.

"According to the _Code Noir_ of Louis XIV, freemen and their
descendants were entitled to all the rights and privileges of citizens
of France. However, in defiance of the law, race prejudice had built
up during the eighteenth century a special body of customary rules for
their control, and this custom was recognized by numerous
administrative edicts and royal ordinances." Great effort was put
forth to keep the possibilities of uprisings at a distance. Any use of
fire arms was prohibited even the mulattoes, and the commissioned
officers of military service were kept white without exception. A
trace of Negro blood was a bar to individual attainment, even marriage
to a mulatto received its share of condemnation. A strong feeling of
social repugnance was being brought into play which outlawed all
social intercourse between the races. This sort of thing, going on in
so many different places--practically wherever the Western European
colonized--became imbedded in custom and in places was expressed in
law.

While the _Code Noir_ of Louis XIV went even so far as to lay down
certain practices as the fundamental law of slavery, it was apparently
only a "law." There was a lack of the moral support necessary to
insure for it even a respectable amount of operation. There were at
work, however, forces which sought to create a widespread social
antipathy to slavery. This resulted somewhat from the situation in
England where there was a strong sentiment against slavery. The
Quakers in England, whose founder had been a fearless critic of the
institution, were foremost in the attack on slavery. In 1727 the
Society of Friends passed a resolution of censure against the slave
trade, and in 1758 its influence was strongly exerted to keep its
members from even an indirect connection with it. In 1765, Granville
Sharp began to look after the interests of Negroes who were claimed in
British ports as slaves, and in 1772 was instrumental in securing the
famous Somerset decision that, as soon as any slave set foot on
British soil he became free. In 1783 the Society of Friends submitted
to Parliament the first petition for the abolition of the slave trade.
In that same year Thomas Clarkson won the prize in a competition in
Latin composition at Cambridge upon the assigned subject, "Whether it
is right to enslave others against their will." His essay immediately
became a standard authority among opponents of the trade and the
institution. A gre