The rigorous system of domestic slavery established in the colony of Massachusetts bore its bitter fruit in due season.  It was impossible to exclude the slaves from the privileges of the Church and State without inflicting a moral injury upon the holy marriage relation.  In the contemplation of the law the slave was a chattel, an article of merchandise.  The custom of separating parent and child, husband and wife, was very clear proof that the marriage relation was either positively ignored by the institution of slavery, or grossly violated under the slightest pretext.  All well-organized society or government rests upon this sacred relation.  But slavery, with lecherous grasp and avaricious greed, trailed the immaculate robes of marriage in the moral filth of the traffic in human beings.  True, there never was any prohibition against the marriage of one slave to another slave,—­for they tried to breed slaves in Massachusetts!—­but there never was any law encouraging the lawful union of slaves until after the Revolutionary War, in 1786.  We rather infer from the following in the Act of October, 1705, that the marriage relation among slaves had been left entirely to the caprices of the master.

     “And no master shall unreasonably deny marriage to his Negro
     with one of the same nation; any law, usage or custom to the
     contrary notwithstanding."[330]

We have not been able to discover “any law” positively prohibiting marriage among slaves; but there was a custom denying marriage to the Negro, that at length received the weight of positive law.  Mr. Palfrey says,—­

     “From the reverence entertained by the fathers of New
     England for the nuptial tie, it is safe to infer that slave
     husbands and wives were never separated."[331]

We have searched faithfully to find the slightest justification for this inference of Mr. Palfrey, but have not found it.  There is not a line in any newspaper of the colony, until 1710, that indicates the concern of the people in the lawful union of slaves.  And there was no legislation upon the subject until 1786, when an “Act for the orderly Solemnization of Marriage” passed.  That Negro slaves were united in marriage, there is abundant evidence, but not many in this period.  It was almost a useless ceremony when “the customs and usages” of slavery separated them at the convenience of the owner.  The master’s power over his slaves was almost absolute.  If he wanted to sell the children and keep the parents, his decision was not subject to any court of law.  It was final.  If he wanted to sell the wife of his slave man into the rice-fields of the Carolinas or into the West India Islands, the tears of the husband only exasperated the master.  “The fathers of New England” had no reverence for the “nuptial tie” among their slaves, and, therefore, tore slave families asunder without the least compunction of conscience.  “Negro children were considered an incumbrance