[28] Preamble to the Body of Liberties of the Massachusetts Colony, 1641: Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc., 3d Ser. Vol. VIII. p. 216. See also General Laws and Liberties of the Massachusetts Colony, revised and reprinted by Order of the General Court, 1672, p. 1. [29] The Preamble in combination with the first Article of the Massachusetts Body of Liberties was adopted as the Preamble to the Connecticut Code of 1650. See Public Records of the Colony of Connecticut, edited by J. H. Trumbull, (Hartford, 1850,) p. 509; and compare with Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc., _ut supra_. I should not do justice to this "Body of Liberties," if I did not call attention to at least four different declarations. There is, first, the clause: "There shall never be any bond slavery, villenage, or captivity amongst us, unless it be lawful captives taken in just wars, and such strangers as willingly sell themselves or are sold to us"; and although this provision falls short of that universal freedom which is our present aspiration, it is a plain limitation upon Slavery, and marks the hostility of the Colony. Another declaration sets an example of hospitality: "If any people of other nations, professing the true Christian religion, shall flee to us from the tyranny or oppression of their persecutors, or from famine, wars, or the like necessary and compulsory cause, they shall be entertained and succored amongst us according to that power and prudence God shall give us." And it is further declared: "Every person within this jurisdiction, whether inhabitant or foreigner, shall enjoy the same Justice and Law that is general for the Plantation, which we constitute and execute one towards another, without partiality or delay." Here is nothing less than Equality before the Law, without this compendious term. There is another declaration, which has the same exalted character: "Every man, whether inhabitant or foreigner, free or not free, shall have liberty to come to any public Court, Council, or Town Meeting, and either by speech or writing to move any lawful, seasonable, and material question, or to present any necessary motion, complaint, petition, bill, or information, whereof that meeting hath proper cognizance, so it be done in convenient time, due order, and respective manner." Such declarations as these belong to the history of Freedom.