The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1

besides the Country's pay."

"1736. Voted, that whosoever shall kill brown rats, so much grown as to have their hair on them, within y

town of Dochester, y

year ensuing, until our meeting in May next, and bring in their scalps with y

ears on unto y

town treasurer, shall be paid by y

town treasurer Fourpence for every rat's scalp."

The same year the town offered a bounty for the destroying of striped squirrels.

Now that the recent death of Wendell Phillips brings freshly to mind the bitter opposition with which the early champions of abolution were treated in Boston and vicinity, it is pleasant to find in the musty records of the Dochester Plantation emphatic evidence that they not only recognized slavery as an evil, and the slave-trade as a heinous crime, but that they set their faces like a flint against it. The traffic in slaves began among the colonists in the winter of 1645-6, and in the following November the court placed on record this outspoken denunciation of the practice:

"The Gen'all Co'te conceiving themselves bound by y

first opertunity to bear Witness against y

haynos & crying sin of man stealing, as also to prscribe such timely redresse for what is past, and such a law for y

future as may sufficiently deter all others belonging to us to have to do in such vile and odious courses, iustly abhored of all good and iust men, do order y

y

negro interpreter w

others unlawfully taken, be y

first opertunity (at y

charge of y

country for psent), sent to his native country in Ginny, & a letter w

him of y

indignation of y

Corte thereabout, and iustice hereof, desiring o

hono

Gov

would please put this order in execution."

How men so clear in their convictions of the rights of Africans could be guilty of the most heartless injustice to Quakers and their friends, it is not easy to explain; and yet they mercilessly persecuted one of their own fellow-citizens, Nicholas Upsall, and made him an exile from his home, for no greater crime than that of countenancing and befriending members of the Society of Friends. He kept the Dorchester hostelry, and was wont to entertain Quakers as he did any other decent people; but for this he was apprehended and tried by the court, and sentenced to pay a fine of £20 and be thrown into prison. Finally, finding it impossible to entirely prevent his friends from holding intercourse with him, he was banished from the settlement for the remainder of his life. That curious book, "Persecutors Maul'd with their own Weapons," contains the following account of the case:

"Nicholas Upsall, an old man full of years, seeing their (the authorities) cruelty to the harmless Quakers that they had condemned some of them to die, both he and elder Wisewell, or otherwise Deacon Wisewell, members of the church in Boston, bore their testimonies in public against their brethren's horrid cruelty to the said Quakers. And the said Upsall declared that he did look at it as a sad forerunner of some heavy judgment to follow upon the country; which they took so ill at his hands, that they fined him twenty pounds and three pounds more at another meeting of the court, for not coming to their meeting, and would not abate him one grote, but imprisoned him and then banished him on pain of death, which was done in a time of such extreme bitter weather for frost, snow and cold, that had not the heathen Indians in the wilderness woods taken compassion on his misery, for the winter season, he in all likelihood had perished, though he had then a good estate in houses and lands, goods and money, also a wife and children."

One of the officials who for a time had charge of poor Upsall during the period of his imprisonment was John Capen, of whom the old chroniclers have left a pleasanter record, namely, a transcript of several of his youthful love-letters. The following will serve as sample:

"SWEETE-HARTE,

"My kind loue and affection to you remembered; hauinge not a convenient opertunety to see and speake w

you soe oft as I could desier, I therefore make bold to take opertunety as occassione offers it selfe to vissit you w

my letter, desiering y

it may find acceptance w

you, as a token of my loue to you; as I can assuer you y

yours have found from me; for as I came home from you y

other day, by y

way I reseaued your letter from your faithfull messenger w

was welcom vnto me, and for w

I kindly thanke you, and do desier y

as it is y

first: so y

may not be y

last, but y

it may be as a seed w

will bring forth more frute: and for your good counsell and aduise in your letter specified, I doe accept, and do desier y

we may still command y

casse to god for direction and cleering vp of your way as I hope wee haue hitherto done; and y

our long considerations may at y

next time bring forth firme concessions, I meane verbally though not formally. Sweete-harte I have given you a large ensample of patience, I hope you will learn this instruction from y'e same, namely, to show y

like toward me if euer occassion be offered for futuer time, and for y