Page:The Slave Struggle in America.djvu/12

 Nor was England behindhand in her patronage of this infamous traffic. Sir John Hawkins was the first to engage in it, under the protection of Queen Elizabeth. He transported large cargoes of slaves to Hispaniola, and Elizabeth shared the profits. When the New Netherlands were broken up into New Jersey and New York, the Duke of York was president of the African Company and patron of the slave trade. The proprietaries of New Jersey offered a bounty of seventy-five acres for the importation of each able slave. Germany does not seem to have shared in the slave trade, and the German and Swedish colonies rested on free labor. In the reign of William III. the British Parliament declared that the slave trade was "highly beneficial to England and her Colonies." The treaty of Utrecht, in 1713, gave to England the privilege of supplying Spanish America with 144,000 negroes, and as many more as she pleased in thirty years. As this horrible monopoly was expected to be very profitable, Philip V., of Spain, took a quarter of the stock, Queen Anne took another quarter, and the remainder was to be divided amongst her subjects. A tract written in 1745 calls the African slave trade "the great pillar and support of the British plantation trade in North America." In 1749 a law was passed laying open all African ports to English competition for "the slave trade is very advantageous to Great Britain." The right to trade in men England henceforth jealously kept for herself, as far as possible preventing foreigners from sharing in the profits of this honorable traffic. Queen Anne ordered the governors of New York and New Jersey to give "due encouragement to merchants, and in particular to the Royal African Company of England," and similar instructions seem to have been given to the other settlements. When Virginia, attempting to check the traffic, imposed a tax on the importation of negroes, the Royal African Company obtained from the English Home Government the annulment of the law. South Carolina even attempted to restrain the traffic, and was met by rebuke from England. Actually in the very year before the Declaration of Independence we find the Earl of Dartmouth, the Secretary of State, who had the management of American affairs, saying:—"We cannot allow the colonies to check or discourage in any degree a traffic so beneficial to the nation." When Georgia was settled under James Oglethorpe, as an asylum for the poor and persecuted, a rule was made prohibiting the introduction of slaves; and while Oglethorpe lived he steadily refused every petition for their introduction. But the laws were soon evaded, and slaves were hired, at first for short periods and afterwards for life. In 1761, Richard Henry Lee made his first speech, in the Virginian House of Burgesses, in support of a prohibitory duty on the importation of Africans into that colony. This law was carried through the Assembly by a narrow majority, and, like nearly all other