during the whole of the 18th century and its complete: suppression about the middle of the 19th.
The first. Englishman to engage in this traffic was Sir John Hawkins, who was MP. for Plymouth in 1572, and the next year was made treasurer and comptroller of the navy.
The Encyclopedia Britannicasays: "The African Company, however, continued to exist and obtained from time to time large parliamentary grants. By the trea ty of Utrecht, the asiento or contract for supplying the Spanish colonies with 4,800 negroes annually, which had previously passed from the Dutch to the French, "was transferred to Great Britain an English company was to enjoy the monopoly for a period of thirty years from Ist May, 1713... Between 1680 and 1700 about 140,000 were exported by the African Company. Between 1700° and 1786 as many ay 610,000 were transported to Jamaica alone. Bryan Edwards ¢stimated the total import into all the British Colonies of America and the West Indies from 1680 to 1786 as 20,095. - The British slave trade 2,130,000, being an annual average. of
reached its utmost extension shortly before the war of American Independence. Tt was then carried on principally from Liverpool, but "also from London, Bristol, and caster. The entire number of slave ships sailing from these ports was 192, and in them space was provided for the transport of 47,146 negroes.
Daring the year 1790 it is estimated that 38,000 slaves Were exported from the continent of Africa by British traders. At this time the English had 14 factories on the coast of Africa where slaves captured in the interior were collected and kept tin stock" till the arrival of a slaver. Badinel states that the number exported from the const in 1798 was not less than 100,000 of whom 55,000 were taken by the English. Thus just one century ago more than half the Slave trade was in the hands of the British, and British interests" were assiduously guarded by the home government.
'This iniquitous traffic reached its height at that time and soon began to decline. When public opinion, under the leadership of Wilberforce and' Macaulay had been thoroughly aroused to- its injustice' and inhumanity, a very veneral desire was awakened in the English mind to repair the injuries that had been inflicted on that ill-fated continent.
It was " herculean task when the British undertook to suppress the slave trade. There were forty or fifty barracoons, along 3,000 miles of coast, where slaves were collected. The fastest ships were employed as slavers and were sometimes detained only a night "to take in cargo," so, as the number of places occupied by the slave trade exceeded the number of cruisers, the. fre-Yet euch wis the diligence aud_activity of quent escap ¢ of the slavers was inevitable.
the officers o£ the squadron—amidst terrible sufferings on. this deadly malarial coast—that during @ score of years one by one the stronghcilds were abandoned, -till the hunting' a13d stealing' of human beings to make them slaves" ceased on land and sea, The suppression of the slave trade is the glory of England during the present centucy. Is it too much to hope that with the dawn of the 20th century British cruisers will sweep the China seas in search of opium-slavers who poison their victims on these unhappy shores?
Hasepes O. w Bose, President Anti-Opium League in China.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.