Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 2.djvu/108

 and instruction of the child should be left to his father and godfather, who pledged themselves that he should be educated in the Christian belief.

The Council for Foreign Plantations were so much interested in the religious condition of the slaves residing in Barbadoes and Virginia, that in 1661 they directed that a letter should be written to the authorities in those Colonies, commanding them to encourage the introduction of ministers of the Gospel who would devote themselves to the reclamation of the newly imported negroes with a view to preparing them for baptism. The notion that the act of baptizing a slave operated to release him from bondage was certainly prevalent in Virginia at one time, but the indisposition which it created in planters to extend the comforts of religion to their negroes was entirely removed by the passage of the law in 1667, that the administration of the sacrament of baptism to them effected no change in their legal condition. It was expressly stated in this statute that its object was to encourage masters to promote the propagation of Christianity by permitting their slaves to come within the pale of the Christian Church. This law would perhaps have been adopted at an earlier date if the negroes had previously constituted a very important element in the general population. As late, however, as 1648, there were only three hundred persons of African blood in the Colony, and in 1667, the number could not have exceeded eighteen hundred, and very probably fell