The legal development of this slavery was rapid and brief. As it was not created by statutory enactment, so some of its most important incidents were never alluded to in the laws. The Assembly of Pennsylvania, unlike that of Virginia, never seems to have thought it necessary to define the status of the slave as property, the consequences of slave baptism, or the line of servile descent.[62] Some of these questions had been settled in other colonies before the founding of Pennsylvania, and there the results seem to have been accepted. Accordingly the steps in the development are neither obvious nor distinct. They rest not so much upon statute as upon court decisions interpreting usage, and in many cases the decisions do not come until the end of the slavery period. Notwithstanding all this there was a development, which may be said to fall into three periods. They were, first, the years from 1682 to 1700, when slavery was slowly diverging from servitude, which it still closely resembled; second, from 1700 to 1725-1726, when slavery was more sharply marked off from servitude; and third, the period from 1725-1726 to 1780, when nothing was added but some minor restrictions. During the earliest years slavery in Pennsylvania differed from servitude in but little, save that servitude was for a term of years and slavery was for life. It may be questioned whether at first all men recognized even this difference. Many of Penn's first colonists were men who embarked upon their undertaking with high ideals of religion and right, and whose conception of what was right could not easily be reconciled with hopeless bondage.[63] The strength of this sentiment is seen in the well known provision of Penn's charter to the Free Society of Traders, 1682, that if they held blacks they should make them free at the end of fourteen years, the blacks then to become the Company's tenants.[64] It is the motive in Benjamin Furley's proposal to hold negroes not longer than eight years.[65] It is particularly evident in the protest made at Germantown in 1688.[66] It is seen in George Keith's declaration of principles in 1693.[67] And it gave impetus to the movement among the Friends, which, starting about 1696, led finally to the emancipation of all their negroes.