All such efforts were finally discontinued, as the system was already practically extinct in Massachusetts and the custom of importation had nearly ceased.  Slavery was eventually declared by judicial decision to have been abolished.[26] The first step toward stopping the participation of Massachusetts citizens in the slave-trade outside the State was taken in 1785, when a committee of inquiry was appointed by the Legislature.[27] No act was, however, passed until 1788, when participation in the trade was prohibited, on pain of L50 forfeit for every slave and L200 for every ship engaged.[28]

20. Restrictions in Rhode Island. In 1652 Rhode Island passed a law designed to prohibit life slavery in the colony.  It declared that “Whereas, there is a common course practised amongst English men to buy negers, to that end they may have them for service or slaves forever; for the preventinge of such practices among us, let it be ordered, that no blacke mankind or white being forced by covenant bond, or otherwise, to serve any man or his assighnes longer than ten yeares, or untill they come to bee twentie four yeares of age, if they bee taken in under fourteen, from the time of their cominge within the liberties of this Collonie.  And at the end or terme of ten yeares to sett them free, as the manner is with the English servants.  And that man that will not let them goe free, or shall sell them away elsewhere, to that end that they may bee enslaved to others for a long time, hee or they shall forfeit to the Collonie forty pounds."[29]

This law was for a time enforced,[30] but by the beginning of the eighteenth century it had either been repealed or become a dead letter; for the Act of 1708 recognized perpetual slavery, and laid an impost of L3 on Negroes imported.[31] This duty was really a tax on the transport trade, and produced a steady income for twenty years.[32] From the year 1700 on, the citizens of this State engaged more and more in the carrying trade, until Rhode Island became the greatest slave-trader in America.  Although she did not import many slaves for her own use, she became the clearing-house for the trade of other colonies.  Governor Cranston, as early as 1708, reported that between 1698 and 1708 one hundred and three vessels were built in the State, all of which were trading to the West Indies and the Southern colonies.[33] They took out lumber and brought back molasses, in most cases making a slave voyage in between.  From this, the trade grew.  Samuel Hopkins, about 1770, was shocked at the state of the trade:  more than thirty distilleries were running in the colony, and one hundred and fifty vessels were in the slave-trade.[34] “Rhode Island,” said he, “has been more deeply interested in the slave-trade, and has enslaved more Africans than any other colony in New England.”  Later, in 1787, he wrote:  “The inhabitants of Rhode Island, especially those of Newport, have had by far the greater share in this traffic, of all these United States.  This trade in human species has been the first wheel of commerce in Newport, on which every other movement in business has chiefly depended.  That town has been built up, and flourished in times past, at the expense of the blood, the liberty, and happiness of the poor Africans; and the inhabitants have lived on this, and by it have gotten most of their wealth and riches."[35]