s service, and to give
him no more food or clothing than was absolutely necessary.

After a time there were laws made to protect the redemptioners. One of
these was, that any person sold after he was seventeen years old could
not serve for more than four years; and another provided, that, when a
redemptioner's time of service had expired, his master should give him
"two good suits of clothing, suitable for a servant, one good ax, one
good hoe, and seven bushels of Indian corn."

But although the redemptioner sometimes fared very badly in the new
country, it often happened that he came out very well in the end. Among
the white people who came here as slaves there were often convicts and
paupers; but even some of these succeeded in bettering their condition
and establishing themselves as good citizens, and in founding families.

It often happened that some of the Germans who came to buy land and
settle, chose rather to put away their money, and sell themselves as
redemptioners to English families, so that they might learn the English
language and manner of living. Then, when they had educated themselves
in this practical manner, and their time of service was over, they could
buy land, and establish themselves on terms of equality with their
English neighbors.

But the trade in redemptioners gradually decreased; and by the middle of
the eighteenth century there were not many of them left in New Jersey,
although there were a few in the State until after the Revolution. Negro
slavery, however, continued much longer. It grew and flourished until it
became a part of the New Jersey social system; but it must not be
supposed that all the people of the State continued to be satisfied with
this condition of things.

At first everybody who could afford it owned slaves, and the Friends or
Quakers bought negroes the same as other people did; but about the end
of the seventeenth century some of these Quakers began to think that
property in human beings was not a righteous thing, and the Quakers of
New Jersey united with those of Pennsylvania in an agreement
recommending to the members of the Society of Friends that they should
no longer employ negro slaves, or, if they thought it best to continue
to do this, that they should at least cease to import them.

A strong party among the Quakers of New Jersey opposed slavery for many
years, and the system was denounced at some of their yearly meetings;
and this went on until about the