The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America 1638-1870 | Page 3

with the trade began. By the Statute
9 and 10 William and Mary, chapter 26, private traders, on payment of
a duty of 10% on English goods exported to Africa, were allowed to
participate in the trade. This was brought about by the clamor of the
merchants, especially the "American Merchants," who "in their Petition
suggest, that it would be a great Benefit to the Kingdom to secure the
Trade by maintaining Forts and Castles there, with an equal Duty upon
all Goods exported."[7] This plan, being a compromise between
maintaining the monopoly intact and entirely abolishing it, was adopted,
and the statute declared the trade "highly Beneficial and Advantageous
to this Kingdom, and to the Plantations and Colonies thereunto
belonging."
Having thus gained practically free admittance to the field, English
merchants sought to exclude other nations by securing a monopoly of
the lucrative Spanish colonial slave-trade. Their object was finally
accomplished by the signing of the Assiento in 1713.[8]
The Assiento was a treaty between England and Spain by which the
latter granted the former a monopoly of the Spanish colonial
slave-trade for thirty years, and England engaged to supply the colonies
within that time with at least 144,000 slaves, at the rate of 4,800 per
year. England was also to advance Spain 200,000 crowns, and to pay a
duty of 33½ crowns for each slave imported. The kings of Spain and
England were each to receive one-fourth of the profits of the trade, and
the Royal African Company were authorized to import as many slaves

as they wished above the specified number in the first twenty-five years,
and to sell them, except in three ports, at any price they could get.
It is stated that, in the twenty years from 1713 to 1733, fifteen thousand
slaves were annually imported into America by the English, of whom
from one-third to one-half went to the Spanish colonies.[9] To the
company itself the venture proved a financial failure; for during the
years 1729-1750 Parliament assisted the Royal Company by annual
grants which amounted to £90,000,[10] and by 1739 Spain was a
creditor to the extent of £68,000, and threatened to suspend the treaty.
The war interrupted the carrying out of the contract, but the Peace of
Aix-la-Chapelle extended the limit by four years. Finally, October 5,
1750, this privilege was waived for a money consideration paid to
England; the Assiento was ended, and the Royal Company was
bankrupt.
By the Statute 23 George II., chapter 31, the old company was
dissolved and a new "Company of Merchants trading to Africa" erected
in its stead.[11] Any merchant so desiring was allowed to engage in the
trade on payment of certain small duties, and such merchants formed a
company headed by nine directors. This marked the total abolition of
monopoly in the slave-trade, and was the form under which the trade
was carried on until after the American Revolution.
That the slave-trade was the very life of the colonies had, by 1700,
become an almost unquestioned axiom in British practical economics.
The colonists themselves declared slaves "the strength and sinews of
this western world,"[12] and the lack of them "the grand
obstruction"[13] here, as the settlements "cannot subsist without
supplies of them."[14] Thus, with merchants clamoring at home and
planters abroad, it easily became the settled policy of England to
encourage the slave-trade. Then, too, she readily argued that what was
an economic necessity in Jamaica and the Barbadoes could scarcely be
disadvantageous to Carolina, Virginia, or even New York.
Consequently, the colonial governors were generally instructed to "give
all due encouragement and invitation to merchants and others, ... and in
particular to the royal African company of England."[15] Duties laid on

the importer, and all acts in any way restricting the trade, were frowned
upon and very often disallowed. "Whereas," ran Governor Dobbs's
instructions, "Acts have been passed in some of our Plantations in
America for laying duties on the importation and exportation of
Negroes to the great discouragement of the Merchants trading thither
from the coast of Africa.... It is our Will and Pleasure that you do not
give your assent to or pass any Law imposing duties upon Negroes
imported into our Province of North Carolina."[16]
The exact proportions of the slave-trade to America can be but
approximately determined. From 1680 to 1688 the African Company
sent 249 ships to Africa, shipped there 60,783 Negro slaves, and after
losing 14,387 on the middle passage, delivered 46,396 in America. The
trade increased early in the eighteenth century, 104 ships clearing for
Africa in 1701; it then dwindled until the signing of the Assiento,
standing at 74 clearances in 1724. The final dissolution of the
monopoly in 1750 led--excepting in the years 1754-57, when the
closing of Spanish marts sensibly affected the trade--to an