One of the commonest sayings to which my ears early became accustomed, on Col.
Lloyd's plantation and elsewhere in Maryland, was, that it was _"worth but half a cent to kill a nigger, and a half a cent to bury him;"_ and the facts of my experience go far to justify the practical truth of this strange proverb.

Laws for the protection of the lives of the slaves, are, as they must needs be, utterly incapable of being enforced, where the very parties who are nominally protected, are not permitted to give evidence, in courts of law, against the only class of persons from whom abuse, outrage and murder might be reasonably apprehended.

While I heard of numerous murders committed by slaveholders on the Eastern Shores of Maryland, I never knew a solitary instance in which a slaveholder was either hung or imprisoned for having murdered a slave.

The usual pretext for killing a slave is, that the slave has offered resistance.

Should a slave, when assaulted, but raise his hand in self defense, the white assaulting{100} party is fully justified by southern, or Maryland, public opinion, in shooting the slave down.