Page:The American Slave Trade (Spears).djvu/136

 healing in forms of effective helpfulness. Very clearly dawned the conviction that, if one could but point out to the members of this waiting company some ‘way', 'something to do, which would square well with their practical business sense, of things instant and unmeasured would be their response.'"

The quotation emphasizes the work of the Quakers of 1693, for they did not ask nor did they so much as think of what would square with practical business sense. There is not a word in their manifesto, nor was there a thought in the heart of one of them, about the "Impolicy of the Slave-trade." And they were followed by many others who refused to entertain business considerations, but asked solely what was right.

The story of the Boston slaver, who, in 1645, robbed an African village by force of arms of its inhabitants, was told in open court because the slaver captain quarrelled with the ship's owners. On hearing it, one of the magistrates, Richard Saltonstall, declared that the master and his mate had been guilty of murder, man-stealing, and Sabbath-breaking, all crimes "Capital by the law of God." This was the first time that a man was accused in open court, on United States soil, of a capital offence because he had stolen negroes in Africa. It was the first of the long series of slave-trials wherein the insolent slaver was let go on technicalities, the Courts deciding that they had no jurisdiction over crimes committed by citizens of the colony when on the coast of Africa.

The next court case worth mention here came up in 1767. In 1727 the British planters of the West Indies who came to England bringing slaves for personal attendants began to have trouble through