In the revised Code of Virginia, adopted in the year 1705, is contained the final enactment upon the subject of slavery during the colonial state, except some acts imposing duties on imported slaves, and by that enactment it was provided that "all servants imported or brought into this country by sea or land, who were not Christians in their native country (except Turks and Moors in amity with his majesty, and others who can make due proof of their being free in England or any other Christian country before they were shipped in order to transportation thither) shall be accounted and be slaves, notwithstanding a conversion to Christianity afterwards"; and it was further provided--as in the first act on the subject--for "all children to be bond or free according to the condition of their mothers." The Virginia Assembly had passed, from time to time, acts imposing a duty of twenty shillings a head on all imported slaves, and this being renewed in 1723, was repealed by royal proclamation, but the Board of Trade in England intimated that they had no objection to a duty on imported negroes, provided it was exacted from the colonial purchaser, and not from the English seller; and in 1734 an act was passed imposing a duty of five per cent. to be paid by the purchaser, which was subsequently increased and reached as high as twenty per cent. In the year 1772, the House of Burgesses of Virginia adopted an address to George III, declaring the importation of negroes from Africa to be an inhuman trade and asking that all restraints be removed from the passage of acts to check "that pernicious commerce," which request was not granted. After the commencement of the difficulties which led to the Revolution, the Virginia convention, which assembled the 1st of August, 1774, and took upon itself the actual management of the affairs of the colony, adopted among its first acts, a resolution to import "no more slaves, nor British goods, nor tea." Practically this resolution put an end forever to the African slave trade so far as Virginia was concerned, and its abolition was subsequently confirmed during the war of the Revolution by a more formal act passed by the legislature in the year 1778, prohibiting the importation of slaves from any quarter, whether by sea or land, and providing that all brought into the State in violation of the law should be free. Slaves brought in by citizens of other of the United States coming into Virginia as actual residents, and those inherited by citizens of Virginia in other States of the Union and brought in by them being exempted from the operation of the act. In addition to the grant of freedom to the slaves themselves heavy penalties were imposed on both the buyer and seller who violated the act. In adopting this prohibition, Virginia was ahead of all the States in the Union except the little State of Delaware, and its action preceded the abolition of the slave trade, by England, thirty years.