FROM THE FUND DERIVED FROM THE
     IMPOST-TAX, FOR THE PAVING OF THE STREETS OF NEWPORT.—­AN
     ACT PASSED DISPOSING OF THE MONEY RAISED BY
     IMPOST-TAX.—­IMPOST-LAW REPEALED, MAY, 1732.—­AN ACT
     RELATING TO FREEING MULATTO AND NEGRO SLAVES PASSED
     1728.—­AN ACT PASSED PREVENTING MASTERS OF VESSELS FROM
     CARRYING SLAVES OUT OF THE COLONY, JUNE 17, 1757.—­EVE OF
     THE REVOLUTION.—­AN ACT PROHIBITING IMPORTATION OF NEGROES
     INTO THE COLONY IN 1774.—­THE POPULATION OF RHODE ISLAND IN
     1730 AND 1774.

Individual Negroes were held in bondage in Rhode Island from the time of the formation of the colonial government there, in May, 1647, down to the close of the eighteenth century.  Like her sister colonies, she early took the poison of the slave-traffic into her commercial life, and found it a most difficult political task to rid herself of it.  The institution of slavery was never established by statute in this colony; but it was so firmly rooted five years after the establishment of the government, that it required the positive and explicit prohibition of law to destroy it.  On the 19th of May, 1652, the General Court passed the following Act against slavery.  It is the earliest positive prohibition against slavery in the records of modern nations.

“Whereas, there is a common course practiced amongst English men to buy negers, to that end they may have them for service or slaves forever; for the preventinge of such practices among us, let it be ordered, that no blacke mankind or white being forced by covenant bond, or otherwise, to serve any man or his assighnes longer than ten yeares, or until they come to bee twentie-four yeares of age, if they bee taken in under fourteen, from the time of their cominge within the liberties of this Collonie.  And at the end or terme of ten yeares to sett them free, as the manner is with the English servants.  And that man that will not let them goe free, or shall sell them away elsewhere, to that end that they may bee enslaved to others for a long time, hee or they shall forfeit to the Collonie forty pounds."[450]

The above law was admirable, but there was lacking the public sentiment to give it practical force in the colony.  It was never repealed, and yet slavery flourished under it for a century and a half.  Mr. Bancroft says, “The law was not enforced, but the principle lived among the people."[451] No doubt the principle lived among the people; but, practically, they did but little towards emancipating their slaves until the Revolutionary War cloud broke over their homes.  There is more in the statement Mr. Bancroft makes than the casual reader is likely to discern.