In practical effect the policy of colonial Massachusetts toward the backward races merits neither praise nor censure; it was merely commonplace.
[Footnote 21: C.F.Adams, _Massachusetts, its Historians and its History_ (Boston, 1893), p.

106.] What has been said in general of Massachusetts will apply with almost equal fidelity to Connecticut.[22] The number of negroes in that colony was hardly appreciable before 1720.

In that year Governor Leete when replying to queries from the English committee on trade and plantations took occasion to emphasize the poverty of his people, and said as to bond labor: "There are but fewe servants amongst us, and less slaves; not above 30, as we judge, in the colony.

For English, Scotts and Irish, there are so few come in that we cannot give a certain acco[un]t.

Some yeares come none; sometimes a famaly or two in a year.