in ſimilar legiſlation. It anticipates by many years anything of the ſort to be found in the ſtatutes of Virginia, or Maryland, or South Carolina, and nothing like it is to be found in the contemporary codes of her ſiſter colonies in New England. Compare Hildreth, i., 278.
Yet this very law has been gravely cited in a paper communicated to the Maſſachuſetts Hiſtorical Society, and twice reprinted in its publications without challenge or correction, as an evidence that "ſo far as it felt free to follow its own inclinations, uncontrolled by the action of the mother country, Maſſachuſetts was hoſtile to ſlavery as an inſtitution.” M. H. S. Coll., iv., iv., 334. Proc., 1855–58, p. 189.
And with the ſtatute before them, it has been perſiſtently aſſerted and repeated by all ſorts of authorities, hiſtorical and legal, up to that of the Chief Juſtice of the Supreme Court of the Commonwealth, that "ſlavery to a certain extent ſeems to have crept in; not probably by force of any law, for none ſuch is found or known to exiſt." Commonwealth vs. Aves, 18 Pickering, 208. Shaw, C. J.
The leading caſe in Maſſachuſetts is that of Winchendon vs. Hatfield in error, iv Maſs. Reports, 123. It relates to the ſettlement of a negro pauper who had been a ſlave as early as 1757, and paſſed through the hands of nine ſeparate owners before 1775. From the ninth he abſconded, and enliſted in the Maſſachuſetts Army among the eight-months' men, at Cambridge, in the beginning of the Revolutionary War. His term of ſervice had not expired when he was again ſold, in July, 1776, to another citizen of Maſſa-
