BOOK III. CHAP. V. 495 



adjudged a flave, fliould fleal, or entice, away Tuch child from its 

 mafter; fuch father, mother, &c. were to be adjudged flaves to 

 fuch child's mafter for ever. I think the word^^-y^ occurs no lefs 

 than //j/V/jy-fv^/^/ different times in the courfe of this ftatute. But: 

 this is not the only inftance of legiilative barbarity at home. In 

 the 13th of Elizabeth, 1571, upon reading a bill then before the 

 houfe for fuppreffion of vagabonds, Mr Sandys endeavoured to 

 prove the above-mentioned law of Edward VI. to be too flnarp and 

 bloody, llanding much on the care which is to be had for the poor. 

 Wilfon, mafter of the requefts, argued thus: that poor, of ne- 

 ceffity, we muft have ; and as true it is, that beggars by God's 

 word might not be among his people, ?ie Jit mend'icans inter vos j 

 that it was no charity to give to a ftranger ; and that even as thieves 

 did the Greeks judge of them. In the following year, the law 

 pafled which enadled, " that every perfon above the age of fourteen, 

 " being taken begghig, or going about as a vagrant, fliould, for the 

 " firft offence, be grievoully whipped, and burned through the 

 " griftle of the right ear with an hot iron of an inch compafs ; 

 " and, if of eighteen years of age, if he afterwards fall into a . 

 «« rogui(h life, to be adjudged a folon." A ilatute of 8 Elizabeth, 

 c. 3, enaded, that perfons, bringing, delivering, fending, re- 

 ceiving, or taking, or procuring to be brought, &c. into any fhip, 

 or bottom, to be carried out of the kingdom, any ram, flieep, or 

 lamb, alive, (hould, for the firft offence, forfeit. all their goods 

 for ever, fuffer a year's imprifonment, and at the year's end have 

 their left hands cut off^in a market-town, to be there publickly 

 nailed up ; and, for the fecond off^ence, fliould fuff^er death. The 

 modes of punifliment in thefe ftatutes, and the general provilions 

 contained in the ftatute of Edward VI, have io near an affinity to 

 the Barbadoes law refpedting Negroe flaves, as to leave fcarcely 

 any doubt but that the Icgiflature of that ifland tranfcribed from 

 thefe precedents, which they found in the mother fl:ate. At the 

 time we firft entered on the fettleraent of Barbadoes, the idea of 

 flavery could hardly be extinguifl-ied in England; the firft emigrants 

 to the Weft-Indies, it is natural to think, carried with them fome 

 prejudices in favour of the villeinage lyftem, fo far as it might feem . 

 to coincide with the government of Negroe-labourers. . They 



perceived 



