[491] How rarely slaves were imported is shown by the fact that of 1,062 entries for duty (a negro imported for sale was taxed £4) during the period from the 11th of March, 1746, to the 31st of March, 1749, only 29 entries were of 49 slaves, and 5 of these were brought on speculation, the others being servants or seamen, and thus exempted from duty. Slavery and the slave traffic were never countenanced in New York, and much less in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, where the Quakers early declared themselves opposed to this institution.
[492] See Vol. IV. p. 410. [Mr. Fernow assisted Geo. W. Schuyler in the account of the records given in his Colonial New York (1885).—Ed.]
[493] Only two of these copies are now known: one is in the manuscript department of the State library at Albany, the other is in the library of the Long Island Historical Society. These laws were printed in the Collection of the New York Historical Society, vol. i. [Cf. Sabin, xiii. p. 178, for editions of early New York laws; and the present History, Vol. III. pp. 391, 414, 510.—Ed.]
[494] The Bradford copy of 1694, in the State library (Albany), not being considered complete, the legislature of 1879 appropriated $1,600 to purchase a better copy at the Brinley sale in 1880. [This was the first book printed in New York. Sabin (xiii. 53,726, etc.; cf. x. p. 371, and Menzies Catal., no. 1,250) gives the successive editions. For the proceedings of the assembly in various forms, see Ibid., xiii. 53,722, 54,003, etc.—Ed.]
[495] It may be here noted that there are also in the State library at Albany the “Minutes of the Proceedings of the Commissioners for settling the Boundaries of the Colony of Rhode Island eastwards towards the Massachusetts Bay,” 1741, one volume; and the “Minutes of the Commissioners appointed to examine, etc., the Controversy between Connecticut and the Mohegan Indians,” 1743, one volume.
[496] [The Johnson papers are further described in chapter viii. of the present volume.—Ed.]
[497] [Dr. Sprague gave also to Harvard College library the papers of Gen. Thomas Gage during his command in New York; but they relate mainly to a later period.—Ed.]
[498] [This is probably the manuscript sold at an auction sale in New York (Bangs, Feb. 27, 1854, Catal., no. 1,330). In an introduction, Wraxall gives an account of his office and its difficulties. He says the originals were somewhat irregularly arranged in four folio volumes, and in part in Dutch, “of which I was my own translator.”—Ed.]
[499] The State library also possesses a small MS., The Mythology of the Iroquois or Six Nations of Indians, by the Hon’ble James Deane, Senior, of Westmoreland, Oneida County, who represented his county in the assembly of New York, in 1803 and 1809, and probably obtained his material from the Oneida Indians in his neighborhood. His account differs very little from that given by the Indian David Cusick. [See Vol. IV. p. 298.—Ed.]
[500] [See ante, p. 169.—Ed.]