The Act is most often noted for its provisions for financial penalties for inflicting cruel and unusual punishments on slaves.
However, the Act was somewhat eclectic in effect; it also prohibited marriages between slaves being sanctified by religious ceremony.
Trying to moderate the conduct of the worst slave owners was partly a measure to control these outbreaks of violence.
However, in at least one notable instance, the trial of Arthur Hodge for the murder of one of his slaves, the Act was cited obliquely.
Use of the term "cruel and unusual punishments", derived from the English Bill of Rights might have also been influenced by its inclusion in the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution some ten years previously, whose text was well known to English-speaking jurists.