[Footnote 12: Hannah and other Indians, against Davis.--Since this adjudication, I have met with a manuscript act of assembly made in 1691 c. 9 entitled, "An Act for a free Trade with Indians," the enacting clause of which is in the very words of the act of 1705. c. 52. A similar title to an act of that session occurs in the edition of 1733. p. 94. and the chapter is numbered as in the manuscript. If this manuscript be authentic (which there is some reason to presume, it being copied in some blank leaves at the end of Purvis's edition, and apparently written about the time of the passage of the act), it would seem that no Indians brought into Virginia for more than a century, nor any of their descendents, can be retained in slavery in this commonwealth.] [Footnote 13: Although it be true that the number of slaves in the _whole_ state bears the proportion of 292,427, to 747,610, the whole number of souls in the state, that is, nearly as _two_ to _five_; yet this proportion is by no means _uniform_ throughout the state. In the forty-four counties lying upon the Bay, and the great rivers of the state, and comprehended by a line including Brunswick, Cumberland, Goochland, Hanover, Spottsylvania, Stafford, Prince William and Fairfax, and the counties eastward thereof, the number of slaves is 196,542, and the number of free persons, including free Negroes and mulattoes, 198,371 only. So that the blacks in that populous and extensive district of country are _more numerous_ than the whites. In the second class, comprehending nineteen counties, and extending from the last mentioned line to the Blue Ridge, and including the populous counties of Frederick and Berkeley, beyond the Blue Ridge, there are 82,286 slaves, and 136,251 free persons; the number of free persons in that class not being two to one, to the slaves. In the third class the proportion is considerably increased; the eleven counties of which it consists contain only 11,218 slaves, and 76,281 free persons. This class reaches to the Allegany ridge of mountains: the fourth and last class, comprehending fourteen counties westward of the third class, contains only 2,381 slaves, and 42,288 free persons. It is obvious from this statement that almost all the dangers and inconveniences which may be apprehended from a state of slavery on the one hand, or an attempt to abolish it, on the other, will be confined to the people eastward of the blue ridge of mountains.]