mind, cannot
be proved from the will any more than it could be proved, in
the first case above, that the testator did not know a fee
simple would pass a will without the word heirs; nor than,
in the second case, that the devise of a trust, that might
continue forever, would convey a fee-simple without the like
words. I take it, therefore, that the executor of this will
is, by implication, obliged to give bonds to the town
treasurer, and, in his refusal, is a wrongdoer; and I cannot
think he ought to be allowed to take advantage of his own
wrong, so much as to allege this want of an indemnification
to evade an action of the case brought for the legacy by the
negro himself.

But why may not the negro bring a special action of the case
against the executor, setting forth the will, the devise of
freedom and a legacy, and then the necessity of
indemnification by the province law, and then a refusal to
indemnify, and, of consequence, to set free and to pay the
legacy?

Perhaps the negro is free at common law by the devise. Now,
the province law seems to have been made only to oblige the
master to maintain his manumitted slave, and not to declare
a manumission in the master's lifetime, or at his death,
void. Should a master give his negro his freedom, under his
hand and seal, without giving bond to the town, and should
afterwards repent and endeavor to recall the negro into
servitude, would not that instrument be a sufficient
discharge against the master?"[371]

It is pleaded in extenuation of this Act, that it was passed to put a
stop to the very prevalent habit of emancipating old and decrepit
Negroes after there was no more service in them. If this be true, it
reveals a practice more cruel than slavery itself.

In 1702 the representatives of the town of Boston were "desired to
promote the encouraging the bringing of White servants and to put a
period to Negroes being slaves."[372] This was not an anti-slavery
measure, as some have wrongly supposed.[373] It was not a resolution
or an Act: it was simply a request; and one that the "Representatives"
did not grant for nearly a century afterwards.

"In 1718, a committee of both Houses prepared a bill
entitled 'An Act for the Encouraging the Importation of
White Male Servants, and the preventing the Clandestine
bringi