wed plainly that the friends of the original bill had been driven
from their high ground. It was like applying for the position of a
major-general, and then accepting the place of a corporal. It was as
though they had asked for a fish, and accepted a serpent instead. It
seriously lamed the cause of emancipation. It filled the slaves with
gloom, and their friends with apprehension. On the other hand, those
who profited by barter in flesh and blood laughed secretly to
themselves at the abortive attempt of the anti-slavery friends to call
a halt on the trade. They took courage. For ten weary years the voices
lifted for the freedom of the slave were few, faint, and far between.
The bill itself has been lost. What its subject-matter was, is left to
uncertain and unsatisfactory conjecture. All we know is from the title
just quoted. But it was, nevertheless, the only direct measure offered
in the Provincial Legislature against slavery during the entire
colonial period, and came nearest to passage of any. But "a miss is as
good as a mile!"

It was now the spring season of 1771. Ten years had flown, and no one
in all the Province of Massachusetts had had the courage to attempt
legislation friendly to the slave. The scenes of the preceding year
were fresh in the minds of the inhabitants of Boston. The blood of the
martyrs to liberty was crying from the ground. The "red coats" of the
British exasperated the people. The mailed hand, the remorseless steel
finger, of English military power was at the throat of the rights of
the people. The colony was gasping for independent political life. A
terrible struggle for liberty was imminent. The colonists were about
to contend for all that men hold dear,--their wives, their children,
their homes, and their country. But while they were panting for an
untrammelled existence, to plant a free nation on the shores of North
America, they were robbing Africa every year of her sable children,
and condemning them to a bondage more cruel than political
subjugation. This glaring inconsistency imparted to reflecting persons
a new impulse toward anti-slavery legislation.

In the spring of 1771 the subject of suppressing the slave-trade was
again introduced into the Legislature. On the 12th of April a bill
"_To prevent the Importation of slaves from Africa_" was introduced,
and read the first time, and, upon the question "When shall the bill
be read again?" was ordered to a second reading on the day fol