In this letter James Winthrop responds to St. George Tucker's queries, circulated by Jeremy Belknap, about slavery and abolition in Massachusetts. He includes a great deal of information about the legal regulation of slavery and the slave trade in Massachusetts before and after the Revolution. He also indicates his own opinion that the government would be better served by regulating the slave-trade, rather than trying to abolish a trade that is "considered as lawful, from earliest antiquity." Winthrop (1752-1821) was a librarian and jurist, one of the founders of the Massachusetts Historical Society.