THE NEGRO PLOTS 209

out of place in New York, and from early times
they had exhibited resentment and hatred toward
the governing classes, who in turn looked upon
them with distrust. This smoldering discontent
of the blacks aroused no little uneasiness and led
to the adoption of laws which, especially in the
cities, were marked by a brutality quite out of
keeping with the usual moderation of the colony.
When Mrs. Grant wrote later of negro servitude in
Albany as "slavery softened into a smile," she
spoke in the first place from a narrow observation
of life in a cultivated family, and in the second
place from scant knowledge of the events which
had preceded the kind treatment of the negroes.

In 1684 an ordinance was passed declaring that no
negroes or Indian slaves above the number of four
should meet together on the Lord's Day or at any
other time or at any place except on their master's
service. They were not to go armed with guns,
swords, clubs, or stones on penalty of ten lashes at
the whipping-post. An act provided that no slave
should go about the streets after nightfall anywhere
south of the Collect without a lighted lantern "so
as the light thereof could be plainly seen." A few
years later Governor Cornbury ordered the jus-
tices of the peace in King's County to seize and

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