enacted by this Assembly and the authority
thereof, and it is hereby enacted, If any negroes or
Indians, either freemen, servants, or slaves, do walk in the
streets of the town of Newport, of any other town in this
Collony, after nine of the clock of the night, without a
certificate from their masters, or some English person of
said family with them, or some lawfull excuse for the same,
that it shall be lawfull for any person to take them up and
deliver them to a Constable, to be secured, or see them
secured, till the next morning, and then to be brought
before some Justice of the Peace in said town, to be dealt
withall, according to the recited Act, which said Justice
shall cause said person or persons so offending, to be
whipped at the publick whipping post in said town, not
exceeding fifteen stripes upon their naked backs, except
their incorrigible behavior require more. And all free
negroes and free Indians to be under the same penalty,
without a lawful excuse for their so being found walking in
the streets after such unseasonable time of night.

"And be it further enacted, All and every house keeper,
within said town or towns or Collony, that shall entertain
men's servants, either negroes or Indians, without leave of
their masters or to whom they do belong, after said set time
of the night before mentioned, and being convicted of the
same before any one Justice of the Peace, he or they shall
pay for each his defect five shillings in money, to be for
the use of the poor in the town where the person lives; and
if refused to be paid down, to be taken by distraint by a
warrant to any one Constable, in said town; any Act to the
contrary notwithstanding."[452]

It is rather remarkable that this Act should prohibit free Negroes and
free Indians from walking the streets after nine o'clock. In this
particular this bill had no equal in any of the other colonies. This
act seemed to be aimed with remarkable precision at the Negroes as a
class, both bond and free. The influence of free Negroes upon the
slaves had not been in harmony with the condition of the latter; and
the above Act was intended as a reminder, in part, to free Negroes
and Indians. It went to show that there was but little meaning in the
word "free," when placed before a Negro's name. No such restriction
could hav