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 sell themselves. And these shall have all the liberties and Christian usages, which the law of God established in Israel concerning such persons doth morally require. This exempts none from servitude, who shall be judged thereto by authority."

In 1646, one James Smith, a member of a Boston church, brought home two negroes from the coast of Guinea, and had been the means of killing near a hundred more. In consequence of this conduct, the General Court passed the following order:—

"The General Court conceiving themselves bound by the first opportunity to bear witness against the heinous and crying sin of man-stealing, as also to prescribe such timely redress for what is passed, and such a law for the future as may sufficiently deter all others belonging to us to have to do in such vile and odious courses, justly abhorred of all good and just men, do order that the negro interpreter with others unlawfully taken, be by the first opportunity at the charge of the country for the present, sent to his native country (Guinea) and a letter with him of the indignation of the Court thereabouts, and justice thereof desiring our honored Governor would please put this order in execution."

From this time till about 1700, the number of slaves imported into Massachusetts was not large. In 1680, Governor Simon Bradstreet, in answer to inquiries from "the lords of his Majesty's privy council," thus writes:—

"There hath been no company of blacks or slaves brought into the country since the beginning of this plantation, for the space of fifty yeares, only one small vessell about two yeares since after twenty months'