were at least several other blacks in the colony, one of whom proved unamenable to her master’s improper command, is told in the account of a contemporary traveler.[6] In the same period, furthermore, the central court of the colony condemned certain white criminals to become slaves to masters whom the court appointed.[7] In the light of these things the pro-slavery inclination of the much-disputed paragraph in the Body of Liberties, adopted in 1641, admits of no doubt.  The passage reads:  “There shall never be any bond slaverie, villinage or captivitie amongst us unles it be lawfull captives taken in just warres, and such strangers as willingly selle themselves or are sold to us.  And these shall have all the liberties and Christian usages which the law of God established in Israell concerning such persons doeth morally require.  This exempts none from servitude who shall be judged thereto by authoritie."[8]

[Footnote 2:  Thomas Dudley, Letter to the Countess of Lincoln, in Alex.  Young, Chronicles of the First Planters of Massachusetts Boy (Boston, 1846), p. 312.]

[Footnote 3:  Records of the Court of Assistants of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, 1630-1692 (Boston, 1904), pp. 135, 136.]

[Footnote 4:  Letter of John Winthrop to William Bradford, Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, XXXIII, 360; Winthrop, Journal (Original Narratives edition, New York, 1908), I, 260.]

[Footnote 5:  Records of the Court of Assistants, p. 118.]

[Footnote 6:  John Josslyn, “Two Voyages to New England,” in Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, XXIII, 231.]

[Footnote 7:  Records of the Court of Assistants, pp. 78, 79, 86.]

[Footnote 8:  Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, XXVIII, 231.]

On the whole it seems that the views expressed a few years later by Emanuel Downing in a letter to his brother-in-law John Winthrop were not seriously out of harmony with the prevailing sentiment.  Downing was in hopes of a war with the Narragansetts for two reasons, first to stop their “worship of the devill,” and “2lie, If upon a just warre the Lord should deliver them into our hands, we might easily have men, women and children enough to exchange for Moores,[9] which wil be more gaynful pilladge for us than wee conceive, for I doe not see how wee can thrive untill wee get into a stock of slaves sufficient to doe all our buisines, for our children’s children will hardly see this great continent filled with people, soe that our servants will still desire freedome to plant for themselves, and not stay but for verie great wages.[10] And I suppose you know verie well how we shall mayntayne 20 Moores cheaper than one Englishe servant.”

[Footnote 9:  I. e. negroes.]

[Footnote 10:  Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, XXXVI. 65.]