PLANTERS AND
SLAVES.
299
intelligible testimony of other and different slaves, any more than the smiling perjuries of our Ilchester dozen render unworthy of belief the good natured natives of Somersetshire? Would it be even strictly just to set down every voter in Ilchester as a liar? I trow not. In the foregoing observations I have contended for the simple position that servile condition shall not of itself disqualify a man to give evidence; this point once established, the slave will become subject to all the rules which affect the competency and credibility of free witnesses. He may with great advantage even be submitted to other tests which with judicious management may be rendered not only certificates of competency but also incitements to the earning and preserving of credibility. For this purpose no better mode can be devised than the establishment of parish and plantation registers, an entry in which should be proof of competency; in this manner the slave, knowing in whose discretion the power of qualifying rested, would naturally learn to connect his duty to his master and his respect to the clergyman with his ambition to raise himself in the scale of society. This would be an association pregnant with practical good; it would be an everliving corrective of contingent licentiousness, a ready barrier to insubordination, a leading, a punishing, yet a guardian spirit,窶認ire to the good and Cloud to the bad till it brought