[Footnote 683: In 1700 Sewall, then a judge of the superior court, wrote an anti-slavery tract entitled _The Selling of Joseph_. It is reprinted in the _Procds. Mass. Hist. Soc._ (1863-64), 161-65; with the _Diary_ in 5 _Mass. Hist. Coll._, VI, 16-20, note; and in MOORE, _Notes on Hist. of Slavery in Mass._, 83-87. The next year JOHN SAFFIN, a judge of the same court, replied to Sewall in _A Brief and Candid Answer_ (Boston, 1701); reprinted by MOORE, _op. cit._, 251-56. Compare SEWALL'S letter _To the Rev^d. & aged Mr. John Higginson_ (Apr. 13, 1706), and his extract from the _Athenian Oracle_, II, 460-63, both reprinted by MOORE, _op. cit._, 89-94. Sewall favored a law requiring "that all importers of Negroes shall pay 40 shillings per head to discourage the bringing of them." _Cf._ BLISS, _Side Glimpses from the Col. Meeting-House_, 21; WEEDEN, _Ecc. and Soc. Hist._, II, 450.] [Footnote 684: According to Bliss, "as time passed on and the slave trade flourished," Sewall "must have dismissed his anti-slavery opinions;" for the following advertisement appears in the Boston _News-Letter_ of June 23, 1726: "To be sold by Mr. Samuel Sewall at his House in the Common, Boston, several likely young Negro Men & Boys Just Arrived."--_Side Glimpses from the Col. Meeting-House_, 21.] [Footnote 685: "An Act for the better preventing of a spurious and mixt issue" (Dec. 5, 1705): _Acts and Resolves_, I, 578, 579; _Charters and Gen. Laws_, Appendix, 748: "Be it enacted ... that none of her majesty's English or Scottish Subjects, nor of any other Christian nation within this province, shall contract matrimony with any Negro or Molatto: nor shall any ... presume to join any such in Marriage, on pain of forfeiting ... _fifty pounds_."] [Footnote 686: By the act of 1786 intermarriage of whites with Indians, negroes, and mulattoes is forbidden.] [Footnote 687: Of the bill for the act of 1705 SEWALL writes: "Deputies send in a Bill against fornication or Marriage of White men with Negros or Indians; with extraordinary penalties.... If it be pass'd, I fear twill be an O[=p]ression provoking to God, and that which will promote Murders and other Abominations. I have got the Indians out of the Bill, and some mitigation for them [the Negroes] left in it, and the clause about their Masters not denying their Marriage." _Diary_: in 5 _Mass. Hist. Coll._, VI, 143.]