If under the original law the children of enſlaved captives and ſtrangers might poſſibly have claimed exemption from that ſervitude to which the recognized common law of nations aſſigned them from their birth; this amendment, by ſtriking out the word "ſtrangers," removed the neceſſity for alienage or foreign birth as a qualification for ſlavery, and took off the prohibition againſt the children of ſlaves being "born into legal ſlavery in Maſſachuſetts."
It is true there is little probability that in thoſe days the natural rights of theſe little heathen, born in a Chriſtian land, would have been much regarded, or that the owners of ſlave parents would have had much difficulty in quieting the title by having the increaſe of their chattels duly "judged" to ſervitude by authoritie," in accordance with the civil law; ſtill there might have been color for the claim to freedom, which this amendment effectually barred. And this was in accordance, too, with the law of Moſes—the children of ſlaves remained ſlaves, being the claſs deſcribed as "born in the houſe."
This Maſſachuſetts law of ſlavery was not a regulation of the ſtatus of indentured ſervants. "Bond-ſlavery" was not the name of their ſervice, neither is it placed among the "Liberties of ſervants," but thoſe of "Forreiners and ſtrangers." And in all the editions of the laws, this diſtinction is maintained; "Bond-ſlavery" being invariably a ſeparate title. White ſervants for a term of years would hardly be deſignated as ſtrangers,[1] and a careful ſtudy of the whole ſubject
- ↑ John Cotton, in his letter to Cromwell, July 28, 1651, ſays: "the Scots, whom God delivered into your hands at Dunbarre, and whereof
