n the slavery question. It
has been brought out "to point a moral and adorn a tale" by the proud
friends of the Commonwealth; but the law quoted above against
"man-stealing," the language of the "protest," the statute on "bond
servitude," and the practices of the colonists for many years
afterwards, prove that many have gloried, but not according to the
truth.[296] When it came to the question of damages, the court said:
"For the negars (they being none of his, _but stolen_) we thinke meete
to allow nothing."[297]

So the decision of the court was based upon law,--the prohibition
against "man-stealing." And it should not be forgotten that many of
the laws of the colony were modelled after the Mosaic code. It is
referred to, apologetically, in the statute of 1641; and no careful
student can fail to read between the lines the desire there expressed
to refer to the Old Testament as authority for slavery. Now, slaves
were purchased by Abraham, and the New-England "doctors of the law"
were unwilling to have slaves stolen when they could be bought[298] so
easily. Dr. Moore says, in reference to the decision,--

"In all the proceedings of the General Court on this
occasion, there is not a trace of anti-slavery opinion or
sentiment, still less of anti-slavery legislation; though
both have been repeatedly claimed for the honor of the
colony."[299]

And Dr. Moore is not alone in his opinion; for Mr. Hildreth says this
case "in which Saltonstall was concerned has been magnified by too
precipitate an admiration into a protest on the part of Massachusetts
against the African slave-trade. So far, however, from any such
protest being made, at the very birth of the foreign commerce of New
England the African slave-trade became a regular business."[300] There
is now, therefore, no room to doubt but what the decision was rendered
on a technical point of law, and not inspired by an anti-slavery
sentiment.

As an institution, slavery had at first a stunted growth in
Massachusetts, and did not increase its victims to any great extent
until near the close of the seventeenth century. But when it did begin
a perceptible growth, it made rapid and prodigious strides. In 1676
there were about two hundred slaves in the colony, and they were
chiefly from Guinea and Madagascar.[301] In 1680 Gov. Bradstreet, in
compliance with a request made by the home government, said that the
slave-trade was not carried on to any gre