"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 past, _and such a law for the future, as may sufficiently deter all others belonging to us to have to do in such vile and most 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 present, sent to his native country of Guinea, and a letter with him, of the indignation of the Court thereabouts, and justice thereof."[89] [88] Mass. Records, Oct. 14, 1645, Vol. III. p. 49. Winthrop, History of New England, Vol. II. p. 244. [89] Mass. Records, Nov. 4, 1646, Vol. III. p. 84. Note the language: "Such vile and most odious courses, justly abhorred of all good and just men." Better words could not be employed against the infamies of Slavery in our day. The Colony that could issue this noble decree was inconsistent with itself, when it permitted its rocky soil to be pressed by the footstep of a single slave. But a righteous public opinion early and constantly set its face against Slavery. As early as 1701 the following vote appears on the Records of Boston: "The Representatives are desired to promote the encouraging the bringing of white servants, _and to put a period to negroes being slaves_."[90] Perhaps, in all history, this is the earliest testimony from any official body against Negro Slavery, and I thank God that it came from Boston, my native town. In 1705 a heavy duty was imposed upon every negro imported into the Province;[91] in 1712 the importation of Indians as servants or slaves was strictly forbidden;[92] but the general subject of Slavery attracted little attention till the beginning of the controversy which ended in the Revolution, when the rights of the blacks were blended by all true patriots with those of the whites. Sparing unnecessary detail, suffice it to say, that, as early as 1770, one of the courts of Massachusetts, anticipating by two years the renowned judgment in Somerset's case, established within its jurisdiction the principle of emancipation, and, under its touch of magic power, changed slave into freeman. Similar decisions followed from other courts. In 1776 the whole number of blacks, both free and slave, sprinkled thinly over "hardy" Massachusetts, was five thousand two hundred and forty-nine, being to the whites as one to sixty-five,[93]--while in "slaveholding" South Carolina the number of negro slaves at that time was not far from one hundred thousand, being at least one slave for every freeman, thus rendering that Colony anything but "hardy." In these figures I give South Carolina the benefit of the most favorable estimates. Good authorities make the slaves at that time in this State more than twice as numerous as the