hundred pounds of tobacco. This was also a means of stimulating him to greater energy in a subsequent instance of a like nature.
In 1669, it was provided that a reward of one thousand pounds of tobacco should be allowed to every person who apprehended a servant absenting himself from the plantation to which he belonged without a passport from the authorities of the place where he resided, or a note from his master, granting him permission. This reward was to be paid not by the master, but by the public at large, the amount thus expended to be returned to the public funds by the sale of the runaway for a term of years as soon as his present employment came to an end. This law was enacted for the benefit of the class of landowners who were in possession of so few laborers that they were unable to follow fugitives at certain seasons of the year without abandoning their crops in the ground to ruin. When a servant was captured after the passage of the Act of 1669, he was at once carried to the office of the nearest justice of the peace. A certificate of the term for which the runaway was bound to his master was then drawn up and transmitted to the next General Assembly. In the meanwhile, the runaway was delivered to the constable of the parish in which he had been seized, by whom he was conveyed to the constable of the adjacent parish, and so in turn until he was finally delivered to his owner. In case he was suffered to escape by the neglect of one of these officers, a penalty of one thousand pounds of tobacco was imposed upon the delinquent for the offence.[1]
The allowance of one thousand pounds for the apprehension of an absconding servant was found to be not only burdensome to the public revenues but also promotive of a spirit of collusion, defeating the object which
- ↑ Hening’s Statutes, vol. II, pp. 273, 274.
