ter in the
meantime to provide "proper nourishment and cloathing" for the child,
but to be entitled to put him to work, all issue of such children to
be free whenever born. It further declared any voluntary contract of
service or indenture should not be binding longer than nine years.
Upper Canada was the first British possession to provide for the
abolition of slavery.[18]

It will be seen that the Statute did not put an end to slavery at
once. Those who were lawfully slaves remained slaves for life unless
manumitted and the statute rather discouraged manumission, as it
provided that the master on liberating a slave must give good and
sufficient security that the freed man would not become a public
charge. But, defective as it was, it was not long without attack. In
1798, Simcoe had left the province never to return,[19] and while the
government was being administered by the time-serving Peter Russell, a
bill was introduced into the Lower House to enable persons "migrating
into the province to bring their negro slaves with them." The bill was
contested at every stage but finally passed on a vote of eight to
four. In the Legislative Council it received the three months' hoist
and was never heard of again.[20] The argument in favor of the bill
was based on the scarcity of labor which all contemporary writers
speak of, the inducement to intending settlers to come to Upper Canada
where they would have the same privileges in respect of slavery as in
New York and elsewhere; in other words the inevitable appeals to
greed.

After this bill became law, slavery gradually disappeared. Public
opinion favored manumission and while there were not many manumissions
_inter vivos_,[21] in some measure owing to the provisions of the act
requiring security to be given in such case against the freed man
becoming a public charge, there were not a few liberations by
will.[22]

The number of slaves in Upper Canada was also diminished by what seems
at first sight paradoxical, that is, their flight across the Detroit
River into American territory. So long as Detroit and its vicinity
were British in fact and even for some years later, Section 6 of the
Ordinance of 1787 "that there shall be neither slavery not involuntary
servitude in the said territory otherwise than as the punishment of
crime" was in great measure a dead letter: but when Michigan was
incorporated as a territory in 1805, the ordinance became effective.
Many slaves made the