CHAPTER II. ORIGIN OF THE MODERN SLAVE TRADE AND SLAVERY. The Portuguese-The Spaniards-Charles V.-Ferdinand V.-The Hollanders, the Danes, the French, the English-Queen Elizabeth, John Hawkins, Louis XIII. of France-Act of George II.-Prohibition of Violence-Barbarity of the TrafficStatistics-Imports into Jamaica. "In the year 1442, while the Portuguese, under the encouragement of their celebrated Prince Henry, were exploring the coast of Africa, Anthony Gonzalez, who, two years before, had seized some Moors, near Cape Badajor, was, by that prince, ordered to carry his prisoners back to Africa. He landed them at Rio del Oro, and received from the Moors in exchange, ten blacks and a quantity of gold dust, with which he returned to Lisbon."Edwards' History of the West Indies, Vol. II., p. 37. "This new kind of commerce, appearing to be a profitable speculation, others, of the same nation, soon embarked in it."-Godwin's Lectures on Slavery, p. 184. (American Edition.) THE Spaniards, on taking possession of the West India islands, compelled the native Charibs (or Caribs,) to work the mines of Hispaniola. In these and other exhausting labors, that feeble race became well nigh extinct,* and their place was supplied by importations of a hardier race from Africa. The infamy of having first projected this expedient has com monly rested on Las Casas, a priest much hated among the colonists for his uncompromising opposition to the ill treatment of the Charibs, whom he is represented as seeking to "Down to the dust the Charib people passed, Montgomery's West Indies. relieve at the expense of the Africans.* With more proba bility, the crime has been charged on Chievres and the Flemish nobility, who obtained a monopoly of the traffic from Charles V., and sold it for 25,000 ducats to some Genoese merchants, who first commenced, in a regular form, the commerce in slaves that, with little intermission, has been continued ever since. "As early as 1503," according to Clarkson, "a few slaves were sent by the Portuguese to the Spanish colonies." In 1511, Ferdinand V. of Spain, is said to have permitted an importation of Negroes into the colonies. But while Cardinal Ximenes held the reins of government, and until the accession of Charles V. of Spain, he steadily refused to allow such a detestable commerce. Vide Godwin, p. 184. It was in 1517 that Charles V., (who was sovereign of Germany, and of the Netherlands,) granted the exclusive patent before mentioned, to one or more of the Flemish nobility, to import four thousand Africans annually, for the supply of Hispaniola, Cuba, Jamaica, and Porto Rico. "This great prince was not, in all probability, aware of the dreadful evils attending this horrible traffic, nor of the crying injustice of permitting it; for in 1512, when he made a code of laws for his Indian subjects, he liberated all the Negroes, and by a word put an end to their slavery. When, however, he resigned his crown and retired into a monastery, and his minister of mercy, Pedro de la Gasca, returned to Spain, the imperious tyrants of these new dominions returned to their former practices, and fastened the yoke on the suffering and unresisting Negroes."-Godwin, p. 185. See also Clarkson's History, pp. 28, 29. The slave trade was prosecuted by the Portuguese, the *Robertson, in his History of America, takes up and somewhat exaggerates this statement, on the authority of Herrera, an enemy of Las Casas, whose charge was first published 35 years after the philanthropist's decease. The previous writers make no mention of Las Casas in such a connection, though avowedly his enemies. The writings of Las Casas abound in denunciations against slavery; and from the language of Herrera himself, it would not conclusively appear that Las Casas designed to have the Africans imported by compulsion, or held as slaves.— Vide the Abbe Gregoire's Defence of Las Casas, approved by James Montgomery in a Lote to his poem, "The West Indies." See also Stuart's Memoir of Sharp, page 29; and preface to Clarkson's Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species. Spaniards, the Hollanders, the Danes, the French, the British, the Anglo-Americans, including the colonists of New Eng land. BEGINNING OF THE SLAVE TRADE BY THE ENGLISH. "The first importation of Slaves from Africa by Englishmen was in the reign of Elizabeth, in the year 1562. This great princess seems, on the very commencement of the trade, to have questioned its lawfulness. She seems to have entertained a religious scruple concerning it, and, indeed, to have revolted at the very thought of it. She seems to have been aware of the evils to which its continuance might lead, or that, if it were sanctioned, the most unjustifiable means might be made use of, to procure the persons of the natives of Africa. And in what light she would have viewed any acts of this kind, had they taken place, we may conjecture from this fact; that when Captain (afterwards Sir John) Hawkins returned from his first voyage to Africa and Hispaniola, whither he had carried slaves, she sent for him, and, as we learn from Hill's Naval History, expressed her concern lest any of the Africans should be carried off without their free consent, declaring that it would be detestable, and call down Heaven's vengeance upon the undertakers.' Captain Hawkins promised to comply with the injunctions of Elizabeth in this respect. But he did not keep his word, for when he went to Africa again, he seized many of the inhabitants, and carried them off as slaves, which occasioned Hill, in the account he gives of his second voyage, to use these remarkable words: 'Here began the horrid practice of forcing the Africans into slavery, an injustice and barbarity which, so sure as there is vengeance in heaven for the worst of crimes, will sometime be the destruction of all who encourage it.' That the trade should have been suffered to continue under such a princess, and after such solemn expressions as those which she has been described to have uttered, can only be attributed to the pains taken by those concerned to keep her ignorant of the truth."-Clarkson, p. 30. It may be proper to notice the view taken of this beginning of the slave trade and slavery in the British dominions by a writer decidedly averse to the abolition of the slave trade: "In regard to Hawkins, himself, he was, I admit, a murderer and a robber. His avowed purpose, in sailing to Guinea, was to take, by stratagem or force, and carry away the unsuspecting natives, in the view of selling them as slaves to the people of Hispaniola. In this pursuit, his object was present profit, and his employment and pastime devastation and murder."Edwards' History of the West Indies, Vol. II., pp. 43-4. This authentic account of the origin of British Colonial slavery is worthy of profound study, and, in connection with other facts that may be presented, suggests thoughts that may have a decisive bearing upon the now pending slave question in America, in more aspects than one. It is common to cast all the odium of slavery upon our fathers, and upon the governments that first permitted the slave trade. Could the dead rise up and plead their own cause, they might perhaps retort that they had no idea of lending their sanction to the system of American slavery, as now practiced. Queen Elizabeth permitted the Africans to be carried into the colonies with their own consent, but they were taken and are held by force. Louis XIII. of France was very uneasy, when about to sanction the importation of Africans into his colonies, until assured that they were to be educated in the Christian religion.* What would he say to the laws that forbid their Christian education? And what would he think of the statement that the colored people of America "must be colonized back to Africa," (a country they never saw), before they can be christianized? If one monarch who authorized the importation of Africans into his American Colonies directed the liberation of the victims when he learned by what means and for what purposes they were imported-if another consented to the importation only on condition that they should be educated in the Christian religion-and if another only permitted their importation with their own free consent, (involving, by fair implication, the condition of their voluntary and compensated labor,) the question may arise whether the importation originally authorized was indeed that African slave trade that actually took place, and which history describes. And this may suggest the question how far the usages of slavery, as they now exist, can be said to have been authorized or legalized by the permission of such importations as were contemplated by those monarchs. Mr. Clarkson, who seems to have devoted much attention to the details of this history, considers them of the * Vide Clarkson. utmost importance to a right understanding of the question respecting the legality of the slave trade as it existed while he was laboring for its suppression. He demands whether "the African slave trade ever would have been permitted to exist, but for the ignorance of those in authority concerning it." And he affirms that the "trade began in piracy, and was continued upon the principles of force." (Pg. 31.) The connivance, rather than the "ignorance of those in authority," appears to have sheltered this execrable traffic, after the times of Elizabeth. Even then it was rather tolerated than directly authorized. It would be difficult, perhaps, to find any act of the British Parliament by which the slave trade was explicitly legalized. The enactments seem to insinuate, or faintly imply, that the negroes imported are property, yet they studiously avoid to acknowledge them distinctly, or even by necessary implication, as such. In the act of 10 William III., chap. 26, entitled an "Act to settle the trade to Africa," the negroes are not called slaves. In the act of 23 George II., chap. 31 (1749-50), entitled "An Act for extending and improving the trade to Africa," it was provided (sect. 29) that "no commander or master of any ship trading to Africa shall by fraud, force, or violence, or by any other indirect practice whatsoever, take on board, or carry away from the coast of Africa, any negro or native of the said country, or commit, or suffer to be committed, any violence on the natives, to the prejudice of said trade." The 28th section of the same act did indeed recognize the holding of "slaves" at the station of the Trading Company in Africa, yet it gave no authority to transport slaves to America or elsewhere. Undoubtedly the secret design was to stimulate the slave trade. But a sense of shame, and a consciousness of wrong-doing, prevented the Parliament from employing the terms which, upon a strict legal construction, could give to that feature of the African trade the shelter of valid law. [Vide Spooner, pp. 29-35.] Mr. Pitt's view of this statute, and of the legality of the slave trade, will be presented in the proper place. |