An Act to explain and render more effectual an Act, intituled, “An Act to restrain thefts committed by Negro and other Slaves, and to prevent the dishonest traffick carried on by such as deal with them.

WHEREAS it will greatly increase the advantages derived to this colony by the appointment of supervisors, if such officers were rewarded with things and articles which they detect in the possession of negroes; now therefore, We, Your Majesty’s most dutiful and loyal subjects, the commander in chief of all Your Majesty’s Leeward Charribbee Islands in America, and the council and assembly of Your Majesty’s Island of Saint Christopher, pray it may be enacted, and it is hereby enacted, by and with the advice and consent of the said commander in chief, and the council and assembly of this Island, and by the authority of the same, That from the publication of this Act every supervisor who shall detect and take from any negro or other slave any article which has been stolen, and shall apprehend and deliver up to justice such negro or other slave, shall retain such article for his own use and as his own property, unless the value of the said articles shall exceed the sum of five pounds current money, or such articles shall have been stolen from a slave.

That every supervisor who shall take up and apprehend any slave who has been guilty of any robbery, burglary, theft or other crime or offence whatever, shall carry such criminal or offender to the common cage, and as soon as convenient carry him before a magistrate, to be disposed of according to issue.

That every supervisor shall and is hereby commanded to be particularly vigilant in the apprehension of all negroes and other slaves who he shall detect with any articles that have been stolen, or who have in their possession any article that is prohibited to be sold without a ticket, and also all runaways and deserters from the service of their masters, and all negroes who are drunk, or who have rum in their possession; and for the apprehension of every such offender the superior shall receive the sum of one dollar; and in case of his omitting to perform his duty in any such respect, shall forfeit the sum of ten pounds current money.

Dated in Saint Christopher, the sixteenth day of June, in the forty-eighth year of the reign of our Sovereign Lord George the Third, by the grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, King, Defender of the Faith; and in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and eight.

Read, and passed the Assembly, this third day of May 1808.

Jas. Ward, Clerk of Assembly. John Garnett, Speaker.

Read, and passed the Council, this first day of June 1808. W.J. Woodcock, Clerk of the Council.