the Legislature.[27] No act was, however, passed until 1788, when
participation in the trade was prohibited, on pain of £50 forfeit for
every slave and £200 for every ship engaged.[28]


20. ~Restrictions in Rhode Island.~ In 1652 Rhode Island passed a law
designed to prohibit life slavery in the colony. It declared that
"Whereas, there is a common course practised amongst English men to buy
negers, to that end they may have them for service or slaves forever;
for the preventinge of such practices among us, let it be ordered, that
no blacke mankind or white being forced by covenant bond, or otherwise,
to serve any man or his assighnes longer than ten yeares, or untill they
come to bee twentie four yeares of age, if they bee taken in under
fourteen, from the time of their cominge within the liberties of this
Collonie. And at the end or terme of ten yeares to sett them free, as
the manner is with the English servants. And that man that will not let
them goe free, or shall sell them away elsewhere, to that end that they
may bee enslaved to others for a long time, hee or they shall forfeit to
the Collonie forty pounds."[29]

This law was for a time enforced,[30] but by the beginning of the
eighteenth century it had either been repealed or become a dead letter;
for the Act of 1708 recognized perpetual slavery, and laid an impost of
£3 on Negroes imported.[31] This duty was really a tax on the transport
trade, and produced a steady income for twenty years.[32] From the year
1700 on, the citizens of this State engaged more and more in the
carrying trade, until Rhode Island became the greatest slave-trader in
America. Although she did not import many slaves for her own use, she
became the clearing-house for the trade of other colonies. Governor
Cranston, as early as 1708, reported that between 1698 and 1708 one