CHAP. greedily seized on the expedient; the board of trade V. at Seville was consulted, to learn how many slaves would be required. It had been proposed to allow four for each Spanish emigrant; deliberate calcula1517. tion fixed the number, esteemed necessary, at four thousand. The monopoly of annually importing that number of slaves into the West Indies was eagerly seized by La Bresa, a favorite of the Spanish monarch, and was sold to the Genoese, who purchased their cargoes of Portugal. We shall, at a later period, have occasion to observe a stipulation for this lucrative monopoly, forming an integral part in a treaty of peace, established by a European Congress; and shall witness the sovereign of the most free state in Europe stipulating for a fourth part of the profits of the abominable commerce.2 Thus a hasty benevolence, too zealous to be just, attempted to save the natives of America by sancBut tioning an equal oppression of another race. covetousness, and not a mistaken benevolence, established the slave trade; which existed and had nearly received its development, before the charity of Las Casas was heard in defence of the Indians. Reason,3 policy, and religion alike condemned the 1 Herrera, d. ii. l. ii. c. xx. 3 Inter dominum et servum nul- Curtius, 1. vii. c. viii. John Locke, who yet seems to have sanctioned slavery in Carolina, gives a similar definition of it. "The perfect condition of slavery is the state of war continued between a lawful conqueror and a captive." Compare, also, Montesquieu de l' Esprit des Lois, 1. xv. c. v., on negro slavery. 4 See A.Q. Review, for Dec. 1832, for the effects of slavery in Virginia. OPINIONS ON SLAVERY. 185 V. June 10. traffic. It was never sanctioned by the see of Rome. CHAP. Pope Alexander III., in the very darkness of the middle ages, had written, that, "nature having made no slaves, all men have an equal right to liberty." Even Leo X., though his voluptuous life, making of his pontificate a continued carnival, might have deadened the sentiments of humanity and justice, declared, that "not the Christian religion only, but nature herself cries out against the state of slavery." And Paul III., in two separate briefs,3 imprecated a 1537. curse on the Europeans, who should enslave Indians, or any other class of men. It even became usual for Spanish vessels, when they sailed on a voyage of discovery, to be attended by a priest, whose benevolent duty it was, to prevent the kidnapping of the aborigines. The legislation of independent America has been emphatics in denouncing the hasty avarice, which entailed the anomaly of negro slavery in the midst of liberty. Ximenes, the gifted coadjutor of Ferdinand and Isabella, the stern grand inquisitor, the austere but ambitious Franciscan, saw in advance the danger, which it required centuries 1 See his letter to Lupus, king of Valencia, in Historiæ Anglicanæ Scriptores, in folio; Londini, 1652; t. i. p. 580. Cum autem omnes liberos natura creasset, nullus conditione naturæ fuit subditus servituti. 2 Grahame's United States, v. ii. p. 18; Clarkson's History of the Abolition of the Slave Trade, v. i. p. 35, American edition. Clarkson, v. i. p. 33, 34, says that Charles V. lived to repent his permission of slavery and to order emancipa tion. The first is probable; yet 3 See the Brief, in Remesal, 4 T. Southey's West Indies, v. i. p. 126. 5 Walsh's Appeal, octavo, Philadelphia, 1819, p. 306-342; Belknap's letter to Tucker, i. Mass. Historical Collections, v. iv. p. 190 -211. V. 1562. CHAP. to reveal, and 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. A severe retribution has clearly manifested his sagacity; 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. He had fraudulently transported a large cargo of Africans to Hispaniola; the rich returns of sugar, ginger and pearls, attracted the notice of Queen 1567. Elizabeth; and when a new expedition was prepared, she was induced, not only to protect, but to share the traffic. In the accounts, which Hawkins himself gives of one of his expeditions, he relates, that he set fire to a city, of which the huts were covered with dry palm leaves, and, out of eight thousand inhabitants, succeeded in seizing two hundred and fifty. The deliberate and even self-approving frankness, with which this act of atrocity is related, and the lustre which the fame of Hawkins acquired, display in the strongest terms the depravity of public sentiment in the age of Elizabeth. The leader in these expeditions was not merely a man of courage; in all other emergencies he knew how to pity the unfortunate, even when they were not his countrymen, and 1 Irving's Columbus, v. iii. p. 374, 375. 2 Compare Hakluyt, v. ii. p. 351, 352, with v. iii. p. 594. Hewitt's Carolina, v. i. p. 20-26; Keith's Virginia, p. 31; Anderson's History of Commerce. 3 Hakluyt, v. iii. p. 618, 619. Compare Mackintosh's England, v. iii. p. 178, American edition. NEW-ENGLAND AND THE SLAVE TRADE. to relieve their wants with cheerful liberality. 187 Yet CHAP. the commerce, on the part of the English, in the Spanish ports, was by the laws of Spain illicit, as well as by the laws of morals detestable; and when the sovereign of England participated in its hazards, its profits and its crimes, she became at once a smuggler and a slave merchant.2 V. A ship of one Thomas Keyser and one James 1645. Smith, the latter a member of the church of Boston, first brought upon the colonies the guilt of participating in the traffic in African slaves. They sailed "for Guinea to trade for negroes;" but throughout Massachusetts the cry of justice was raised against them as malefactors and murderers; Richard Saltonstall, a worthy assistant, felt himself moved by his duty as a magistrate, to denounce the act of stealing negroes as "expressly contrary to the law of God and the law of the country;" the guilty men were committed for the offence; and, after advice with the elders, the representatives of the people, bearing 1646. "witness against the heinous crime of man stealing," ordered the negroes to be restored at the public charge "to their native country, with a letter expressing the indignation of the general court" at their wrongs. Conditional servitude, under indentures or covenants, had from the first existed in Virginia. The 1 Hakluyt, v. iii. p. 418, 419, and 612-614. 2 Lingard's England, v. viii. p. 306, 307. 3 Winthrop's New-England, v. ii. p. 243, 244, 245. 4 Winthrop's New-England, v. ii. p. 379, 380. 5 Colony Records, v. iii. p. 45; Savage on Winthrop, v. ii. p 245. 6 Colony Laws, c. xii. p. 53 V. CHAP. servant stood to his master in the relation of a debtor, bound to discharge the costs of emigration by the entire employment of his powers for the benefit of his creditor. Oppression early ensued; men who had been transported into Virginia at an expense of eight or ten pounds, were sometimes sold for forty, fifty, or even threescore pounds. The supply of white servants became a regular business; and a class of men, nicknamed spirits, used to delude professed idlers into embarking for America, as to a land of spontaneous plenty. White servants came to be in Barbadoes a usual article of traffic; like the negroes, they were to be purchased on shipboard, as men buy horses at a fair. In 1672, the price, where five years of service were due, was about ten pounds; while a negro was worth twenty or twenty-five pounds. So usual was this manner of dealing in Englishmen, that not the Scots only, who were taken in the field of Dunbar, were sent into involuntary servitude in New-England, but the royalist prisoners of the battle of Worcester," and the leaders in the insurrection of Penruddoc, were shipped to America. At the corresponding period in Ireland, the crowded exportation of Irish catholics was a frequent event, and was attended by cruel aggravations, hardly inferior to the usual atrocities of the 3 1 Smith, v. i. p. 105. 2 Bullock's Virginia, 1649, p. 14. 3 Blome's Jamaica, 1672, p. 84 and p. 16. 4 See the letters of Cromwell and Cotton, in Hutchinson's Collection, p. 233–235. 5 Suffolk County Records, v. i. p. 5 and 6. The names of two hundred and seventy are recorded. The lading of the John and Sarah was "ironwork, household stuff, and other provisions for planters, and Scotch prisoners." Recorded May 14, 1652. 6 Hume's England, c. Ixi. |