollars. While, therefore, we still tolerate slavery as a punishment for crime in the United States, we are not quite so brutal as Great Britain. We do not permanently enslave poor debtors who are innocent of wrong.— San Francisco paper.