THE NAVIGATION ACT AND THE COLONIES 477
slave trade appeared most beneficial to the mother-country?, AD, 105%
and there are numerous official expressions of the high ’
opinion which Englishmen entertained of its value?
That the negroes were terribly degraded cannot for a The traffic
moment be doubted; dragged as they were from different Re ns
African tribes, with no common language, or common customs, ee
they had no traditions or interests of their own. The horrors
of the middle passage caused a frightful amount of mortality
and must have left most serious results, even in the cases of
those who survived. The total number of persons, who were
thus exported from Africa, has been very variously estimated;
but a writer, who was professedly correcting exaggerations
and giving what appeared an unusually low estimate, put
it at an annual average of twenty thousand from 1680 to
1786. The trade had attained its “highest pitch of pros-
perity ” shortly before the commencement of the American
War. Of the hundred and ninety English ships engaged in
this trade in 1771, a hundred and seven sailed from Liver-
pool, fifty-eight from London, twenty-three from Bristol,
and four from Lancaster; the total export in a year of great
activity was about fifty thousand®. The dimensions of the
depend only on Planting by Negroes * * * our Colonies can never become in-
dependent of these Kingdoms.”
1 There was some anxiety as to the drain on the population of Africa for fear the
sources of supplying the slave markets should be exhausted. Hippisley discusses
the conditions of Africa and pronounces these fears illusory. Essays, dc., p. 6.
3 Bancroft, op. cit. mm. 414. The only symptoms of humanitarian feeling
in England were shown, oddly enough, in dicta which tended to confirm the
rights of the slave-holder, when popular opinion did not altogether endorse them.
There was a general impression in South Carolina that a Christian could not be
retained as a slave—that the rite of Baptism at once conferred freedom. This
opinion tended to check any efforts for the instruction and conversion of the
slaves. Bishop Gibson, of Londen, was too good a canonist to countenance it for
a moment, and the opinions of the Solicitor and Attorney-General, as to the un-
altered right of property in Christian slaves, were eagerly welcomed by George
Berkeley and those who had the welfare of the blacks at heart (Bancroft, 1m. 409).
3 Bancroft calculates the average loss of life in this way at 12% per cent. of
those exported from Africa, op. cit. 1. 405.
4 In 1804 Liverpool possessed six-sevenths of the whole trade. Young, West
India Common Place Book, p. 9.
5 Edwards, In. 65. A statement of the trade for several years occurs in Parl.
Hist. x1x. 302; it appears to place the numbers somewhat lower. A very much
higher estimate is given by Raymal, who is said by some authorities to have
anderrated the numbers. Bancroft (mr. 555), however, considers him to have
arred on the side of excess; this tends to confirm the estimate given by Edwards.
