Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 2).djvu/225

 though the most hideous cruelties were practised to procure these slaves, the traffic continued to increase and, half a century afterwards, one hundred and fifty vessels were fitted out in one year for the east coast of Africa from the ports of France alone, transporting in the course of that year twenty thousand slaves to the island of St. Domingo.

The French, indeed, during the reign of Louis XIV. had encroached at all points on the English trade, especially on her fisheries at Newfoundland; hence William III. in his declaration of war against that country in 1689, intimated "that whereas not long since the French had been accustomed to take licences from the British governor of Newfoundland for fishing in the seas upon that coast, and to pay tribute for such licences as an acknowledgment of the sole right of the Crown of England to that island, yet of late their encroachments upon his subjects' trade and fishery there had been more like the invasions of an enemy than of becoming friends who enjoyed the advantages of the said trade only by permission." But the capture of Nova Scotia at the commencement of this war restored English supremacy in that quarter. The preamble of an Act passed in 1698 for the encouragement of the trade with Newfoundland, declared it to be a beneficial trade to Great Britain, not only in so far as it employed great numbers of ships and seamen in those fisheries, but also in that it procured returns of valuable commodities direct from other countries in exchange for the produce of those fisheries. The prevailing customs at the fisheries were sanctioned expressly in this Act, one of the most important being that the master of