"The Committee have already found in the statute-books of this Commonwealth a law, passed in 1788, regulating the residence in this State of certain persons of color. They believe that this law has never been enforced, and, ineffectual as it has proved, they would never have been the authors of placing among the statutes a law so arbitrary in its principle, and in its operation so little accordant with the institutions, feelings, and practices of the people of this Commonwealth."
The Report then goes into a history of the public acts and proceedings in relation to colored persons in Massachusetts, from the earliest colonial times down to the date of the enactment, in order to show the spirit of the people towards this class, and concludes with observations like the following:—
"The feelings of the people disclosed since the year 1760 in the votes of towns and in the verdicts of juries, ... the fact that there is no law at present in force which makes a distinction between white and black persons, ... the same law which allows justices to expel blacks from the State after a certain notice expressly recognizing the right of blacks to become citizens (a law, the constitutionality of which has been called in question, and which it is well known was passed on the same day as the Abolition Act of March, 1788, in order to prevent the State from being overrun with runaway slaves),—blacks having the same public provisions for education, and the same public support in case of sickness and poverty,—many blacks before and during the Revolution having obtained their freedom by a legal process, and, as the spirit of the Constitution of this State abrogates all exclusive laws, thereby becoming invested with all the rights of freemen, and with a capability of becoming freeholders, ... and, above all, the construction given to the first principle in the Declaration of Rights at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, both in the public mind and in the courts of law,—clearly manifest and demonstrate that the people of this Commonwealth have always believed negroes and mulattoes to possess the same right and capability to become citizens as white persons."
[97] Bancroft, History of the United States, Vol. V. pp. 294, 425, 426.
[98] Military Affairs, Vol. I. pp. 14-19. Compare with Coll. New Hamp. Hist. Soc., Vol. I. p. 236.
[99] Works, Vol. III. p. 48; see also p. 87.
[100] Jackson's History of Newton, p. 517.
[101] Works, Vol. I. p. 207.
[102] Hansard, Parliamentary History, Vol. XVIII. col. 45.
[103] Vie Publique et Privée de Louis XVI., p. 43. See also Memoir of the Right Honorable Hugh Elliot, by the Countess of Minto, published since this speech, where will be found (p. 48) a letter from a fine lady of Vienna, who, writing to Mr. Elliot in 1775, confesses that she has been "Bostonian at heart": J'etais Bostonienne de cœur.