Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 3 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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[Will You Buy Me, Sir?]);
The Privilege Of Marrying According To His Own Inclination; The
Possibility Of Purchasing His Liberty*
By his labour (* A slave in the
Spanish colonies ought, according to law, to be estimated at the
lowest price;
This estimate, at the time of my journey, was, according
to the locality, from 200 to 380 piastres. In 1825 the price of an
adult negro at the island of Cuba, was 450 piastres. In 1788 the
French trade furnished a negro for 280 to 300 piastres. A slave among
the Greeks cost 300 to 600 drachmes (54 to 108 piastres), when the
day-labourer was paid one-tenth of a piastre. While the Spanish laws
and institutions favour manumission in every way, the master, in the
other islands, pays the fiscal, for every freed slave, five to seven
hundred piastres!), and of paying, with an acquired property, for the
liberty of his wife and children.* (* What a contrast is observable
between the humanity of the most ancient Spanish laws concerning
slavery, and the traces of barbarism found in every page of the Black
Code and in some of the provincial laws of the English islands! The
laws of Barbadoes, made in 1686, and those of Bermuda, in 1730,
decreed that the master who killed his negro in chastising him, could
not even be sued, while the master who killed his slave wilfully
should pay ten pounds sterling to the royal treasury. A law of saint
Christopher's, of March 11th, 1784, begins with these words:
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