“Provided also that this act shall not be construed to extend to any such Person or Persons, occasionally hereafter coming to reside within this Province, or passing thro’ the same, who may bring such Negro or other Person or Persons as necessary servants into this Province provided that the stay or residence of such Person or Persons shall not exceed Twelve months or that such Person or Persons within said time send such Negro or other Person or Persons out of this Province there to be and remain, and also that during said Residence such Negro or other Person or Persons shall not be sold or alienated within the same.

“[Transcriber’s Note:  Inverted A appears here.] And be it further Enacted and declared that nothing in this act contained shall extend or be construed to extend for retaining or holding in perpetual servitude any Negro or other Person or Persons now inslaved within this Province but that every such Negro or other Person or Persons shall be intituled to all the Benefits such Negro or other Person or Persons might by Law have been intituled to, in case this act had not been made.

     “In the House of Representatives March 2, 1774.  Read a first
     & second Time.  March 3, 1774.  Read a third Time & passed to
     be engrossed.  Sent up for concurrence.

T. CUSHING, Spkr.

“In Council March 3, 1774.  Read a first time. 4.  Read a second Time and passed in Concurrence to be Engrossed with the Amendment at [Transcriber’s Note:  Inverted A appears here.] dele the whole Clause.  Sent down for concurrence.

THOS.  FLUCKER, Secry.

     “In the House of Representatives March 4, 1774.  Read and
     concurred.

T. CUSHING, Spkr.”

Like all other measures for the suppression of the slave-trade, this bill failed to become a law.  If Massachusetts desired to free herself from this twofold cross of woe,—­even if her great jurists could trace the law that justified the abolition of the curse, in the pages of the royal charter,—­were not the British governors of the Province but conserving the corporation interests of the home government and the members of the Royal African Company?  By the Treaty of Utrecht, England had agreed to furnish the Spanish West Indies with Negroes for the space of thirty years.  She had aided all her colonies to establish slavery, and had sent her navies to guard the vessels that robbed Africa of five hundred thousand souls annually.[412] This was the cruel work of England.  For all her sacrifices in the war, the millions of treasure she had spent, the blood of her children so prodigally shed, with the glories of Blenheim, of Ramillies, of Oudenarde and Malplaquet, England found her consolation and reward in seizing and enjoying, as the lion’s share of results of the grand alliance against the Bourbons, the exclusive right for thirty years of selling African slaves to the Spanish West Indies and the coast of America![413] Why should Gov.  Hutchinson sign a bill that was intended to choke the channel of a commerce in human souls that was so near the heart of the British throne?