Hi, William, Here in PA convicts were being sold right along with people who were binding themselves out to pay for their passage. They were treated all the same, which is to say, not particularly well. Anyone in this topic should read Section II of Bernard Baylin's _Voyagers to the West_. Section II is about the labor force that was needed in the colonies to help build the British Empire in North America. It is quite good. Apparently, as Baylin writes, the concept of selling people into servitude, even though it was limited to a number of years (convicts for 7, other individuals usually for 4), was unknown in Europe, and European visitors to this country thought it appalling that white men, women, and children were sold as if they were livestock. Evidently, it didn't bother them that blacks were being sold as if they were livestock. Karen Greim Mullian booboopies@aol.com