COLONIAL GOVERNMENT IN RHODE ISLAND, MAY, 1647.--AN ACT PASSED TO ABOLISH SLAVERY IN 1652, BUT WAS NEVER ENFORCED.--AN ACT SPECIFYING WHAT TIMES INDIAN AND NEGRO SLAVES SHOULD NOT APPEAR IN THE STREETS.--AN IMPOST-TAX ON SLAVES (1708).--PENALTIES IMPOSED ON DISOBEDIENT SLAVES.--ANTI-SLAVERY SENTIMENT IN THE COLONIES RECEIVES LITTLE ENCOURAGEMENT.--CIRCULAR LETTER FROM THE BOARD OF TRADE TO THE GOVERNOR OF THE ENGLISH COLONIES RELATIVE TO NEGRO SLAVES.--GOVERNOR CRANSTON'S REPLY.--LIST OF MILITIA-MEN, INCLUDING WHITE AND BLACK SERVANTS.--ANOTHER LETTER FROM THE BOARD OF TRADE.--AN ACT PREVENTING CLANDESTINE IMPORTATIONS AND EXPORTATION OF PASSENGERS, NEGROES, OR INDIAN SLAVES.--MASTERS OF VESSELS REQUIRED TO REPORT THE NAMES AND NUMBER OF PASSENGERS TO THE GOVERNOR.--VIOLATION OF THE IMPOST-TAX LAW ON SLAVES PUNISHED BY SEVERE PENALTIES.--APPROPRIATION BY THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY, JULY 5, 1715, FROM THE FUND DERIVED FROM THE IMPOST-TAX, FOR THE PAVING OF THE STREETS OF NEWPORT.--AN ACT PASSED DISPOSING OF THE MONEY RAISED BY IMPOST-TAX.--IMPOST-LAW REPEALED, MAY, 1732.--AN ACT RELATING TO FREEING MULATTO AND NEGRO SLAVES PASSED 1728.--AN ACT PASSED PREVENTING MASTERS OF VESSELS FROM CARRYING SLAVES OUT OF THE COLONY, JUNE 17, 1757.--EVE OF THE REVOLUTION.--AN ACT PROHIBITING IMPORTATION OF NEGROES INTO THE COLONY IN 1774.--THE POPULATION OF RHODE ISLAND IN 1730 AND 1774. Individual Negroes were held in bondage in Rhode Island from the time of the formation of the colonial government there, in May, 1647, down to the close of the eighteenth century. Like her sister colonies, she early took the poison of the slave-traffic into her commercial life, and found it a most difficult political task to rid herself of it. The institution of slavery was never established by statute in this colony; but it was so firmly rooted five years after the establishment of the government, that it required the positive and explicit prohibition of law to destroy it. On the 19th of May, 1652, the General Court passed the following Act against slavery. It is the earliest positive prohibition against slavery in the records of modern nations.