NEW-ENGLAND AND THE SLAVE TRADE.

187

Yet CHAP.

to relieve their wants with cheerful liberality.
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 smug-
gler 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.

6

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,5 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. lxi.

NEGRO SLAVERY IN VIRGINIA.

189

V.

African slave trade.' In 1685, when nearly a thou- CHAP. sand of the prisoners, condemned for participating in the insurrection of Monmouth, were sentenced to transportation, some gentlemen of influence at court, among others Sir Christopher Musgrave, begged of the monarch the convicted insurgents as a merchantable commodity, and satisfied their avarice by the sale of their countrymen into slavery.

2

The condition of apprenticed servants in Virginia differed from that of slaves chiefly in the duration of their bondage; and the laws of the colony favored their early emancipation. But this state of labor easily admitted the introduction of perpetual servitude. The commerce of Virginia had been at first monopolized by the company; but as its management for the benefit of the corporation led to frequent dissensions, it was in 1620 laid open to free 1620. competition. In the month of August of that year, just fourteen months after the first representative assembly of Virginia, four months before the Plymouth colony landed in America, and less than a year before the concession of a written constitution, a Dutch man-of-war entered James River, and landed twenty negroes for sale. This is, indeed, the sad epoch of the introduction of negro slavery within the English colonies; but the traffic would have been checked in its infancy, had its profits remained with the Dutch. Thirty years after this first importation of

1 Lingard's England, v. xi. p. 131, 132.

92.

2 Hallam's England, v. iii. p.

3 Hening, v. i. p. 257.

4 Stith, p. 171.

5 Beverley's Virginia, p. 35. Stith, p. 182; Chalmers, p. 49; Burk, v. i. p. 211; and Hening, v. i. p. 146, all rely on Beverley.

CHAP. Africans, the increase had been so inconsiderable,

V. that to one black, Virginia contained fifty whites;1

1621.

and, at a later period, after seventy years of its colo-
nial existence, the number of its negro slaves was
proportionably much less than in several of the free
states at the time of the war of independence. It
is the duty of faithful history, to trace events, not
only to their causes, but to their authors; and we
shall hereafter inquire, what influence was ultimately
extended to counteract the voice of justice, the cry
of humanity, and the remonstrances of colonial legis-
lation. The negro race was from the first regarded
with disgust, and its union with the whites was for-
bidden under ignominious penalties.2
For many
years, the Dutch were principally concerned in the
slave trade in the market of Virginia; the immediate
demand for laborers may, in part, have blinded the
eyes of the planters to the ultimate evils of slavery ;3
though the laws of the colony, at a very early period,
discouraged its increase by a special tax upon female
slaves.4

If Wyatt, on his arrival in Virginia, 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, the most favorable to the independent rights of the col

1 ii. Mass. Hist. Coll. v. ix. p. 105.
A New Description of Virginia.
2 Hening, v. i. p. 146.

3 This may be inferred from a
paper on Virginia, in Thurloe, v.
v. p. 81, or Hazard, v. i. p. 601.

4 Hening, v. ii. p. 84, Act liv. March, 1662. The statute implies, that the rule already existed.

5 Ibid, v. i. p. 114-118. They are also in Stith, p. 194-196; and Burk, v. i. p. 224–227.

WYATT'S ADMINISTRATION.

191

V.

onists. Justice was established on the basis of the CHAP. laws of England; and an amnesty of ancient feuds proclaimed. The order to search for minerals betrays the continuance of lingering hopes of finding gold; while the injunction to promote certain kinds of manufactures was ineffectual, because labor could otherwise be more profitably employed.

Nov.

and

The business which occupied the first session 1621. under the written constitution, related chiefly to the encouragement of domestic industry; and the cul- Dec. ture of silk particularly engaged the attention of the assembly.1 But legislation, though it can favor industry, cannot create it. When soil, men and circumstances combine to render a manufacture desirable, legislation can protect the infancy of enterprize against the unequal competition with established skill. The culture of silk, long, earnestly and frequently recommended to the attention of Virginia,2 is successfully pursued, only when a superfluity of labor exists in a redundant population. In America, the first wants of life left no labor without a demand; silkworms could not be cared for, where every comfort of household existence required to be created. Still less was the successful culture of the vine possible. The company had repeatedly sent vinedressers, who had been set to work under the terrors of martial law; and whose efforts were continued after the establishment of regular government. But the toil was in vain. The extensive culture of the vine, unless singularly favored by climate, succeeds 2 Virgo Triumphans, p. 35.

1 Hening, v. i. p. 119.