the peace in order that he might be assigned for the public use, his term being extended at the rate of four months for every two hundred pounds of tobacco which the county had expended in his capture. Under the law of 1686, however, the entire amount of the outlay which had fallen upon the public was assessed upon his master or mistress, to be reimbursed by the extension in his or her favor of the servant’s time for a period which would cover the value of the loss entailed by his recovery.[1]
There can be little doubt that the last provision made was the wisest that could have been adopted in the circumstances existing in the Colony. When a servant absconded, all the resources of the public treasury and its personal instruments for carrying on the machinery of the government and preserving the peace were brought to bear to effect his capture, and when that end had been accomplished, the master was very properly required to save the people at large from pecuniary loss. The rule prevailing at one time that the community was to be reimbursed by the sale of the runaway by the public officers as soon as his original term had expired, must have given rise to much inconvenience and some complication in the affairs of each county. The authorities, from the great number of fugitives, were placed in the position, as long as the law was in operation, of being vendors of labor on a very important scale, and this made necessary a serious enlargement of the public accounts without any pecuniary advantage accruing from it.
The fact that so few conspiracies were hatched among the laborers bound by articles of indenture is to be attributed not only to the fair treatment which, as a rule, they received from their masters, but also to the comparative
- ↑ Hening’s Statutes, vol. III, p. 29.
