240 CRIMES AND PUNISHMENTS. [ART. 30.

informer, and the other half to the State; and for the second
offence shall be sold out of the State, and the proceeds, after de-
ducting one-half for the informer, shall be paid into the treasury
of the State.

148. If any person owning or having charge of any land,
house, room, or other place, shall knowingly suffer any masonic
or other lodge, or pretended lodge, or secret society of negroes,
or secret society formed jointly of negroes and whites, to assem-
ble and meet therein, or thereat, he, if white, shall be fined not
less than five hundred dollars, or be confined in the penitentiary
for a term not less than five years nor more than ten years, at
the discretion of the court; and if the said person shall be a free
negro, he shall be sold as a slave.

149. Whenever an action of replevin shall be brought in this
State, and the property in dispute shall be any negro slave, it
shall not be lawful for either plaintiff or defendant, or any
other person in whose possession such negro slave shall be, to
sell such negro slave until such action of replevin shall first have
been determined; and any sale thus made shall be void, unless
an order of the court authorizing such sale be first had and
obtained.

150. Every person, his counsellors, aiders or abettors, who
shall be convicted of selling or transporting such negro slave
beyond the limits of this State, before the final decision of said
action of replevin, or without an order of the court as aforesaid,
shall be deemed guilty of felony, and shall be sentenced to the
penitentiary for not less than two nor more than ten years; this
section shall not extend to any person who, by the finding of the
jury in such action of replevin, shall be determined to be the
rightful owner of such negro slave.

FORNICATION WITH NEGROES.

151. Any white woman who shall suffer or permit herself to be
got with child by a negro or mulatto, upon conviction thereof in
the court having criminal jurisdiction either in the city or county
where such child was begot, or where the same was born, shall be
sentenced to the penitentiary for not less than eighteen months
nor more than five years.