the hart for the water-brook.  Far from their native country, without the blessings of the Church, or the warmth of substantial friendship, they fell into a listless condition, a somnolence that led them to stagger against some of the regulations of the Province.  Their wandering was not inspired by any subjective, inherent, generic evil:  it was but the tossing of a weary, distressed mind under the dreadful influences of a hateful dream.  And what little there is in the early records of the colony of New Jersey is at once a compliment to the humanity of the master, and the docility of the slave.

In 1676 the colony was divided into East and West Jersey, with separate governments.  The laws of East Jersey, promulgated in 1682, contained laws prohibiting the entertaining of fugitive servants, or trading with Negroes.  The law respecting fugitive servants was intended to destroy the hopes of runaways in the entertainment they so frequently obtained at the hands of benevolent Quakers and other enemies of “indenture” and slavery.  The law-makers acted upon the presumption, that as the Negro had no property, did not own himself, he could not sell any article of his own.  All slaves who attempted to dispose of any article were regarded with suspicion.  The law made it a misdemeanor for a free person to purchase any thing from a slave, and hence cut off a source of revenue to the more industrious slaves, who by their frugality often prepared something for sale.

In 1694 “an Act concerning slaves” was passed by the Legislature of East Jersey.  It provided, among other things, for the trial of “negroes and other slaves, for felonies punishable with death, by a jury of twelve persons before three justices of the peace; for theft, before two justices; the punishment by whipping.”  Here was the grandest evidence of the high character of the white population in East Jersey.  In every other colony in North America the Negro was denied the right of “trial by jury,” so sacred to Englishmen.  In Virginia, Maryland, Massachusetts, Connecticut,—­in all the colonies,—­the Negro went into court convicted, went out convicted, and was executed, upon the frailest evidence imaginable.  But here in Jersey the only example of justice was shown toward the Negro in North America.  “Trial by jury” implied the right to be sworn, and give competent testimony.  A Negro slave, when on trial for his life, was accorded the privilege of being tried by twelve honest white colonists before three justices of the peace.  This was in striking contrast with the conduct of the colony of New York, where Negroes were arrested upon the incoherent accusations of dissolute whites and terrified blacks.  It gave the Negroes a new and an anomalous position in the New World.  It banished the cruel theory of Virginia, New York, and Connecticut, that the Negro was a pagan, and therefore should not be sworn in courts of justice, and threw open a wide door for his entrance into a more hopeful