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, .
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25