To this Mr. Sumner replied at once:-- "The Senator from South Carolina is so jealous of the honor of his own State, that he will pardon me, if I interrupt him for one moment, merely to explain the offensive statute to which he has referred. I have nothing to say in vindication of it: I simply desire that it should be understood. This statute, which bears date 1788, anterior to the National Government, was applicable only to Africans or negroes not citizens of some one of the United States; and, according to contemporary evidence, it was intended to protect the Commonwealth against the vagabondage of fugitive slaves. But I do not vindicate the statute; I only explain it; and I add, that it has long since been banished from the statute-book." There is a Report to the Massachusetts Legislature by Theodore Lyman, Jr., as Chairman of a Committee "to report a Bill concerning the Admission into this State of Free Negroes and Mulattoes," dated January 16, 1822, which confirms the position of Mr. Sumner. After a few preliminary remarks, it is said:-- "The Committee have already found in the statute-books of this Commonwealth a law, passed in 1788, regulating the residence in this State of certain persons of color. They believe that _this law has never been enforced_, and, ineffectual as it has proved, they would never have been the authors of placing among the statutes a law so arbitrary in its principle, and in its operation _so little accordant with the institutions, feelings, and practices of the people of this Commonwealth_." The Report then goes into a history of the public acts and proceedings in relation to colored persons in Massachusetts, from the earliest colonial times down to the date of the enactment, in order to show the spirit of the people towards this class, and concludes with observations like the following:--