vessel in 1620, and was bought by the colonists. All the commercial nations of Europe were implicated in the trade; and all the colonies in America were supplied, to a greater or less extent, with slave labour from Africa, whether Spanish, Portuguese, English, French, or Dutch. But England became, on the whole, the leader in this trade, and was unrivalled by any, save her daughter, New England.

The happy revolution of 1688, which placed William and Mary on the throne, arrested for a time the activity of the royal company for slave trading, by throwing the business open to the whole nation. For one of the reforms, stipulated with the new government, was the abolition of all monopolies. But the company did not give up its operations; and it even succeeded in exacting from Parliament an indemnity of £10,000 per annum for the loss of its exclusive privilege. But the most splendid triumph of British enterprise was that achieved by the treaty of Utrecht, 1712, between Queen Anne and Spain. By a compact called the Asiento treaty, the Spanish monarch resigned to the English South Sea Company, the exclusive slave trade even between Africa and the Spanish colonies. Four thousand eight hundred slaves were to be furnished to the Spanish colonies annually, for thirty years, paying to the King of Spain an impost of thirty-three and a third dollars per head; but the company had the privilege of introducing as many more as they could sell, paying half duty upon them. The citizens of every other nation, even Spaniards themselves, were prohibited from bringing a single slave. The British Queen and the King of Spain became stockholders in the venture, to the extent of one-fourth each; the remainder of the stock was left to British citizens. And Anne, in her speech from the throne, detailing to her Parliament the provisions of the treaty of Utrecht, congratulated them on this monopoly of slave trading, as the most splendid triumph of her arms and diplomacy.^[1] Meantime, the African Company, with private adventurers at a later day, plied the trade with equal activity, for furnishing the British colonies. Finally, in 1749, every restriction upon private enterprise was removed; and the slave trade was thrown open to all Englishmen; for, says the statute: "the slave trade is very advantageous to Great Britain." But every resource of legislation, and even of war, was employed during the eighteenth century to secure the monopoly of the trade to British subjects, and to enlarge the market for their commodity in all the colonies. To this end, the royal government of the plantations, which afterwards became the United States, was perseveringly directed. The complaint of Hugh Drysdale, Deputy Governor of Virginia, in 1726, that when a tax was imposed to check the influx of Africans, "the interfering interest of the African company has obtained the repeal of the law,"^[2] was common to him and all the patriotic rulers of the Southern colonies.

Reynal estimates the whole number of negroes stolen from Africa before 1776 at nine millions; Bancroft at something more than six millions. Of these, British subjects carried at least half: and to the above numbers must be added a quarter of a million thrown by Englishmen into the Atlantic on the voyage.^[3] As the traffick continued in full activity until 1808, it is a safe estimate that the number of victims to British cupidity taken from Africa was increased to five millions. The profit made by Englishmen upon the three millions carried to America before 1776, could not have been less than four hundred millions of dollars. The negroes cost the traders nothing but worthless trinkets, damaged fire-arms, and New England rum: they were usually paid for in hard money at the place of sale. This lucrative trade laid the foundation, to a great degree, for the commercial wealth of London, Bristol, and Liverpool. The capital which now makes England the workshop and emporium of the world, was in large part born of the African slave trade. Especially was this the chief source of the riches which founded the British empire in Hindostan. The South Sea and the African Companies were the prototypes and pioneers of that wonderful institution, the East India Company; and the money by which the latter was set on foot was derived mainly from the profitable slave-catching of the former. When the direct returns of the African trade in the eighteenth century are remembered; when it is noted how much colonial trade has contributed to British greatness, and when it is considered that England's colonial system was wholly built upon African slavery, the intelligent reader will be convinced that the slave trade was the corner-stone of the present splendid prosperity of that Empire.

But after the nineteenth century had arrived, the prospective impolicy of the trade,^[4] the prevalence of democratic and Jacobin opinions imported from France, the shame inspired by the example of Virginia, with (we would fain hope) some influences of the Christian religion upon the better spirits, began to create a powerful party against the trade. First, Clarkson published in Latin, and then in English, his work against the slave trade, exposing its unutterable barbarities, as practised by Englishmen, and arguing its intrinsic unrighteousness. The powerful parliamentary influence of Wilberforce was added, and afterwards that of the younger Pitt. The commercial classes made a tremendous resistance for many years, sustained by many noblemen and by the royal family; but at length the Parliament, in 1808, declared the trade illicit, and took measures to suppress it. Since that time, the British Government, with a tardy zeal, but without disgorging any of the gross spoils with which it is so plethoric, wrung from the tears and blood of Africa, has arrogated to itself the special task of the catchpole of the seas, to "police" the world against the continuance of its once profitable sin. Its present attitude is in curious contrast with its recent position, as greedy monopolist, and queen of slave traders; and especially when the observer adverts to her activity in the Coolie traffick, that new and more frightful form, under which the Phariseeism of this age has restored the trade, he will have little difficulty in deciding, whether the meddlesome activity of England is prompted by a virtuous repentance, or by a desire to replace the advantages of the African commerce with other fruits of commercial supremacy.

The share of the Colony of Virginia in the African slave trade was that of an unwilling recipient; never that of an active party. She had no ships engaged in any foreign trade; for the strict obedience of her governors and citizens to the colonial laws of the mother country prevented her trading to foreign ports, and all the carrying trade to British ports and colonies was in the hands of New Englanders and Englishmen. In the replies submitted by Sir William Berkeley, Governor, 1671, to certain written inquiries of the "Lords of Plantations," we find the following statement: "And this is the cause why no great or small vessels are