orrection; where, under
severe discipline, he was constrained to work out his fine at the rate
of one shilling per day! If a Negro "presume to smite or strike any
person of the English, or other Christian nation," he was publicly
flogged by the justice before whom tried, at the discretion of that
officer.

During this period the social condition of the Negroes, bond and
free, was very deplorable. The early records of the town of Boston
preserve the fact that one Thomas Deane, in the year 1661, was
prohibited from employing a Negro in the manufacture of hoops, under a
penalty of twenty shillings; for what reason is not stated.[340] No
churches or schools, no books or teachers, they were left to the gloom
and vain imaginations of their own fettered intellects. John Eliot
"had long lamented it with a Bleeding and Burning Passion, that the
English used their Negroes but as their Horses or their Oxen, and that
so little care was taken about their immortal souls; he looked upon it
as a Prodigy, that any wearing the _Name_ of _Christians_ should so
much have the _Heart_ of _Devils_ in them, as to prevent and hinder
the Instruction of the poor _Blackamores_, and confine the souls of
their miserable Slaves to a _Destroying Ignorance_, merely for fear of
thereby losing the Benefit of their Vassalage; but now he made a
motion to the _English_ within two or three Miles of him, that at such
a time and place they would send their _Negroes_ once a week unto him:
For he would then _Catechise_ them, and _Enlighten_ them, to the
utmost of his power in things of their Everlasting Peace; however, he
did not live to make much progress in this undertaking."[341] The few
faint voices of encouragement, that once in a great while reached them
from the pulpit[342] and forum, were as strange music, mellowed and
sweetened by the distance. The free and slave Negroes were separated
by law, were not allowed to communicate together to any great extent.
They were not allowed in numbers greater than three, and then, if not
in the service of some white person, were liable to be arrested, and
sent to the House of Correction.

"The slave was the property of his master as much as his ox
or his horse; _he had no civil rights_ but that of
protection from cruelty; he could acquire no property nor
dispose of any[343] without the consent of his master.... We
think he had not the capacity to communicate a civil
relation to his chi