476 PARLIAMENTARY COLBERTISM 
importing slaves into the Spanish colonies; and there 
appears to have been an entire want of any humanitarian 
feeling on the subject. The New England colonists were 
quite as callous!, and carried on the trade without scruple; 
there was some uneasiness in the southern plantations, for 
the enormous number of slaves was regarded as constituting 
both in prea grave political danger. But from the point of view of 
serving the # : ” 
economic English merchants, this was a lesser evil than the develop- 
dependence 3 y ’ 4 . 
of the ment of such an industrial population in the plantations as 
plantations would interfere with the sale of English products. «Were 
it possible for White Men to answer the end of Negroes in 
Planting, must we not drain our own Country of Husband- 
men, Mechanicks and Manufacturers too? Might not the 
latter be the Cause of our Colonies interfering with the 
Manufactures of these Kingdoms, as the Palatines attempted 
in Pensilvania? In such Case indeed, we might have just 
Reason to dread the Prosperity of our Colonies; but while 
we can be well supplied with Negroes, we need be under 
no such Apprehensions; their Labour will confine the 
Plantations to Planting only%” Besides this, the African 
trade took off a considerable amount of English manu- 
factures, and the slaves for America furnished a large part of 
the returns. Both as regards manufactures and shipping, the 
condition that 600,000 livres were paid to the King of Spain, to be repaid to the 
Company during the last ten years of the Treaty. 
ii. During the first twenty-five years the Company might import as many, 
more than the specified number, as it thought fit. 
iti. They could employ English or Spanish vessels as they thought fit. 
iv. They were allowed to use vessels of 400 tons to export goods from 
America to Europe, and one ship of 500 tons for importing goods for Indian trade. 
v. The Kings of Spain and England were each to have one-fourth of the profit. 
The English put the liberty accorded to them to great abuse by mooring the 
one ship permitted to bring imports and constantly refilling her with goods brought 
by tenders; they got much of the Spanish American trade into their hands. The 
arrangement expired with the outbreak of war in 1739, but was renewed in 1748 
at Aix-la-Chapelle for four years, to make up for the years of which the Company 
had lost the benefit. There is no mention of the Assiento in the Treaty of Paris 
(1763). Koch and Shoell, Histoire Abrégée des Traités de Paix, 1. 215, 861. 
1 A contrary view is expressed by Bancroft, mi. 408; but see Weeden, 
Economic and Social History of New England, 1. 103, 148; m. 451, 834. Also 
Wakefield, England and America, 11. 25. 
2 The African Trade, the great Pillar and Support of the British Plantation 
Trade (1745), pp. 18,14. Postlethwayt, who is said to have been the writer, assumes 
that self-sufficiency was a necessary condition without which the plantations 
could not secure political independence. “Negro labour will keep them in due 
Subservieney to the Interest of their Mother Country; for while our Plantations 
A.D. 1689 
--1776.