commissioned as governor. The legislative career of the
Province began in the fall of the same year; and history must record
that it was one of the most remarkable and startling North America
ever witnessed. The portions of the constitution which refer to the
institution of slavery are as follows:--

"97th. But since the natives of that place, who will be
concerned in our plantation, are utterly strangers to
Christianity, whose idolatry, ignorance or mistake, gives us
no right to expel or use them ill; and those who remove from
other parts to plant there, will unavoidably be of different
opinions, concerning matters of religion, the liberty
whereof they will expect to have allowed them, and it will
not be reasonable for us on this account to keep them out;
that civil peace may be obtained amidst diversity of
opinions, and our agreement and compact with all men, may be
duly and faithfully observed; the violation whereof, upon
what pretence soever, cannot be without great offence to
Almighty God, and great scandal to the true religion which
we profess; and also that Jews, Heathens and other
dissenters from the purity of the Christian religion, may
not be scared and kept at a distance from it, but by having
an opportunity of acquainting themselves with the truth and
reasonableness of its doctrines, and the peaceableness and
inoffensiveness of its professors, may by good usage and
persuasion, and all those convincing methods of gentleness
and meekness, suitable to the rules and design of the
gospel, be won over to embrace, and unfeignedly receive the
truth; therefore any seven or more persons agreeing in any
religion, shall constitute a church or profession, to which
they shall give some name, to distinguish it from others....

"101st. No person above seventeen years of age, shall have
any benefit or protection of the law, or be capable of any
place of profit or honor, who is not a member of some church
or profession, having his name recorded in some one, and but
one religious record, at once....

"107th. Since charity obliges us to wish well to the souls
of all men, and religion ought to alter nothing in any man's
civil estate or right, it shall be lawful for slaves as well
as others, to enter themselves and be of what church or
profession any of