Note 12 — ON THE STATE OF SLAVERY IN VIRGINIA.

Hannah and other Indians, against Davis.—Since this adjudication, I have met with a manuscript act of assembly made in 1691 c. 9 entitled, "An Act for a free Trade with Indians," the enacting clause of which is in the very words of the act of 1705. c. 52. A similar title to an act of that session occurs in the edition of 1733. p. 94. and the chapter is numbered as in the manuscript. If this manuscript be authentic (which there is some reason to presume, it being copied in some blank leaves at the end of Purvis's edition, and apparently written about the time of the passage of the act), it would seem that no Indians brought into Virginia for more than a century, nor any of their descendents, can be retained in slavery in this commonwealth.