the labor or skill of the people.  Civil war seemed inevitable.  Thoughtful men began to consider the question as to which party the Negroes of the colony would contribute their strength.  It was no idle question to determine whether the Negroes were Tories or Whigs.  As early as 1750 the questions as to the legality of holding Negroes in slavery in British colonies began to be discussed in England and New England.  “What, precisely, the English law might be on the subject of slavery, still remained a subject of doubt."[358] Lord Holt held that slavery was a condition unknown to English law,—­that the being in England was evidence of freedom.  This embarrassed New-England planters in taking their slaves to England.  The planters banded for their common cause, and secured the written opinion of Yorke and Talbot, attorney and solicitor general of England.  They held that slaves could be held in England as well as in America; that baptism did not confer freedom:  and the opinion stood as sound law for nearly a half-century.[359] The men in England who lived on the money wrung from the slave-trade, the members of the Royal African Company, came to the rescue of the institution of slavery.  In order to maintain it by law in the American colonies, it had to be recognized in England.  The people of Massachusetts took a lively interest in the question.  In 1761, at a meeting “in the old court-house,” James Otis,[360] in a speech against the “writs of assistance,” struck a popular chord on the questions of “The Rights of the Colonies,” afterwards published (1764) by order of the Legislature.  He took the broad ground, “that the colonists, black and white, born here, are free-born British subjects and entitled to all the essential rights of such."[361] In 1766 Nathaniel Appleton and James Swan distinguished themselves in their defence of the doctrines of “liberty for all.”  It became the general topic of discussion in private and public, and country lyceums and college societies took it up as a subject of forensic disputation.[362] In the month of May, 1766, the representatives of the people were instructed to advocate the total abolition of slavery.  And on the 16th of March, 1767, a resolution was offered to see whether the instructions should be adhered to, and was unanimously carried in the affirmative.  But it should be remembered that British troops were in the colony, in the streets of Boston.  The mutterings of the distant thunder of revolution could be heard.  Public sentiment was greatly tempered toward the Negroes.  On the 31st of May, 1609, the House of Representatives of Massachusetts resolved against the presence of troops, and besought the governor to remove them.  His Excellency disclaimed any power under the circumstances to interfere.  The House denounced a standing army in time of peace, without the consent of the General Court, as “without precedent, and unconstitutional."[363] In 1769 one of the courts of Massachusetts gave a decision friendly to a slave, who was the plaintiff.  This stimulated the Negroes to an exertion for freedom.  The entire colony was in a feverish state of excitement.  An anonymous Tory writer reproached Bostonians for desiring freedom when they themselves enslaved others.