478 PARLIAMENTARY COLBERTISM 
trade, and the importance attached to it, are a sufficient 
illustration of the manner in which English merchants were 
ready to push their commerce at the time; but it is worth 
ands of notice that subsequent events raised a doubt as to whether 
economic the trade had after all proved beneficial even on the lowest 
sdvaniage: grounds’. The labour, which was supplied by English ships to 
the plantations, enabled the foreign planters, as it was said, 
to develop more rapidly than they could otherwise have 
done; it was held that by carrying on this traffic, England 
had, after all, only succeeded in raising up competitors with 
whom we found it hard to cope. 
The There is, as might be expected, a great conflict of evidence 
Te in a8 to the manner of treatment which the slaves received. The 
ve Wot most favourable statement, as to the action of the planters, 
is that the negro race as a whole distinctly improved under 
the care of their masters®, physically, intellectually, and 
morally. The most serious evil in the condition of the 
West Indian slaves was imposed by a British Act of Parlia- 
ment, and in the interest of the British creditors of the 
planters’. In accordance with this Act, the home of the 
negro, who had lived for years on an estate, might be 
suddenly broken up, he himself sold to the continent, and 
his wife and children scattered. This was a matter of 
frequent occurrence, and could not be excused as an ex- 
ceptional outrage, like an occasional case of severe flogging. 
Those who held that, on the whole, the position of the slaves 
would not be improved by suddenly giving them freedom 
and ruining their masters, argued for such an alteration in 
by astrict- their legal condition that they should be astricted to the soil, 
oo eat and only sold as part of the estate; and this was effected by 
states. 4 Bill introduced by Mr Edwards in 1797¢, 
The West Indian islands had been highly prized on 
political grounds in the seventeenth century, as they might 
A.D. 1639 
—1776. 
1 Hochstetter, Die wirthschaftlichen und politischen Motive fiir die Abschaf- 
fung des britischen Sklavenhandels, 59. 
2 Against this must be set the fact of the insurrection of the slaves in Jamaica 
in 1760 (Macpherson, ox. 329). The alleged attempts to incite to insurrection in 
southern colonies, during the American War of Independence, show that in common 
opinion the slaves were not at all contented with their condition. Burke, Parl. 
Hist. x1x. 698. 85 Geo. IT. c. 7. 
4 87 Geo. IIL. ¢. 119: Edwards, op. cit. 11. 184 n.; Parl. Hist. xxx111. 831.