Page:The American Slave Trade (Spears).djvu/81

 But a worse state of affairs was to come. That there was a steady growth in the number of ships in the trade has already been noted. The cause of the rapid increase in the number and capacity of the slavers during the middle years of the eighteenth century is not far to seek. The planters of the West Indies had found it more profitable to work slaves to death, while yet in the prime of life, than to support them in an idle old age. The loss of hands could be readily replaced by importations from Africa, and there was nothing in the civilization of that age to make the planters consider any other question in the matter than that of making profits.

The prices of slaves rose steadily under this increasing demand. Captain Lindsay, in the voyage that was "anoof to make a man creasey," sold his prime slaves for £35 each. Twenty-five years later the price received averaged £70, and the Liverpool ship Enterprise, belonging to T. Leyland & Co., in a voyage made about the first of the present century, cleared £24,430 8s. 11d. on a cargo of three hundred and ninety-two slaves, or more than £62 per head, old and young all counted in.

The result was an activity, well called "feverish," in the market on the African coast. The price of a slave there, according to a Newport record dated 1762, was one hundred and ten gallons of rum. An old commercial history of Liverpool records that in 1786 the average cost of delivering a slave in the West Indies was £27 5s. 10d., of which perhaps £22 was the price paid for the slave. With the first jumps in the price came a change in the methods of obtaining cargoes. The dribbling supply that had worried Captain