649, for example, confined the poll tax to male inhabitants of all
sorts above sixteen years old. But the act of 1658 added imported female
negroes, along with Indian female servants; and this rating of negro
women as men for tax purposes was continued thenceforward as a permanent
practice. A special act of 1668, indeed, gave sharp assertion to the policy
of using taxation as a token of race distinction: "Whereas some doubts have
arisen whether negro women set free were still to be accompted tithable
according to a former act, it is declared by this grand assembly that
negro women, though permitted to enjoy their freedome yet ought not in all
respects to be admitted to a full fruition of the exemptions and impunities
of the English, and are still liable to the payment of taxes."[14]

[Footnote 14: W.W. Hening, _Statutes at Large of Virginia_, I, 361, 454;
II, 267.]

As to slavery itself, the earliest laws giving it mention did not establish
the institution but merely recognized it, first indirectly then directly,
as in existence by force of custom. The initial act of this series, passed
in 1656, promised the Indian tribes that when they sent hostages the
Virginians would not "use them as slaves."[15] The next, an act of
1660, removing impediments to trade by the Dutch and other foreigners,
contemplated specifically their bringing in of "negro slaves."[16] The
third, in the following year, enacted that if any white servants ran away
in company with "any negroes who are incapable of making satisfaction by
addition of time," the white fugitives must serve for the time of the
negroes' absence in addition to suffering the usual penalties on their own
score.[17] A negro whose time of service could not be extended must needs
have been a servant for life--in other words a slave. Then in 1662 it was
enacted that "whereas some doubts have arrisen whether children got by any
Englishman upon a negro woman shall be slave or free, ... all children born
in this colony shall be bond or free only according to the condition of the
mother."[18] Thus within six years from the first mention of slaves in the
Virginia laws, slavery was definitely recognized and established as the
hereditary legal status of such negroes and mulattoes as might be held
therein. Eighteen years more elapsed before a distinctive police law for
slaves was enacted; but from 1680 onward the laws for their control were as
definite and for the time being virtually as str