Page:The American Slave Trade (Spears).djvu/42

16 success of interloping owners of single ships who understood the trade and knew the slave-coast and the West India market. Good people have supposed that a special interference of Divine providence ruined the company.

The new company was called the Royal Assiento. It had bought out the old one, used guns on the outside traders, but the private traders, "especially the American merchants," made such persistent appeals that Parliament was obliged to come to their relief.

The company wanted to maintain a monopoly intact, and the English private trader wanted the monopoly abolished. The keen Yankees suggested that it would be a great benefit to the Kingdom to secure the trade by maintaining Forts and Castles there, with an equal duty upon all Goods exported." This compromise was adopted. Parliament declared that the slave-trade was "highly Beneficial and Advantageous to this Kingdom, and to the Plantations and Colonies thereunto belonging," and then enacted that private ships should be free to enter the trade on the payment of ten per cent. duty on English goods exported to Africa. The tax money was used to maintain forts on the African coast.

Those who are familiar with American naval history will find especial interest in the above account for the reason that it was the first Yankee conflict for "Free Trade and Sailors' Rights."

Then the British on both sides of the Atlantic reached out for the trade to the Spanish colonies, which Spain in those days farmed out to other countries. This was obtained by what is known as the Assiento Treaty of March 13, 1713.