BELT verʃus DALBY.
S
INCE the act for the gradual abolition of flavery, a number of perfons have formed a fociety of Philadelphia for the purpofe of relieving thofe of their fellow creatures, who are held in illegal flavery ; and this action is owing to that inftitution.
The plaintiff, being fuppofed iffue of white and mulattoe parents, attended the defendant to Philadelphia in the autumn of 1784, and prefented fo pure a complexion , that the attention of the fociety was excited, and a writ of Habeas corpus taken out at the inftance.
The boy's right to freedom was firft argued before Mr. Juftice BRYAN,and, the next day, before the fame judge, and the CHIEF JUSTICE, at their chambers ; when the facts being difputed, the CHIEF JUSTICE advifed the counfel to throw the cafe into the form of an action de Homine replegiando ; and recognizances to appear, being enter into on both fides, a declaration was filed of September term 1784, ftating that ‘‘the defendant Dalby had taken and kept captive the plaintiff, Francis Belt, whereby the faid plaintiff is injured &c.’’ To this the defendant pleaded, that the plaintiff was his flave, and the plaintiff replied that he was a free man, abʃque bac&c. rejoinder, and iffue.
Upon the trial, which was by a ftruck jury, it was given in evidence, that the plaintiff was born in Maryland of an unmarried multtoe woman; that the grandmother, and the mother, of the plaintiff, are now, and always have been, flaves ; that he was purchafed by the defendant's agent, and that the fale was then in difpute in law in Maryland; that the plaintiff had not been ʃix months in Pennʃylvania when the Habea Corpus was brought ; and the plaintiff himfelf was fhrewn to the jury, that they might from his appearance draw fome conclufion, that he was, at leaft on one fide, the iffue of white parents.
Miƒƒlin, for the defendant, having proved by the laws of Maryland, that the boy was a flave in that ftate, contended that he Lex Loci muft determine this, as well as other perfonal and mixed actions ; and for that doctrine, cited, among many other authorities, I.P. WIll. 420. Preced. in Chan. 207. He faid that the rule, partus ʃequitue ventrem, was founded on reafon and the law of nature, and was as applicable in other countries as in Maryland. 1 Puƒƒend. 599.693. Juʃt. Inʃt. I. 13. §.4. and he obferved, that even in Pennʃylvania, the Legiflature had taken notice of other than negroes and mulattoes,, to wit, Indian flaves. 1 Pen. Laws. 46.
The Attorney General and Lewis argued for the plaintiff. They faid, that, in Pennʃylvania, there was no pofitive law for flavery ; though as the acts of Affembly took notice of three forts of flaves, negroes, mulattoes, and indians they admitted that, by a reafonable conftruction, this might (illegible text) tantamount to an exprefs to-
