the philosophy and pleas of that great litigation a legal and constitutional garb—one contrasting strangely with the devices of the Puritan revolution more than a hundred years before. In Cromwell's day quotations from the Bible as well as the sonorous words of Coke and Lyttleton gave reason to determination and fed the appetite for justification. In the American Revolution, however, statesmen and soldiers, led and taught by lawyers, resorted mainly to charters, laws, prescriptive rights, parchment, and seals for high sanction, thus giving a peculiar cast of thought and ornament to the linguistic devices of the fray. When these weapons broke in their hands, they turned, not to theology, but to another secular armory—nature and the imprescriptible rights written by sunbeams in the hearts of men.
§
A large part of the labor which underlay the social fabric of the American colonies was furnished by semi-servile whites imported under bond for a term of years and by Negroes sold into chattel slavery. This is one phase of American history which professional writers have usually seen fit to pass over with but a sidelong glance. Bancroft admitted that having "a handful" of data on the subject, he "opened his little finger." In fact, although exhaustive researches have not been made for all the colonies, it seems probable that at least one-half the immigrants into America before the Revolution, certainly outside New England, were either indentured servants or Negro slaves.
The white servants fell into two classes. The first embraced those who voluntarily bound themselves for a term of years to pay their passage. The second class included those who were carried here against their will—hustled on board ships, borne across the sea, and sold into bondage. This gruesome traffic was a regular business darkened by many tragedies and illuminated by few romances. The streets of London were full of kidnappers, "spirits," as they
