and be baptised. We command those colonists who purchase slaves recently imported, thus to have them instructed and baptised, within a reasonable time, under pain of an arbitrary fine. We charge the directors general of said company and all our officers to enforce this strictly.

ARTICLE III.-We prohibit any other religious rites than those of the Apostolic Roman Catholic Church; requiring that those who violate this, shall be punished as rebels, disobedient to our commands. We prohibit all meetings for this purpose: Such we declare to be unlawful and seditious assemblages, subject to the same penalties inflicted upon masters who shall permit or suffer it with respect to their slaves.

ARTICLE IV. No overseers shall be set over the negroes to prevent their professing the Apostolic Roman Catholic religion, under pain of forfeiture of such slaves by the masters appointing such overseers, and of arbitrarily punishing the overseers who shall have accepted said superintendence.

ARTICLE V. We admonish all our subjects, of every rank and condition to observe, scrupulously, Sundays and holy-days. We prohibit their laboring or causing their slaves to labor, on those days (from the hour of midnight to the following midnight) in the culture of the soil, or any other service, under penalty of a fine and arbitrary punishment to be inflicted upon the masters, together with forfeiture of those slaves who shall be detected by our officers at work. Reserving to them, nevertheless, the privilege of sending their slaves to market.

ARTICLE VI. We prohibit white subjects of both sexes, from contracting marriages with the blacks, under pain of punishment and an arbitrary fine; and we prohibit all chaplains of vessels, priests, and missionaries, whether secular or regular, from solemnizing marriages between them. We also prohibit our white subjects, as well as blacks affranchised, or born free, from living in a state of concubinage with the slaves; enacting that those who shall have had one or more children by such cohabitation, shall be severally condemned, as well as the master permitting it, to pay a fine of three hundred livres. And, if they are masters of the slaves by whom they shall have such

children, we decree that, beside the fine, they be deprived both of the slave and children, who shall be adjudged the property of the hospital of the district, without the capacity of subsequent affranchisement. Provided, that this Article is of none effect, when the black man, either free-born or manumitted, who was not married during such cohabitation with his slave, shall espouse her according to the forms prescribed by the church; which act shall affranchise her, and make her children free and legitimate.

ARTICLE VII.—The solemnities prescribed by the ordinance of Blois, and the edict of 1639, in case of marriages, shall be observed in respect as well to free persons as to slaves, without any necessity for the consent of the father or mother of the slave: that of the master being only essential.

ARTICLE VIII.—We expressly prohibit parish priests from proceeding to solemnize marriages between slaves, if they do not make apparent the consent of their masters. We forbid, also, the employment, by masters, of any compulsion with their slaves, to marry them against their inclination.

ARTICLE IX.-Children springing from marriages between slaves shall be slaves, and shall belong to the masters of the wives, and not to those of the husbands, if the husbands and wives are owned by different persons.

ARTICLE X.-We decree, that if the husband be a slave and the wife a free woman, their children, both male and female, shall follow the condition of the mother and be free like herself, notwithstanding the slavery of the father: and, if the father be free and the mother a slave, the offspring shall be slaves likewise.

ARTICLE XI.-Masters shall be obliged to inter in holy ground, within the cemeteries set apart for that purpose, their slaves who have been baptised; and with regard to those slaves who die without baptism, they shall be buried at night, in some field adjacent to the place of their decease.

ARTICLE XII.-We prohibit the wearing of any offensive arms, or heavy clubs, by the slaves, under pain of the lash, and the forfeiture of such arms for the benefit of him who may

find the slaves in possession thereof: excepting therefrom those who may be sent to the chase by their masters, and such as may be bearers of the letters or well known marks of their

masters.

ARTICLE XIII. We prohibit, in like manner, the gathering together of slaves belonging to different masters, in the day or night time, under the pretence of attending weddings, or otherwise, at the abode of their masters, or elsewhere, either in the highways or in by-places, under pain of corporal punishment by whipping and branding: And, in case of repeated offences, and other circumstances of aggravation, they may be punished with death, at the discretion of the judges. We enjoin all our subjects to pursue such offenders, arrest, and conduct them to prison, although they be not regular officers, nor have any warrant for such offenders.

ARTICLE XIV.-Masters who shall be convicted of having permitted or suffered such assemblies, composed of other than their own slaves, shall be sentenced in their own proper names to repair every damage suffered by their neighbors on account of said gatherings, and a fine of thirty livres for the first offence and double that amount for a repetition thereof.

ARTICLE XV. We prohibit slaves from exposing to sale in market, or carrying to particular houses for the purpose of sale any sort of commodity, either of fruits, greens, firewood, herbs, or cattle-feed, or any species of grains, or other merchandise, cloths or goods, without express permission from their masters, evidenced by a pass, or well known marks, under pain of having the articles sold, reclaimed by their masters without restoration of the price, and a fine of six livres for their benefit, as against the purchasers of the fruits, greens, firewood, herbs, fodder, or grain: Decreeing in relation to merchandise, cloths, or goods, that the delinquent purchasers be sentenced to pay a fine of fifteen hundred livres, towards the expense, damage, and interest, and that they be prosecuted to the last extremity

as thievish receivers.

ARTICLE XVI. We decree, for this purpose, that two persons shall be appointed as supervisors over each market, by the

officers of the Superior Council, or by the inferior justices, to examine the wares and merchandise brought there by slaves, together with the letters and marks of their masters which they may bear.

ARTICLE XVII.—We allow all our subjects inhabiting that country to seize every thing with which they may find said slaves laden, when they are without any passes or known marks of their masters: the articles seized to be delivered forthwith to their masters, if their residence be near the place where the slaves have been detected in fault; otherwise they shall be sent to the nearest store-house of the company, there to remain on deposit until the masters shall be notified thereof.

ARTICLE XVIII.—It is our will that the officers of our Superior Council in Louisiana shall furnish an opinion as to the quantity of food, and the quality of clothing, it is proper for masters to furnish their slaves-(which food must be furnished in each week, and clothing in each year)—in order that we may enact a statute thereupon. In the mean time, we permit said officers to regulate, by express provision, said food and raiment; interdicting the giving of any kind of spirituous liquors by masters to said slaves, in lieu of said victuals and clothing.

ARTICLE XIX. We forbid, in like manner, their releasing themselves from the charge of feeding and supporting said slaves, by permitting them to labor a certain day in the week on their own' account.

ARTICLE XX.-Slaves who are not fed, clad, and maintained by their masters, may give notice thereof to the Procureur General of said Council, or the officers of the inferior courts, and place their complaints in their hands: upon which, and even of their own accord if the notice shall have come to them in some other way, the master shall be prosecuted on the motion of the said Procureur General, without cost; which course we direct to be pursued in case of crimes, and cruel treatment of slaves by their masters.

ARTICLE XXI.-Slaves enfeebled by old age, sickness, or otherwise, whether the debility be incurable or not, shall be

maintained and supported by their masters; and, in case they have abandoned them, said slaves shall be quartered upon the nearest hospital, to which their masters shall be condemned to pay eight sous per day for the maintenance and support of each slave-for the payment of which sum said hospital shall have a lien upon the plantations of said masters, into whose possession soever they may pass.

ARTICLE XXII.-We declare slaves to be incapable of holding any thing which may not belong to their masters, and all things obtained through their own industry or the liberality of other persons, or otherwise, by what title soever, to be acquired as the property of the masters, without enabling the children of said slaves, their parents, relatives, or any others, to assert any right thereto, by succession, by donation when alive, or causa mortis: Such transfers we declare null, together with all the promises and obligations made by them, as being contracted by a race incapable of transferring and contracting by their own free will.

ARTICLE XXIII.-It is our will, nevertheless, that the masters should keep whatever the slaves have earned by their direction, together with the materials with which they have carried on employment and traded in their workshops in that particular branch of business to which their masters have appointed them; and in case their masters shall have given them no such direction or appointment they shall be bound only to an equivalent to that which shall have resulted to their advantage; and if nothing has so resulted, the substance belonging to said slaves, which their masters may have suffered them to accumulate, shall be reserved, after the masters have deducted of their own choice, whatever is owing to them. It is otherwise if the property consisted, in whole or in part, of merchandise with which slaves had permission to traffic on shares-upon which their masters can only come in for contribution, at the rate of one sous upon every livre, with the other creditors.

ARTICLE XXIV.-Slaves shall not be eligible for office, nor any commission exercising a public function, nor for appoint