History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880 Volume I Part 31

"_Be it therefore Enacted_ by the Governor Council and House of Representatives that whoever shall after the Tenth Day of April next import or bring into this Province by Land or Water any Negro or other Person or Persons whether Male or Female as a Slave or Slaves shall for each and every such Person so imported or brought into this Province forfeit and pay the sum of one hundred Pounds to be recovered by presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury and when so recovered to be to his Majesty for the use of this Government or by action of debt in any of his Majesty's Courts of Record and in case of such recovery the one moiety thereof to be to his majesty for the use of this Government the other moiety to the Person or Persons who shall sue for the same.

"_And be it further Enacted_ that from and after the Tenth Day of April next any Person or Persons that shall purchase any Negro or other Person or Persons as a Slave or Slaves imported or brought into this Province as aforesaid shall forfeit and pay for every Negro or other Person so purchased Fifty Pounds to be recovered and disposed of in the same way and manner as before directed.

"_And be it further Enacted_ that every Person, concerned in importing or bringing into this Province, or purchasing any such Negro or other Person or Persons as aforesaid within the same; who shall be unable, or refuse, to pay the Penalties or forfeitures ordered by this Act; shall for every such offence suffer Twelve months' imprisonment without Bail or mainprise.

"_Provided_ allways that nothing in this act contained shall extend to subject to the Penalties aforesaid the Masters, Mariners, Owners or Freighters of any such Vessel or Vessels, as before the said Tenth Day of April next shall have sailed from any Port or Ports in this Province, for any Port or Ports not within this Government, for importing or bringing into this Province any Negro or other Person or Persons as Slaves who in the prosecution of the same voyage may be imported or brought into the same. _Provided_ he shall not offer them or any of them for sale.

"_Provided_ also that this act shall not be construed to extend to any such Person or Persons, occasionally hereafter coming to reside within this Province, or pa.s.sing thro' the same, who may bring such Negro or other Person or Persons as necessary servants into this Province provided that the stay or residence of such Person or Persons shall not exceed Twelve months or that such Person or Persons within said time send such Negro or other Person or Persons out of this Province there to be and remain, and also that during said Residence such Negro or other Person or Persons shall not be sold or alienated within the same.

"[Transcriber's Note: Inverted A appears here.] _And be it further Enacted and declared that nothing in this act contained shall extend or be construed to extend for retaining or holding in perpetual servitude any Negro or other Person or Persons now inslaved within this Province but that every such Negro or other Person or Persons shall be int.i.tuled to all the Benefits such Negro or other Person or Persons might by Law have been int.i.tuled to, in case this act had not been made_.

"In the House of Representatives March 2, 1774. Read a first & second Time. March 3, 1774. Read a third Time & pa.s.sed to be engrossed. Sent up for concurrence.

T. CUs.h.i.+NG, _Spkr._

"In Council March 3, 1774. Read a first time. 4. Read a second Time and pa.s.sed in Concurrence to be Engrossed with the Amendment at [Transcriber's Note: Inverted A appears here.] dele the whole Clause. Sent down for concurrence.

THOS. FLUCKER, _Secry._

"In the House of Representatives March 4, 1774. Read and concurred.

T. CUs.h.i.+NG, _Spkr._"

Like all other measures for the suppression of the slave-trade, this bill failed to become a law. If Ma.s.sachusetts desired to free herself from this twofold cross of woe,--even if her great jurists could trace the law that justified the abolition of the curse, in the pages of the royal charter,--were not the British governors of the Province but conserving the corporation interests of the home government and the members of the Royal African Company? By the Treaty of Utrecht, England had agreed to furnish the Spanish West Indies with Negroes for the s.p.a.ce of thirty years. She had aided all her colonies to establish slavery, and had sent her navies to guard the vessels that robbed Africa of five hundred thousand souls annually.[412] This was the cruel work of England. For all her sacrifices in the war, the millions of treasure she had spent, the blood of her children so prodigally shed, with the glories of Blenheim, of Ramillies, of Oudenarde and Malplaquet, England found her consolation and reward in seizing and enjoying, as the lion's share of results of the grand alliance against the Bourbons, the exclusive right for thirty years of selling African slaves to the Spanish West Indies and the coast of America![413] Why _should_ Gov. Hutchinson sign a bill that was intended to choke the channel of a commerce in human souls that was so near the heart of the British throne?

Gov. Hutchinson was gone, and Gen. Gage was now governor. He convened the General Court at Salem, in June, 1774. On the 10th of June the same bill that Gov. Hutchinson had refused to sign was introduced, with a few immaterial changes, and pushed to a third reading, and engrossed the same day. It was called up on the 16th of June, and pa.s.sed. It was sent up to the Council, where it was read a third time, and concurred in. But the next day the General Court was dissolved!

And over the grave of this, the last attempt at legislation to suppress the slave-trade in Ma.s.sachusetts, was written: "_Not to have been consented_ to by the governor"!

These repeated efforts at anti-slavery legislation were strategic and politic. The gentlemen who hurried those bills through the House and Council, almost regardless of rules, knew that the royal governors would never affix their signatures to them. But the colonists, having put themselves on record, could appeal to the considerate judgment of the impatient Negroes; while the refusal of the royal governors to give the bills the force of law did much to drive the Negroes to the standard of the colonists. In the long night of darkness that was drawing its sable curtains about the colonial government, the loyalty of the Negroes was the lonely but certain star that threw its peerless light upon the pathway of the child of England so soon to be forced to lift its parricidal hand against its rapacious and cruel mother.

FOOTNOTES:

[380] Felt, vol. ii. p. 416.

[381] Newspaper Literature, vol. i. p. 31.

[382] Lyman's Report, quoted by Dr. Moore.

[383] House Journal, p. 387.

[384] Ibid.

[385] House Journals; see, also, Gen. Court Records, May, 1763, to May, 1767, p. 485.

[386] Slavery in Ma.s.s., pp. 131, 132.

[387] Felt, vol. ii. pp. 416, 417.

[388] Hist. of Leicester, pp. 442, 443.

[389] Freeman's Hist. of Cape Cod, vol. ii. pp. 114, 115.

[390] Boston Gazette, Aug. 17, 1761.

[391] Letters of Mrs. Adams, p. 20.

[392] Adams's Works, vol. ii. p. 200.

[393] Adams's Works, vol. ii, p. 213.

[394] Records, 1768, fol., p. 284.

[395] This is the case referred to by the late Charles Sumner in his famous speech in answer to Senator Butler of South Carolina; see also Slavery in Ma.s.s., p. 115, 116; Washburn's Judicial Hist. of Ma.s.s., p.

202; Ma.s.s. Hist. Soc. Proc., 1863-64, p. 322.

[396] Records, 1769, fol. p. 196. Gray in Quincy's Reports, p. 30, note, quoted by Dr. Moore.

[397] Slavery in Ma.s.s., pp. 115, 116, note.

[398] Lyman's Report, 1822.

[399] Slavery in Ma.s.s., p. 118.

[400] Hist. of Newbury, p. 339.

[401] The Watchman's Alarm, p. 28, note; also Slavery in Ma.s.s., p.

119.

[402] Ma.s.s. Hist Soc. Coll., vol. iv. 1st Series, pp. 202, 203.

[403] Hildreth, vol. ii. p. 564.

[404] House Journal, p. 85, quoted by Dr. Moore.

[405] House Journal, p. 94.

[406] Slavery in Ma.s.s., p. 136.

[407] House Journal, p. 104.

[408] House Journal p. 224.

[409] Ibid., p. 226.

[410] House Journal, Gen Court Records, x.x.x. pp. 248, 264; also, Slavery in Ma.s.s, p. 137.

[411] Ma.s.s. Archives, Domestic Relations, 1643-1774, vol. ix. p. 457.