of being introduced on any reasons, moral or political, but only by positive law, which preserves its force long after the reasons, occasions, and time itself from whence it was created is erased from memory.  It is so odious that nothing can be suffered to support it but positive law.  Whatever inconveniences, therefore, may follow from the decision, I cannot say this case is allowed or approved by the law of England, and therefore the black must be discharged.’”

The influence of this decision was wide-spread, and hurtful to slavery in the British colonies in North America.  It poured new life into the expiring hopes of the Negroes, and furnished a rule of law for the advocates of “freedom for all.”  It raised a question of law in all the colonies as to whether the colonial governments could pass an Act legalizing that which was “contrary to English law."[366]

Notwithstanding the general and generous impulse for liberty, the indissoluble ties of avarice, and the greed for the unearned gains of the slave-trade, made public men conservate to conserve the interests of those directly interested in the inhuman traffic.

“In an age when the interests of trade guided legislation, this branch of commerce possessed paramount attractions.  Not a statesman exposed its enormities; and, if Richard Baxter echoed the opinions of Puritan Massachusetts, if Southern drew tears by the tragic tale of Oronooko, if Steele awakened a throb of indignation by the story of Inkle and Yarico, if Savage and Shenstone pointed their feeble couplets with the wrongs of ‘Afric’s sable children,’ if the Irish metaphysician Hutcheson, struggling for a higher system of morals,—­justly stigmatized the traffic; yet no public opinion lifted its voice against it.  English ships, fitted out in English cities, under the special favor of the royal family, of the ministry, and of parliament, stole from Africa, in the years from 1700 to 1750, probably a million and a half of souls, of whom one-eighth were buried in the Atlantic, victims of the passage; and yet in England no general indignation rebuked the enormity; for the public opinion of the age was obedient to materialism."[367]

Humane masters who desired to emancipate their slaves were embarrassed by a statute unfriendly to manumission.  The Act of 1703[368] deterred many persons from emancipating their slaves on account of its unjust and hard requirements.  And under it quite a deal of litigation arose.  It required every master who desired to liberate his slave, before doing so, to furnish a bond to the treasurer of the town or place in which he resided, in a sum not less than fifty pounds.[369] This was to indemnify the town or place in case the Negro slave thus emancipated should, through lameness or sickness, become a charge.  In case a master failed to furnish such security, his emancipated slaves were still contemplated by the law as in bondage, “notwithstanding any manumission or instrument of freedom to them made or given.”  Judge Sewall, in a letter to John Adams, cites a case in point.