1789.
fhall be deemed, adjudged, and holden, as freemen and free-women, in opoofition, to every fpecies of fervitude before taken notice of in the act. As this ambiguous fection feems annexed indeed as a provifo to the fifth, it may be taken as intended to deter perfons from holding in their fervice negroes and mulattoes, whom they had not regiftered according to law.
Had the Legiflature intended, that all thofe who were born before the making of the act, and had not attained the age of twenty eight years, fhould ferve till they arrived to that age, they would have fhewn that intention in exprefs terms. As perfons of that defcription among the negroes and mulattoes, made a great part of their number, they would have made provifion for thofe of tender age, who might happen to be abandoned by their owners, as they have done with refpect to thofe born after the act and abandoned; they would have made like provifion for their redrefs in cafe of fevere treatment, and, in proportion to their term of fervitude before they attained the age of twenty eight years, they would have directed freedom dues, as they have done for the others.
With refpect to perfons of this colour, thofe who were fervants among us before the paffing of the act, were either flaves, or fervants for thirty one years: the fervitude of twenty eight years is created by this act, and appears to me to be limited to thofe who are born of a regiftered flaves after it was paffed and to thofe only.
The preamble to the act, among the unhappy circumftances formerly attending thefe people, mentions their being caft into the deepeft affliction by an unnatural feparation and fale of hufband and wife, from each other, and from their children: In the prefent cafe, it is attempted to feparate thefe children from their parents, by a conftruction which appears to me to clafh with the intention of the makers of the law; while fuch a conftruction as will fecure freedom to them, and reftore them to their parents, will I think, agree beft with the defign of the Legiflature.
I am, therefore, of opinion, that the implied conftruction contended for in behalf of Samuel Moore, on a doubtful and dark claufe in the act, cannot be admitted to operate in his favour, againft the exprefs letter and direction of its fifth and tenth fections ; and, confequently, that thefe perfons ought to be difcharged from his fervice.
RUSH, Juʃtice :–The queftion on the Habeas Corpus, in the cafe of Samuel Moore‘s negroes, is a queftion of conftruction, arifing on the act for the graduate abolition of flavery.
It is admitted, that thofe negroes were born before the firft of March 1780, the date of the law ; and that Samuel Moore, who now claims them, was then in poffeffion of them, and that he neglected to regifter them. It is alfo admitted, that they were flaves for life, when the act paffed.
