"[28] The prices
of slaves rose correspondingly high, so that smugglers made
fortunes.[29] It is stated that in the years 1772-1778 slave merchants
of Liverpool failed for the sum of L710,000.[30] All this, of course,
might have resulted from the war, without the "Association;" but in the
long run the "Association" aided in frustrating the very designs which
the framers of the first resolve had in mind; for the temporary stoppage
in the end created an extraordinary demand for slaves, and led to a
slave-trade after the war nearly as large as that before.
30. ~The Slave-Trade and Public Opinion after the War.~ The Declaration
of Independence showed a significant drift of public opinion from the
firm stand taken in the "Association" resolutions. The clique of
political philosophers to which Jefferson belonged never imagined the
continued existence of the country with slavery. It is well known that
the first draft of the Declaration contained a severe arraignment of
Great Britain as the real promoter of slavery and the slave-trade in
America. In it the king was charged with waging "cruel war against human
nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in
the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and
carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable
death in their transportation thither.
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