247.] [Footnote 27: W.D.Johnston, "Slavery in Rhode Island, 1755-1776," in Rhode Island Historical Society _Publications_, new series, II, 126, 127.] The earliest piece of legislation in Rhode Island concerning negroes was of an anti-slavery character.

This was an act adopted by the joint government of Providence and Warwick in 1652, when for the time being those towns were independent of the rest.

It required, under a penalty of L40, that all negroes be freed after having rendered ten years of service.[28] This act may be attributed partly perhaps to the liberal influence of Roger Williams, and partly to the virtual absence of negroes in the towns near the head of the bay.

It long stood unrepealed, but it was probably never enforced, for no sooner did negroes become numerous than a conservative reaction set in which deprived this peculiar law of any public sanction it may have had at the time of enactment.

When in the early eighteenth century legislation was resumed in regard to negroes, it took the form of a slave code much like that of Connecticut but with an added act, borrowed perhaps from a Southern colony, providing that slaves charged with theft be tried by impromptu courts consisting of two or more justices of the peace or town officers, and that appeal might be taken to a court of regular session only at the master's request and upon his giving bond for its prosecution.