1790, the common figure for recent years being 11 per cent.

[12]

[13]

As a race there was little to be remarked of the Negro in the colonial period. To those in bondage there was little outlook. Occasionally there was an attempt at an insurrection; but nothing of first rate importance materialized. In 1741 there was a very unhappy panic in New York, then a prosperous town of ten thousand inhabitants. Nine fires in rapid succession led to the report that the Negroes were conspiring to burn the city. All of the eight lawyers of the town appeared against the defendants, who had no counsel and who were convicted on most insufficient evidence. Before the fury was over, fourteen of the Negroes were burned, eighteen hanged, and seventy-one deported.

Any evidence of progress in this period would of course have to be found among the free Negroes. The position of these people was a very anomalous one. In the South especially very harsh laws were passed against them; but very frequently these were not enforced. In general the class was regarded as idle and shiftless and a breeder of mischief. More and more, however, individuals made their way in gainful occupations. The free Negro might become skilled at a trade; he might [14]buy land; he might even buy slaves; and he might have one gun with which to protect his home. Liberty, however, genuine liberty, he did not possess. In all the finer things of life, the things that make life worth living, the lot that was his was only less hard than that of the slave.

[14]

The general period of the Revolution was one of idealism. Humanitarianism and liberalism were in the air, and both principles were exerting a profound influence on English literature and life. In 1772 Lord Mansfield, Chief Justice of England, thrilled all English-speaking people by handing down from the Court of King's Bench the decision that as soon as a slave set foot upon the soil of England he became free. The logic of the position of the patriots, Franklin, Adams, and Jefferson, naturally forced them to defend liberty at all times; and by the time the convention for the framing of the Constitution of the United States met in Philadelphia, at least two of the original thirteen states (Massachusetts and New Hampshire) had positively prohibited slavery, while in three others (Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and Rhode Island) gradual abolition was in progress. Under the influence of commercialism and industrialism, however, great convictions [15]gradually declined; and at 

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