So the decision of the court was based upon law,—­the prohibition against “man-stealing.”  And it should not be forgotten that many of the laws of the colony were modelled after the Mosaic code.  It is referred to, apologetically, in the statute of 1641; and no careful student can fail to read between the lines the desire there expressed to refer to the Old Testament as authority for slavery.  Now, slaves were purchased by Abraham, and the New-England “doctors of the law” were unwilling to have slaves stolen when they could be bought[298] so easily.  Dr. Moore says, in reference to the decision,—­

“In all the proceedings of the General Court on this occasion, there is not a trace of anti-slavery opinion or sentiment, still less of anti-slavery legislation; though both have been repeatedly claimed for the honor of the colony."[299]

And Dr. Moore is not alone in his opinion; for Mr. Hildreth says this case “in which Saltonstall was concerned has been magnified by too precipitate an admiration into a protest on the part of Massachusetts against the African slave-trade.  So far, however, from any such protest being made, at the very birth of the foreign commerce of New England the African slave-trade became a regular business."[300] There is now, therefore, no room to doubt but what the decision was rendered on a technical point of law, and not inspired by an anti-slavery sentiment.

As an institution, slavery had at first a stunted growth in Massachusetts, and did not increase its victims to any great extent until near the close of the seventeenth century.  But when it did begin a perceptible growth, it made rapid and prodigious strides.  In 1676 there were about two hundred slaves in the colony, and they were chiefly from Guinea and Madagascar.[301] In 1680 Gov.  Bradstreet, in compliance with a request made by the home government, said that the slave-trade was not carried on to any great extent.  They were introduced in small lots, and brought from ten to forty pounds apiece.  He thought the entire number in the colony would not reach more than one hundred and twenty-five.  Few were born in the colony, and none had been baptized up to that time.[302] The year 1700 witnessed an unprecedented growth in the slave-trade.  From the 24th of January, 1698, to the 25th of December, 1707,[303] two hundred Negroes were imported into the colony,—­quite as many as in the previous sixty years.  In 1708 Gov.  Dudley’s report to the board of trade fixed the number of Negroes at five hundred and fifty, and suggested that they were not so desirable as white servants, who could be used in the army, and in time of peace turn their attention to planting.  The prohibition against the Negro politically and in a military sense, in that section of the country, made him almost valueless to the colonial government struggling for deliverance from the cruel laws of the mother country.  The white servant could join the “minute-men,”