Page:Notes on the History of Slavery - Moore - 1866.djvu/38

 of laws in Maachuetts etablihed lavery, as we have hown, and at the very birth of the foreign commerce of New England the African lave-trade became a regular buines. The hips which took cargoes of taves and fih to Madeira and the Canaries were accutomed to touch on the coat of Guinea to trade for negroes, who were carried generally to Barbadoes or the other Englih Ilands in the Wet Indies, the demand for them at home being mall. In the cae referred to, intead of buying negroes in the regular coure of traffic, which, under the fundamental law of Maachuetts already quoted, would have been perfectly legal, the crew of a Boton hip joined with ome London veels on the coat, and, on pretence of ome quarrel with the natives, landed a "murderer"—the expreive name of a mall piece of cannon—attacked a negro village on Sunday, killed many of the inhabitants, and made a few prioners, two of whom fell to the hare of the Boton hip. In the coure of a lawuit between the mater, mate, and owners, all this tory came out, and one of the magitrates preented a petition to the General Court, in which he charged the mater and mate with a threefold offence,