D BY
IMPOST-TAX.--IMPOST-LAW REPEALED, MAY, 1732.--AN ACT
RELATING TO FREEING MULATTO AND NEGRO SLAVES PASSED
1728.--AN ACT PASSED PREVENTING MASTERS OF VESSELS FROM
CARRYING SLAVES OUT OF THE COLONY, JUNE 17, 1757.--EVE OF
THE REVOLUTION.--AN ACT PROHIBITING IMPORTATION OF NEGROES
INTO THE COLONY IN 1774.--THE POPULATION OF RHODE ISLAND IN
1730 AND 1774.

Individual Negroes were held in bondage in Rhode Island from the time
of the formation of the colonial government there, in May, 1647, down
to the close of the eighteenth century. Like her sister colonies, she
early took the poison of the slave-traffic into her commercial life,
and found it a most difficult political task to rid herself of it. The
institution of slavery was never established by statute in this
colony; but it was so firmly rooted five years after the establishment
of the government, that it required the positive and explicit
prohibition of law to destroy it. On the 19th of May, 1652, the
General Court passed the following Act against slavery. It is the
earliest positive prohibition against slavery in the records of modern
nations.

"Whereas, there is a common course practiced amongst English
men to buy negers, to that end they may have them for
service or slaves forever; for the preventinge of such
practices among us, let it be ordered, that no blacke
mankind or white being forced by covenant bond, or
otherwise, to serve any man or his assighnes longer than ten
yeares, or until they come to bee twentie-four yeares of
age, if they bee taken in under fourteen, from the time of
their cominge within the liberties of this Collonie. And at
the end or terme of ten yeares to sett them free, as the
manner is with the English servants. And that man that will
not let them goe free, or shall sell them away elsewhere, to
that end that they may bee enslaved to others for a long
time, hee or they shall forfeit to the Collonie forty
pounds."[450]

The above law was admirable, but there was lacking the public
sentiment to give it practical force in the colony. It was never
repealed, and yet slavery flourished under it for a century and a
half. Mr. Bancroft says, "The law was not enforced, but the principle
lived among the people."[451] No doubt the principle lived among the
people; but, practically, they did but little towards emancipating
their slaves