rent
colonies, as slave labor was found more or less profitable. But no one
seems to have doubted the correctness of the prevailing opinion of the
time.

The legislation of the different colonies furnishes positive and
indisputable proof of this fact.

It would be tedious, in this opinion, to enumerate the various laws
they passed upon this subject. It will be sufficient, as a sample of
the legislation which then generally prevailed throughout the British
colonies, to give the laws of two of them; one being still a large
slaveholding State, and the other the first State in which slavery
ceased to exist.

The province of Maryland, in 1717, (ch. 13, s. 5,) passed a law
declaring "that if any free negro or mulatto intermarry with any white
woman, or if any white man shall intermarry with any negro or mulatto
woman, such negro or mulatto shall become a slave during life,
excepting mulattoes born of white women, who, for such intermarriage,
shall only become servants for seven years, to be disposed of as the
justices of the county court, where such marriage so happens, shall
think fit; to be applied by them towards the support of a public
school within the said county. And any white man or white woman who
shall intermarry as aforesaid, with any negro or mulatto, such white
man or white woman shall become servants during the term of seven
years, and shall be disposed of by the justices as aforesaid, and be
applied to the uses aforesaid."

The other colonial law to which we refer was passed by Massachusetts
in 1705, (chap. 6.) It is entitled "An act for the better preventing
of a spurious and mixed issue," &c.; and it provides, that "if any
negro or mulatto shall presume to smite or strike any person of the
English or other Christian nation, such negro or mulatto shall be
severely whipped, at the discretion of the justices before whom the
offender shall be convicted."

And "that none of her Majesty's English or Scottish subjects, nor of
any other Christian nation, within this province, shall contract
matrimony with any negro or mulatto; nor shall any person, duly
authorized to solemnize marriage, presume to join any such in
marriage, on pain of forfeiting the sum of fifty pounds; one moiety
thereof to her Majesty, for and towards the support of the Government
within this province, and the other moiety to him or them that shall
inform and sue for the same, in any of her Majesty's courts of record
within the province, by