This "protest against man-stealing" has adorned and flavored many an oration on the "position of Massachusetts" on the slavery question. It has been brought out "to point a moral and adorn a tale" by the proud friends of the Commonwealth; but the law quoted above against "man-stealing," the language of the "protest," the statute on "bond servitude," and the practices of the colonists for many years afterwards, prove that many have gloried, but not according to the truth.[296] When it came to the question of damages, the court said: "For the negars (they being none of his, _but stolen_) we thinke meete to allow nothing."[297] So the decision of the court was based upon law,--the prohibition against "man-stealing." And it should not be forgotten that many of the laws of the colony were modelled after the Mosaic code. It is referred to, apologetically, in the statute of 1641; and no careful student can fail to read between the lines the desire there expressed to refer to the Old Testament as authority for slavery. Now, slaves were purchased by Abraham, and the New-England "doctors of the law" were unwilling to have slaves stolen when they could be bought[298] so easily. Dr. Moore says, in reference to the decision,-- "In all the proceedings of the General Court on this occasion, there is not a trace of anti-slavery opinion or sentiment, still less of anti-slavery legislation; though both have been repeatedly claimed for the honor of the colony."[299] And Dr. Moore is not alone in his opinion; for Mr. Hildreth says this case "in which Saltonstall was concerned has been magnified by too precipitate an admiration into a protest on the part of Massachusetts against the African slave-trade. So far, however, from any such protest being made, at the very birth of the foreign commerce of New England the African slave-trade became a regular business."[300] There is now, therefore, no room to doubt but what the decision was rendered on a technical point of law, and not inspired by an anti-slavery sentiment.