Note 5 — XXII
Reading edition
As usual these abuses spring from the non-enforcement of a statute passed in 1848 (Leg. ult., i. 144), which prohibits usurious contracts with servants or assistants, and threatens with heavy penalties all those whom, under the pretext of having advanced money, or of having paid debts or the poll-tax or exemption from service, keep either individual natives or whole families in a continual state of dependence upon them, and always secure the increase of their obligations to them by not allowing them wages sufficient to enable them to satisfy the claims against them.