time and place was partly responsible for this, but a more decisive
reason lay in the fierce and turbulent character of the imported
Negroes. The docility to which long years of bondage and strict
discipline gave rise was absent, and insurrections and acts of violence
were of frequent occurrence.[19] Again and again the danger of planters
being "cut off by their own negroes"[20] is mentioned, both in the
islands and on the continent. This condition of vague dread and unrest
not only increased the severity of laws and strengthened the police
system, but was the prime motive back of all the earlier efforts to
check the further importation of slaves.

On the other hand, in New England and New York the Negroes were merely
house servants or farm hands, and were treated neither better nor worse
than servants in general in those days. Between these two extremes, the
system of slavery varied from a mild serfdom in Pennsylvania and New
Jersey to an aristocratic caste system in Maryland and Virginia.


FOOTNOTES:

[1] This account is based largely on the _Report of the Lords
of the Committee of Council_, etc. (London, 1789).

[2] African trading-companies had previously been erected
(e.g. by Elizabeth in 1585 and 1588, and by James I. in 1618);
but slaves are not specifically mentioned in their charters,
and they probably did not trade in slaves. Cf. Bandinel,
_Account of the Slave Trade_ (1842), pp. 38-44.

[3] Chartered by Charles I. Cf. Sainsbury, _Cal. State Papers,