DECREE of the Conseil d’Etat, interpreting Articles 7 and 30 of the Edict of March 1685, and permitting the Markets of the nègres on Sundays and Feast days, and admitting their testimony in the absence of that of White…

SEEN by the King, in his Conseil, the Remonstrances made to His Majesty by the officers of the Conseil Souverain of the Island of Martinique, on the seventh and thirtieth articles of the Ordinance of the month of March 1687, concerning the enslaved of the Island of America. They contain, with regard to the first article, which forbids holding public Markets on Feast days and Sundays, that if the nègres are not present there on those days, most of them would fail to hear Mass and the Catechism and would become more unruly; that the enslavers and the enslaved can hardly, on working days, attend the Markets without interrupting their Business, which requires particular steadiness; and that Merchants, Artisans, enslavers and the enslaved, and the whole Public, receive great benefit from the Markets held on Sundays and Feast days, without this preventing them from performing their spiritual duties, these Markets lasting only about three hours a day.