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EXTRACTS

FROM THE

CODE RURAL OF HAYTI.

Art. 173. The Police Rural has for its object :1st. The repressing of vagabondage,

2d. The directing of assiduity in agricultural labour, 3d. The discipline of the labourer,

4th. The making and keeping in repair of the roads, both public and private.

Art. 174. All persons who are not proprietors or renters of the land on which they are residing, or who shall not have made a contract to work with some proprietor or renter, shall be reputed vagabonds, and shall be arrested by the Rural Police of the section in which they may be found, and carried before the Justice of the Peace of the district.

Art. 175. The Justice of the Peace, after interrogating and hearing the person brought before him, shall make known to him the articles of the law, which oblige him to employ himself in agricultural labour; and, after that communication, he shali remand him to prison until he shall agree to labour, according to the provisions of the law.

Art. 176. The Justice of the Peace will allow the person arrested to make his own choice of the individual with whom he is to contract to labour.

Art. 177. If after eight days of detention, the prisoner shall not have agreed to go to field work, he shall be sent to the public work of the town or district where he shall be arrested, and therein he shall be employed until he shall consent to go to field labour. The person who shall detach any labourer from the public works, to employ him in working for a private individual, shall be subject to a fine of 50 dollars, of which a moiety to be paid to the persons complaining.

Art. 178. If the prisoner be a child under age, the Justice of the Peace shall enquire out his parents, and send him to them to follow their condition of life.

Art. 179. After the expiration of three months from the publication of this Code, compulsion shall be used against delinquents.

180. Every person attached to the country as a cultivator, who shall, on a working day, and during hours of labour, be found unemployed, or lounging on the public roads, shall be considered idle, and shall be arrested, and takeu before the Justice of the Peace, who shall commit him to prison for twenty-four hours, for the first offence, and shall send him to labour on the public works for a repetition of the offence.

Art. 18. To provide against vagabondage under pretence of being a soldier.

Art. 182. Officers of the Rural Police shall take care that in their respective sections no person shall live in idleness; for this purpose they have authority to oblige such persons as are not actually employed in labour to render account of their occupations; and such persons as cannot prove that they are absolute labourers, or keepers of cattle pens, shall be considered as without visible means of procuring their livelihood, and shall be arrested as vagabonds.

Art. 183.Field labour shall commence on Monday morning, and shall never cease until Friday evening (legal holidays excepted); and, in extraordinary cases where the interest of cultivator as well as proprietor appears to re. quire it, work shall be continued until Saturday evening.

Art. 184. On working days, the ordinary field labour shall commence at day dawn, to continue until mid-day, with the interval of half an hour for breakfast, which shall be taken on the spot where the work is carrying on; after mid-day the field labour shall commence at two o'clock. and continue until sun set.

Art. 185. Pregnant females shall he employed on light work only, and, after the fourth month of pregnancy, they shall not be obliged to do any work in the field.

186. Four months after delivery, they shall be obliged to resume their labour in the field, but they shall not turn out to work until one hour after sun rise; they shall continue to work until eleven o'clock, and from two o'clock until one hour before sun set.

Art. 187. No cultivator, dwelling on a property in the country, shall absent himself from the labour assigned him, without the permission of the overseer, in the absence of the proprietor or farmer. and no one shall give that permission unless the case be urgent.

Art. 189. Every act of disobedience or insult on the part of a workman, commanded to do any work to which he is subjected, shall be punished by imprisonment, according to the exigency of the case, upon the decision of the Justiee of the Peace of the district.

Art. 190. Saturdays, Sundays, and Holidays, being at the en-tire disposal of the labourers, they shall not be permitted, on working days, to leave their work, to indulge in dancing or feasting, neither by night nor by day. Delinquents shall be subject to imprisonment for three days, for the first offence; for six days, for the repetition of the offence.

The remaining articles of the Code to 194, are touching the making Roads, and keeping them in repair.

Art. 194. From the Roll of settlements and habitations, ordered by article 132, the number of labourers, necessary for any particular work on the roads, shall be taken, in proportion to the population of that district, able to work, and every one in town shall assist in the work.

Art. 196. Every labourer, ordered to work on the Roads, who shall absent himself from that work, shall pay a fine of six dollars a-week, or suffer imprisonment for one week, which fine or imprisonment shall not exempt him from working the week following.

Art. 201. No person, for private considerations, shall abstract from the public works, those sent to labour therein, under a fine of 50 dollars, for every labourer thus abstracted if it be but for one day. Every morning the overseer of the work of the day, shall call over a list of the labourers, to ascertain their presence.

Art. 202. Labourers, on the public works, shall present themselves early on Monday morning, and shall not absent themselves unless the work be finished, until Friday evening.

Given in the Chamber of the Commons, at Port au Prince, the 21st April, 1826.-23d year of Independence.

MUZAINE, President.

Passed the Senate, the 4th of May, 1826.

Signed, the 6th May, 1826.

By Order,

P. ROUANEZ, President.

BOYER,

B. INGINAC.

These Clauses are given as more particularly exhibiting the effect of the Code on the field labourer. To exhibit the whole system by which, the Driver is made answerable for the labourer, the Overseer for his drivers and labourers, and the Police in its varieus grades for the whole; it would be necessary to translate the eatire Code.

N. B. During imprisonment, the labourer being absent from. field work, forfeits his wages; the pregnant women also appear to receive no wages during their exemption.

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