Accordingly at first there may have been some negroes who were held as servants for a term of years, and who were discharged when they had served their time.[68] There is no certain proof that this was so,[69] and the probabilities are rather against it, but the conscientious scruples of some of the early settlers make it at least possible. In the growth of the colony, however, this feeling did not continue strong enough to be decisive. Economic adjustment, an influx of men of different standards, and motives of expediency, perhaps of necessity, made the legal recognition of an inferior status inevitable. Against this the upholders of the idea that negroes should be held only as servants, for a term of years, waged a losing fight. It is true they did not desist, and in the course of one hundred years their view won a complete triumph; but their success came in abolition, and in overthrowing a system established, long after they had utterly failed to prevent the swift growth and the statutory recognition of legal slavery for life and in perpetuity. Aside from this one fundamental difference the incidents of each status were nearly the same. The negro held for life was subject to the same restrictions, tried in the same courts, and punished with the same punishments as the white servant. So far as either class was subject to special regulation at this time it was because of the laws for the management of servants, passed in 1683 and 1693, which concerned white servants equally with black slaves. These restrictions were as yet neither numerous nor detailed, being largely directed against free people who abetted servants in wrong doing. Thus, servants were forbidden to traffic in their masters' goods; but the only penalty fell on the receiver, who had to make double restitution. They were restricted as to movement, and when travelling they must have a pass. If they ran away they were punished, the white servant by extra service, the black slave by whipping, but this different punishment for the slave was not enacted until 1700, the beginning of the next period. Whoever harbored them was liable to the master for damages.[70] The relations between master and servant were likewise simple. The servant was compelled to obey the master. If he resisted or struck the master, he was punished at the discretion of the court. On the other hand the servant was to be treated kindly.[71] The period, then, prior to 1700 was characteristically a period of servitude. The laws spoke of servants white and black.[72] The regulations, the restrictions, the trials, the punishments, were identical. There was only the one difference: white servants were discharged with freedom dues at the end of a specified number of years; for negroes there was no discharge; they were servants for life, that is, slaves.