In the year 1641, the general court of Massachusetts, in which the legislative power was vested, adopted a code of fundamental laws called "Fundamentals" or "Body of Liberties," which were compiled from two separate drafts reported by those "Godly ministers," "the great Cotton" as he was called, and Nathaniel Ward, who had been appointed commissioners for that purpose. One of the "Liberties" provided that "There shall never be any bond-slavery, villanage nor captivity among us, unless it be lawful captives taken in just wars, and such strangers as willingly sell themselves or are sold unto us, and these shall have all the liberties and Christian usages which the law of God, established in Israel, requires. This exempts none from servitude who shall be judged thereto by authority." This surely was a one-sided idea of religious liberty; the "elect" gave themselves abundant liberty to do as they pleased in the matter. This "Fundamental" was twenty years in advance of any legislative enactment in Virginia recognizing the existence of slavery. A confederacy was formed, in the year 1643, between the colonies of Massachusetts, Plymouth, Connecticut and New Haven, called the "United Colonies of New England" into which the "heretics" of Rhode Island were not permitted to enter. Slavery existed by law everywhere now in New England, including Rhode Island, and one of the stipulations of the compact, by which the United Colonies were bound, was that fugitive servants or slaves should be delivered up when fleeing from one province to another. The stipulation was almost in the identical terms of that long afterwards incorporated into the United States Constitution upon the same subject. The harsh treatment pursued towards dissenters, including the most delicate females, who were sometimes stripped naked and whipped through the streets, and the trials and execution of persons as witches, furnish revolting details of the conduct of the "elect," but it is not intended to refer more particularly to that here. One fact, however, in regard to the history of Virginia and Massachusetts may be properly mentioned--as descendants of the latter's colonists have arraigned at the bar of public opinion, the people of Virginia, as well as the whole South upon the subject of slavery--and that fact is very suggestive.