bringing slaves to Boston and selling them
there, just as they brought them to South
Carolina and sold them there. And down to
the adoption of their bill of rights in 1780,
there appear numerous statutes upon the
statute books of Massachusetts, protecting
this institution of slavery, just as it was pro-
tected in all the other colonies.
Mr. STOCKBRIDGE. Will the gentleman
cite one of those numerous statutes ?
Mr. MILLER. Yes, sir. In 1698 she passed
a law prohibiting repurchasing goods of slaves
under suspicious circumstances. In 1703 she
made a law prohibiting masters from emanci-
pating their slaves unless they gave security
that they should not become town paupers.
In the same year another statute prohibited
any Indian, negro, or mulatto servant or
flaw being abroad after nine o'clock at night,
unless on errands for their masters or owners.
In 1705, by another act, slaves were, for cer-
tain offences, to be sold out of the province;
any negro or mulatto who should strike any
of the English or Christian nation was to be
severely whipped; an unjust duty on negroes
of £4 per head was imposed, but the duty was
to be paid back, if the negro was exported and
" bona fide sold in any other plantation," and
the like advantages of the drawback were to
be allowed "the purchaser of any negro sold
within the province." In 1707 an act was
passed punishing free negroes or mulattoes
for harboring any negro or mulatto servant.
And in 1718 an act imposed a penalty on
every master of a vessel who should carry
away any person underage, or bought or hired
servant, without the master's or parent's con-
sent. The provincial congress of Massachu-
setts prohibited the enlistment of slaves in
the army, thus showing that slavery legally
existed there in May, 1775; and the reason
given for this prohibition is that they were
contending for the liberties of the colonies,
and the admission into the army of any others
but freemen would be inconsistent with the
principles to be supported, and reflect dis-
honor on the colony, Can any other proof
of the existence of slavery in Massachusetts be
required ?
It existed in all the colonies in the same
way, and notwithstanding the decision in
the Somerset case, I say it existed at common
law, for after that decision, which simply
went to the extent that a man could not hold
his slave in England, slaves were bought and
sold in market overt in London, just as much
as cotton, sugar, indigo, or anything else.
Not only that, but from 1804 to 1807, during
the last three years when the importation of
African slaves into this country was allowed
by our constitution, there were at least 20,000
slaves brought into the ports of South Caro-
lina alone, in British vessels, under the pro-
tection of British law, consigned to British
consignees, and sold by them to the people of
South Carolina and other States of this Union. |
Mr. JONES, of Somerset. If my friend will
allow me, I will state in addition to what he
has said in reference to the legislation of Mas-
sachusetts upon this subject, that many years
ago, at a fashionable watering place on the
coast of Massachusetts, while I was spending
a short time there, a citizen of Boston, who
carried down for his amusement a file of old
colonial newspapers, published in Boston
from 1740 or 1750, and along some thirty or
forty years, pointed out to me in those news-
papers numerous advertisements of slaves for
public sale in Boston.
Mr. MILLER. Yes, sir, and not only that;
but Cheif Justice Parsons, in a case reported
in 4 Massachusetts, makes the explicit decla-
ration that slavery did exist in Massachusetts
as it did in all the other colonies. The case
was the settlement of a manumitted slave
under their pauper laws. And the title deeds
to that slave, half a dozen of them in number,
are printed in that report. There bad been a
half a dozen distributions of estates of which
the slave formed a part of the assets, and
sales made of that slave by the respective
owners.
In the Somerset case, Lord Mansfield simply
decided that a man could not bold his slave
in England. Rut that decision did not dis-
turb the title of the master of that slave if he
got him hack into the English colonies. If
Somerset bad been taken on board the vessel
and carried back to the West India islands,
the British subject, by virtue of British law,
would have held his slave in that British
colony. The case of the slave Grace, subse-
quently decided by Lord Stowell, was to the
effect that if the master got his slave into a
British colony where slavery was tolerated
by law, his title to his slave was good,
Slavery a nuisance? When our constitu-
tion was adopted, every one of these States
held slaves. The provision in the constitution '
for their rendition, when they should
escape from their masters into a State where
slavery might not be tolerated; and the pro-
vision in the constitution allowing the con-
tinuance of the African slave trade until 1808,
for twenty years after its adoption, recog-
nized the right and the property of the mas-
ter in the services of his slaves; or else the
constitution and the concurrent testimony of
contemporaneous history upon this subject is
all a broad lie.
Slavery a nuisance? Have you been hold-
ing a nuisance all your lives? Have you, sir,
and other slaveholders in this convention,
now in your pockets the proceeds of this great
nuisance, this great evil? No, sir; you have
held this property by virtue of the laws of
your country. You have held your slaves,
and you hold them to-day by virtue of the
laws of your State, and by virtue of the con-
stitution and laws of your country. And to
call that a nuisance, it seems to me, is, to say
the least of it, a perversion of that legal term. |
