An Act to amend an Act of this Island, entitled ‘An Act for amending an Act of this Island, entitled an Act for the governing of Negroes, and for providing a proper Maintenance and Support for such Negroes, Indians, or Mulattoes, as hereafter shall be manumitted or set free; as also for preventing certain Inconveniences from them arising to the Inhabitants of this Island.

WHEREAS by an Act of this island, bearing date the twenty-seventh day of February, one thousand seven hundred and thirty-nine, entitled “An Act for amending An Act of this Island, entitled an Act for the the [sic] Governing of Negroes, and for providing a proper Maintenance and Support for such Negroes, Indians, or Mulattoes, as hereafter shall be manumitted or set free; as also for preventing certain Inconveniences from them arising to the Inhabitants of this Island,” it is enacted that whoever shall hereafter, by deed or will, or by any other ways or means whatsoever, manumit, set free, or discharge from slavery, any Negro or other Slave or Slaves, such person or persons shall for the better support of such Negro or Slave, and to prevent their becoming burthensome to the parish in which he, she, or they shall live or reside, deposit or direct to be paid into the hands of the churchwarden for the time being of the said parish, for each Negro or other Slave so manumitted, set free, or discharged from slavery, the sum of fifty pounds current money to be by the said churchwarden and the vestry of the said parish for the time being, improved to the best advan­tage; and the said vestry shall direct and appoint the sum of four pounds current money for the maintenance and support of such person so manu­mitted and set free, to be annually paid to him or her; which wholesome provision of the said Act, and wise intention of the Legislature are now totally, evaded by the artifice and contrivance of persons about to manumit or set free their Slaves, by making a conveyance of such Slave or Slaves intended to be manumitted, to some insolvent person, who immediately executes a deed of manumission by which means the parish is defrauded of the said sum of fifty pounds, and the person so set free, deprived of the said annuity and reduced to necessity of seeking a dishonest means of live­lihood: be it therefore enacted by his Excellency David Parry, Esquire, Captain General, Governor and Commander in Chief of this island, Chan­cellor, Ordinary, and Vice Admiral of the same, the Honourable the Mem­bers of His Majesty’s Council and the General Assembly of this island, and by the authority of the same, that for the future any person who shall be minded to manumit or set free any Negro or Slave, shall actually deposit or pay into the hands of the churchwarden for the time being of the parish in which such person lives or resides, the sum of fifty pounds current money, and take a receipt or certificate of the said churchwarden for the same, and without such payment, and such receipt, or certificate, the deed of manu­mission or instrument of writing, shall be as to the purpose of manumitting such Slave void and of no effect, and the said Negro or Slave so intended to be manumitted, shall remain and continue, and to all intents and pur­poses shall be as such a Slave as if no such deed of manumission, or in­strument of writing had been made.         

[Clause 2.] And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid, that if any person shall hereafter by will or other writing direct any Negro or Slave to be ma­numitted after the death of such person, or at any other future time, and the heir-at-law, executor, or other person so directed to manumit such Slave shall, in order to save the said sum of fifty pounds, and to retain the said Slave in slavery, neglect to pay the sum of fifty pounds, current money, into the hands of the churchwarden of the parish, and to manumit the said Slave within three months after the time appointed for the manu­mission of said Slave, the said churchwarden may, and he is hereby autho­rized and required to sue in his own name, in the court of the proper pre­cinct, or proceed by suit in equity, for the said sum of fifty pounds, and as soon as he shall recover and receive the same, he shall execute a deed of manumission in his own name, which shall be effectual to manumit and set free the said Negro or Slave, anything in this Act before seeming to the contrary notwithstanding.

Read three times, and passed the Council with the amendments, this twenty-first day of January, one thousand seven hundred and eighty-three. 

(Signed) FRAS. WORKMAN, Deputy Clerk of the Council.

Read three times, and passed the General Assembly, nemine contradicente, the twenty-sixth day of November, one thousand seven hundred and eighty-two.

(Signed) SAM. MOORE, Clerk of the General Assembly.

Assented to by his Excellency, the twenty-second day of January one thousand seven hundred and eighty-three.

(Signed) FRA. WORKMAN, Deputy Secretary.

Read three times, and passed the General Assembly with the amendments, nemine contradicente, this twenty-first day of January one thousand seven hundred and eighty-three.

(Signed) SAM. MOORE, Clerk of the General Assembly.