Members of the Town Council of Camden request permission to enact several ordinances regarding slaves: they seek authorization to tax slave owners who hire slaves out in town for more than a month; they request permission to hire hands to work on the streets, rather than allow slave owners to "commute" the labor of their hired slaves to a "given sum"; they seek permission to keep the money derived from fines levied against those found guilty of buying the produce of planters from slaves or selling alcohol to slaves -- currently, city officials in Charleston and Columbia keep this fine money. Further, the law of the state would be better implemented "in spirit" if cases of this nature were brought before town officials rather than taken to court, where "technicalities" could get the guilty parties off. Town officials should "hear, & determine such offences, affix such fines thereto as are now authorized by Law, and receive such fines into the Treasury of the Town."
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Repository: South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Columbia, South Carolina
