frages, and what is of more importance, our sentiments and our opinions, have their due weight in the government we live under. Our laws are altogether our own; they grow out of our circumstances, are framed for our exclusive benefit, and administered by officers of our own appointment, and as such possess our confidence. We have a judiciary chosen from among ourselves; we serve as jurors in the trials of others, and are liable to be tried only by juries of our fellow-citizens ourselves. We have all that is meant by liberty of conscience. The time and mode of worshiping God, as prescribed to us in His word, and dictated by our conscience, we are not only free to follow, but are protected in following.

"Forming a community of our own in the land of our forefathers; having the commerce, and the soil, and the resources of the country at our disposal, we know nothing of that debasing inferiority with which our very color stamped us in America. There is nothing here to create the feeling of caste -nothing to cherish the feeling of superiority in the minds of foreigners who visit us. It is this moral emancipation, this liberty of the mind from worse than iron fetters, that repays us ten thousand times over for all that it has cost us, and makes us grateful to God and our American patrons for the happy change which has taken place in our situation. We are not so self-complacent as to rest satisfied with our improvement, either as regards our minds or our circumstances. We do not expect to remain stationary-far from it. But we certainly feel ourselves, for the first time, in a state to enjoy either to any purpose. The burden is gone from our shoulders. We now breathe and move freely, and know not (in surveying your present state) for which to pity you most, the empty name of liberty which you endeavor to content yourselves with, in a country that is not yours, or the delusion which makes you hope for ampler privileges in that country hereafter.

"We solicit none of you to emigrate to this country; for we know not who among you prefers rational independence, and the honest respect of his fellow-men, to that mental sloth and careless poverty which you already possess, and your children will inherit after you in America. But if your views and aspirations rise a degree higher-if your minds are not as servile as your present condition, we can decide the question at once; and with confidence say that you will bless the day, and your children after you, when you determined to become citizens of Liberia.

"But we do not hold this language on the blessings of liberty for the purpose of consoling ourselves for the sacrifice of health, or the sufferings of want, in consequence of our removal to Africa. We enjoy health, after a few months' residence in this country; and a distressing scarcity of provisions, or any of the necessaries of life, has of late been entirely unknown, even to the poorest persons in this community. On these points there are, and have been, much misconception and some malicious misrepresentations in the United States.

"The true character of the African climate is not well understood in other countries. Its inhabitants are as robust, as healthy, as long-lived, to say the least, as those of any other country. Nothing like an epidemic has ever ap

peared in this colony; nor can we learn from the natives, that the calamity of a sweeping sickness ever yet visited this part of the continent. But the change from a temperate to a tropical country is a great one-too great not to affect the health more or less, and in the cases of old people, and very young people, it often causes death. In the early years of the colony, want of good houses, the great fatigues and dangers of the settlers, their irregular mode of living, and the hardships and discouragements they met with, greatly helped the other causes of sickness, which prevailed to an alarming extent, and were attended with great mortality. But we look back to those times as a season of trial long past, and nearly forgotten. Our houses and circumstances are now comfortable; and for the last two or three years not one person in forty, from the middle and southern states, has died from the change of climate.

"A more fertile soil, and a more productive country, so fas as it is cultivated, there is not, we believe, on the face of the earth. Its hills and its plains are covered with a verdure which never fades; the productions of nature keep on in their growth through all seasons of the year. Even the natives of the country, almost without farming tools, without skill, and with very little labor, make more grain and vegetables than they can consume, and often more than they can sell.

"Add to all this, we have no dreary winter here, for one-half the year, to destroy the products of the other half. Nature is constantly renewing herself, and is also constantly pouring her treasures all the year round in the laps of the industrious. We could say on this subject more, but we are afraid of exciting too highly the hopes of the imprudent. Such persons, we think, will

do well to keep their rented cellars, and earn their twenty-five cents a day at their wheelbarrow, in the commercial towns of America, and stay where they are. It is only the industrious and virtuous that we can point to independence, and plenty, and happiness in this country.

“Truly, we have a goodly heritage; and if there is any thing lacking in the character or condition of the people of this colony, it can never be charged to the account of the country; it must be the fruit of our own mismanagement, or slothfulness, or vices. But from all these evils we confide in Him to whom we are indebted for our blessings, to preserve us. It is the topic of our weekly and daily thanksgiving to Almighty God, both in public and private, and He knows with what sincerity we were conducted, by His providence, to this shore. Such great favors, in so short a time, and mixed with so few trials, are to be ascribed to nothing but His special blessing. This we acknowledge. We only want the gratitude which such signal favors call for. Nor are we willing to close this paper, without adding a heartfelt testimonial to the deep obligations we owe to our American patrons and best earthly benefactors, whose wisdom pointed us to this home of our nation, and whose active and persevering benevolence enabled us to reach it. Judge, then, of the feelings with which we hear the motives and doings of the Colonization Society traduced and that, too, by men too ignorant to know what the society has already accomplished; too weak to look through its plans and intentions; or

too dishonest to acknowledge either. But, without pretending to any prophetic sagacity, we can certainly predict to that Society the ultimate triumph of their hopes and labors; and disappointment and defeat to those who oppose them. Men may theorize and speculate upon their plans in America, but there can be no speculation here. The cheerful abodes of civilization and happiness which are scattered over this verdant mountain-the flourishing settlements which are spreading around it-the sound of Christian instruction, and scenes of Christian worship, which are heard and seen in this land of brooding pagan darkness-a thousand contented freemen united in founding a new Christian empire, happy themselves, and the instrument of happiness to others every object, every individual, is an argument, is a demonstration, of the wisdom and goodness of the plan of colonization."

CHAPTER XXI.

HISTORY OF SLAVERY IN THE NORTH AMERICAN COLONIES.

Early existence of Slavery in England.-Its forms.-The Feudal System.-Serfdom.Its extinction.-African Slavery introduced into the North American Colonies, 1620.Slavery in Virginia.-Massachusetts sanctions Negro and Indian slavery, 1641: Kidnapping declared unlawful, 1645.-Negro and Indian slavery authorized in Connecticut. 1650.-Decree against perpetual slavery in Rhode Island, 1652.-Slavery in New Netherland among the Dutch, 1650-Its mild form.-First slavery statute of Virginia, 1662.-In Maryland, 1663, against amalgamation.-Statute of Virginia, conversion and baptism not to confer freedom; other provisions, 1667.-Maryland encourages Slave-trade.--Slave code of Virginia, 1682, fugitives may be killed.-New anti-amalgamation act of Maryland, 1681.-Settlement of South Carolina, 1660.-Absolute power conferred on masters.-Law of Slavery in New York, 1665.-Slave code of Virginia, 1692: offenses of slaves, how punishable.-Revision of Virginia code, 1705: slaves made real estate.-Pennsylvania protests against importation of Indian slaves from Carolina, 1705.-New act of 1712 to stop importation of negroes and slaves, prohibiting duty of £20.-Act repealed by Queen.-First slave law of Carolina, 1712.Its remarkable provisions.-Census of 1715.-Maryland code of 1715-baptism not to confer freedom.-Georgia colonized, 1732: rum and slavery prohibited.-Cruel delusion in New York; plot falsely imputed to negroes to burn the city, 1741.-Slavery legalized in Georgia, 1750.-Review of the state of Slavery in all the colonies in 1750.Period of the Revolution.-Controversy in Massachusetts on the subject of slavery, 1766 to 1773.-Slaves gain their freedom in the courts of Massachusetts.-Court of King's Bench decision.-Mansfield declares the law of England, 1772.-Continental Congress declares against African Slave-trade, 1784.

SLAVERY

OLAVERY existed in England in early times, and slaves became an article of export. Prisoners of war were reduced to slavery; criminals and debtors were added to the number, and unfortunate gamesters who had staked their liberty. There were also hereditary slaves, who derived their condition from their parents, and who were sold and transferred from hand to hand. This

*

*Henry's History of England.

form of slavery was gradually extinguished by the feudal system, which substituted villeinage. To the serfs, who were the lowest grade of vassals, was committed the task of tilling the lands which the soldier gained or protected. There were grades even among the serfs, though probably there were not instances in which one held another as vassal and superior. The peculiarity of the class was, that they were astricted to the domain, and went with it when it changed hands. Some, however, had rights and privileges which they might maintain in the court of the manor of their lord. Some held small estates, which, however, they could not dispose of. The lowest class were abject and unprivileged.*

At the time of the first English emigration to America, but few faint traces were left of that system of villeinage once so universal throughout Europe, and still prevalent in Russia. In England it had disappeared, not by any formal legislative act, but as the joint result of private emancipations and by the discouragement long given by the English courts to claims so contrary to natural right. It became an established opinion throughout western Europe that Christians could not be held as slaves-but the immunity did not extend to infidels or heathen.

We have mentioned in a former chapter that slavery was first introduced into the North American colonies in 1620, by a Dutch vessel which landed a portion of her human merchandise at Jamestown, Virginia. The event was almost simultaneous with the landing of the Pilgrims on Plymouth Rock, Dec. 22d, 1620. In buying and holding negro slaves, the Virginians did not suppose themselves to be violating any law, human or divine. Whatever might be the case with the law of England, the law of Moses, in authorizing the enslavement of "strangers," seemed to give to the purchase of negro slaves an express sanction. The number of negroes in the colony, limited as it was to a few cargoes, brought at intervals by Dutch traders, was long too small to make the matter appear of much moment, and more than forty years elapsed before the colonists thought it necessary to strengthen the system of slavery by any express enactments.

In the colony of Massachusetts a body of fundamental laws was established in 1641. One of the articles, based on the Mosaic code, provides that "there shall never be any bond slavery, villeinage, nor captivity among us, unless it be lawful captives, taken in just wars, and such strangers as willingly sell themselves or are sold unto us, and these shall have all the liberties and Christian usages which the law of God established in Israel requires. This exempts none from servitude who shall be judged thereto by authority." This article sanctions the slave-trade and the holding of negroes and Indians in bondage. This seems to be the first positive enactment in the colonies on the subject of slavery.

About this time a transaction occurred, (1645,) which some consider a protest on the part of Massachusetts against the African slave-trade. We state

* Chambers' History of Laws.