“And be it further enacted, that all the issues of English, or other free-born women, that have already married negroes, shall serve the master of their parents, till they be thirty years of age and no longer."[419]

Section one is the most positive and sweeping statute we have ever seen on slavery.  It fixes the term of servitude for the longest time man can claim,—­the period of his earthly existence,—­and dooms the children to a service from which they were to find discharge only in death.  Section two was called into being on account of the intermarriage of white women with slaves.  Many of these women had been indentured as servants to pay their passage to this country, some had been sent as convicts, while still others had been apprenticed for a term of years.  Some of them, however, were very worthy persons.  No little confusion attended the fixing of the legal status of the issue of such marriages; and it was to deter Englishwomen from such alliances, and to determine the status of the children before the courts, that this section was passed.  Section three was clearly an ex post facto law:  but the public sentiment of the colony was reflected in it; and it stood, and was re-enacted in 1676.

Like Virginia, the colony of Maryland found the soil rich, and the cultivation of tobacco a profitable enterprise.  The country was new, and the physical obstructions in the way of civilization numerous and formidable.  Of course all could not pursue the one path that led to agriculture.  Mechanic and trade folk were in great demand.  Laborers were scarce, and the few that could be obtained commanded high wages.  The Negro slave’s labor could be made as cheap as his master’s conscience and heart were small.  Cheaper labor became the cry on every hand, and the Negro was the desire of nearly all white men in the colony.[420] In 1671 the Legislature passed “An Act encouraging the importation of negroes and slaves into” the colony, which was followed by another and similar Act in 1692.  Two motives inspired the colony to build up the slave-trade; viz., to have more laborers, and to get something for nothing.  And, as soon as Maryland was known to be a good market for slaves, the traffic increased with wonderful rapidity.  Slaves soon became the bone and sinew of the working-force of the colony.  They were used to till the fields, to fell the forests, to assist mechanics, and to handle light crafts along the water-courses.  They were to be found in all homes of opulence and refinement; and, unfortunately, their presence in such large numbers did much to lower honorable labor in the estimation of the whites, and to enervate women in the best white society.  While the colonists persuaded themselves that slavery was an institution indispensable to the colony, its evil effects soon became apparent.  It were impossible to engage the colony in the slave-trade, and escape the bad results of such an inhuman enterprise.  It made men cruel and avaricious.