Turning now to restrictive measures, we must first note the measures of the slave-consuming colonies which tended to limit the trade.  These measures, however, came comparatively late, were enforced with varying degrees of efficiency, and did not seriously affect the slave-trade before the Revolution.  The moral sentiment of New England put some check upon the trade.  Although in earlier times the most respectable people took ventures in slave-trading voyages, yet there gradually arose a moral sentiment which tended to make the business somewhat disreputable.[12] In the line, however, of definite legal enactments to stop New England citizens from carrying slaves from Africa to any place in the world, there were, before the Revolution, none.  Indeed, not until the years 1787-1788 was slave-trading in itself an indictable offence in any New England State.

The particular situation in each colony, and the efforts to restrict the small importing slave-trade of New England, can best be studied in a separate view of each community.

18. Restrictions in New Hampshire. The statistics of slavery in New Hampshire show how weak an institution it always was in that colony.[13] Consequently, when the usual instructions were sent to Governor Wentworth as to the encouragement he must give to the slave-trade, the House replied:  “We have considered his Maj^{ties} Instruction relating to an Impost on Negroes & Felons, to which this House answers, that there never was any duties laid on either, by this Goverm^{t}, and so few bro’t in that it would not be worth the Publick notice, so as to make an act concerning them."[14] This remained true for the whole history of the colony.  Importation was never stopped by actual enactment, but was eventually declared contrary to the Constitution of 1784.[15] The participation of citizens in the trade appears never to have been forbidden.

19. Restrictions in Massachusetts. The early Biblical codes of Massachusetts confined slavery to “lawfull Captives taken in iust warres, & such strangers as willingly selle themselves or are sold to us."[16] The stern Puritanism of early days endeavored to carry this out literally, and consequently when a certain Captain Smith, about 1640, attacked an African village and brought some of the unoffending natives home, he was promptly arrested.  Eventually, the General Court ordered the Negroes sent home at the colony’s expense, “conceiving themselues bound by y^e first oportunity to bear witnes against y^e haynos & crying sinn of manstealing, as also to P’scribe such timely redresse for what is past, & such a law for y^e future as may sufficiently deterr all oth^{r}s belonging to us to have to do in such vile & most odious courses, iustly abhored of all good & iust men."[17]