first ships, which, in 1441, sailed so far south as Cape Blanco, returned not with negroes, but with Moors. These were treated as strangers, from whom information respecting their native country was to be derived. Antony Gonzalez, who had brought them to Portugal, was commanded to restore them to their ancient homes. He did so; and the Moors gave him as their ransom not gold only, but "black Moors" with curled hair. Negro slaves immediately became an object of commerce. The historian of the maritime discoveries of Spain even claims that she anticipated the Portuguese. The merchants of Seville imported gold dust and slaves from the western coast of Africa; so that negro slavery was established in Andalusia, and "abounded in the city of Seville," before the first voyage of Columbus.

The adventurers of those days by sea, joining the creed of bigots with the designs of pirates and heroes, esteemed as their rightful plunder the wealth of the countries which they might discover, and the inhabitants, if Christians, as their subjects; if infidels, as their slaves. There was hardly a convenient harbor on the Atlantic frontier of the United States which was not entered by slavers. The red men of the wilderness, unlike the Africans, among whom slavery had existed from immemorial time, would never abet the foreign merchant in the nefarious traffic. Fraud and force remained, therefore, the means by which, near Newfoundland or Florida, on the shores of the Atlantic, or among the Indians of the Mississippi valley, Cortereal and Vasquez de Ayllon, Porcallo and Soto, and private adventurers, transported the natives of North America into slavery in Europe and the Spanish West Indies. Columbus himself, in 1494, enslaving five hundred native Americans, sent them to Spain, that they might be publicly sold at Seville. The generous Isabella, in 1500, commanded the liberation of the Indians held in bondage in her European possessions. Yet her active benevolence extended neither to the Moors nor to the Africans; and even her compassion for the men of the New World was but transient. The commissions for making discoveries, issued a few days before and after her interference to rescue those whom Columbus had enslaved, reserved for herself and Ferdinand a fourth part of the slaves which the

new kingdoms might contain. The slavery of Indians was recognised as lawful.

A royal edict of 1501 permitted negro slaves, born in slavery among Christians, to be transported. Within two years there were such numbers of Africans in Hispaniola that Ovando, the governor of the island, entreated that their coming might be restrained. For a short time the Spanish government forbade the introduction of negro slaves who had been bred in Moorish families, and allowed only those who were said to have been instructed in the Christian faith to be transported to the West Indies, under the plea that they might assist in converting infidel nations. But, after the culture of sugar was begun, the system of slavery easily overcame the scruples of men in power. King Ferdinand himself sent from Seville fifty slaves to labor in the mines, and promised to send more; and, because it was said that one negro could do the work of four Indians, the direct transportation of slaves from Guinea to Hispaniola was, in 1511, enjoined by a royal ordinance, and deliberately sanctioned by successive decrees. Was it not natural that Charles V., a youthful monarch, at his accession in 1516, should have readily granted licenses to the Flemings to transport negroes to the colonies? The benevolent Las Casas, who felt for the native inhabitants of the New World all that the purest missionary zeal could inspire, and who had seen them vanish away like dew before the cruelties of the Spaniards while the African thrived under the tropical sun, in 1517 suggested that negroes might still further be employed to perform the severe toils which they alone could endure. The board of trade at Seville was consulted, to learn how many slaves would be required; four for each Spanish emigrant had been proposed; deliberate calculation fixed the number at four thousand a year. In 1518 the monopoly, for eight years, of annually importing four thousand slaves into the West Indies, was granted by Charles V. to La Bresa, one of his favorites, and was sold to the Genoese. The buyers of the contract purchased their slaves of the Portuguese, to whom a series of papal bulls had indeed granted the exclusive commerce with Western Africa; but the slave-trade between Africa and America was never expressly sanctioned

by the see of Rome. Leo X. declared that "not the Christian religion only, but Nature herself, cries out against the state of slavery." Paul III., two years after he had given authority to make slaves of every English person who would not assist in the expulsion of Henry VIII., in two separate briefs imprecated a curse on the Europeans who should enslave Indians, or any other class of men. Ximenes, the stern grand inquisitor, the austere but ambitious Franciscan, refused to sanction the introduction of negroes into Hispaniola, believing that the favorable climate would increase their numbers, and infallibly lead them to a successful revolt. Hayti, the first spot in America that received African slaves, was the first to set the example of African liberty.

The odious distinction of having first interested England in the slave-trade belongs to Sir John Hawkins. In 1562, he transported a large cargo of Africans to Hispaniola; the rich returns of sugar, ginger, and pearls, attracted the notice of Queen Elizabeth; and five years later she took shares in a new expedition, though the commerce, on the part of the English, in Spanish ports, was by the law of Spain illicit, as well as by the law of morals detestable.

Conditional servitude, under indentures or covenants, had from the first existed in Virginia. Once at least James sent over convicts, and once at least the city of London a hundred. homeless children from its streets. The servant stood to his master in the relation of a debtor, bound to discharge by his labor the costs of emigration. White servants came to be a usual article of merchandise. They were sold in England to be transported, and in Virginia were to be purchased on shipboard. Not the Scots only, who were taken in the field of Dunbar, were sold into servitude in New England, but the royalist prisoners of the battle of Worcester. The leaders in the insurrection of Penruddoc, in spite of the remonstrance of Haselrig and Henry Vane, were shipped to America. At the corresponding period, in Ireland, the exportation of Irish Catholics was frequent. In 1672, the average price in the colonies, where five years of service were due, was about ten pounds, while a negro was worth twenty or twenty-five pounds. The condition of apprenticed servants in Virginia differed

from that of slaves chiefly in the duration of their bondage; the laws of the colony favored their early enfranchisement. But this state of labor easily admitted the introduction of perpetual servitude. In the month of August, 1619, five years after the commons of France had petitioned for the emancipation of every serf in every fief, a Dutch man-of-war entered James river and landed twenty negroes for sale. This is the sad epoch of the introduction of negro slavery; but the traffic would have been checked in its infancy had it remained with the Dutch. Thirty years after this first importation of Africans, Virginia to one black contained fifty whites; and, after seventy years of its colonial existence, the number of its negro slaves was proportionably much less than in several northern states at the time of the war of independence. Had no other form of servitude been known in Virginia than of men of the same race, every difficulty would have been promptly obviated. But the Ethiopian and Caucasian races were to meet together in nearly equal numbers beneath a temperate zone. Who could foretell the issue? The negro race, from its introduction, was regarded with disgust, and its union with the whites forbidden under ignominious penalties.

If Wyatt, on his arrival in Virginia in 1621, found the evil of negro slavery engrafted on the social system, he brought with him the memorable ordinance on which the fabric of colonial liberty was to rest, and which was interpreted by his instructions in a manner favorable to the colonists. An amnesty of ancient feuds was proclaimed. In November and December, 1621, the first session of an assembly under the written constitution was held. The production of silk engaged attention; but silk-worms could not be cared for where every comfort of household existence required to be created. As little was the successful culture of the vine possible, although the company had repeatedly sent vine-dressers. In 1621, the seeds of cotton were planted as an experiment; and their plentiful coming up" was a subject of interest in America and England. From this year, too, dates the sending of beehives to Virginia, and of skilful workmen to extract iron from the ore. At the instance of George Sandys, five-and-twenty shipwrights came over in 1622.

Nor did the company neglect education and religious worship. The bishop of London collected and paid a thousand pounds toward a university, which, like the several churches of the colony, was liberally endowed with domains, and fostered by public and private charity. But the plan of obtaining for them a revenue through a permanent tenantry could meet with no success where freeholds were so easily obtained. "Needless novelties" in the forms of worship were prohibited by an instruction from England.

Between the Indians and the English there had been quarrels, but no wars. From the first the power of the natives had been despised; their strongest weapons were such arrows as they could shape without the use of iron, such hatchets as could be made from stone; and an English mastiff seemed to them a terrible adversary. Within sixty miles of Jamestown, it is computed, there were no more than five thousand souls, or about fifteen hundred warriors. The rule of Powhatan comprehended about eight thousand square miles, thirty tribes, and twenty-four hundred warriors. The natives dwelt in hamlets, with from forty to sixty in each household. Few assemblages of wigwams contained more than two hundred persons. It was unusual for any large portion of these tribes to meet together. They were regarded with contempt or compassion. No uniform care had been taken to conciliate their good-will, although their condition had been improved by some of the arts of civilized life. When Wyatt arrived, he assured them of his wish to preserve inviolable peace. An old law, which made death the penalty for teaching the Indians to use a musket, was forgotten, and they were employed as fowlers and huntsmen. The plantations of the English were extended for one hundred and forty miles on both sides of the James river and toward the Potomac, wherever rich grounds invited to the culture of tobacco.

Powhatan, the friend of the English, died in 1618; and his brother was the heir to his influence. By this time the natives were near being driven "to seek a stranger countrie;" to save their ancient dwelling-places, it seemed to them that the English must be exterminated. On the twenty-second of March, 1622, at mid-day, they fell upon the unsuspecting pop