THE NAVIGATION ACT AND THE COLONIES 475 
of philanthropy. The American natives were physically unfit A.D. 1689 
for hard toil on the plantations?, and Bartholomew de las —He 
Casas urged that Africans were so constituted that they 
sould work hard in this tropical climate without serious 
injury’. In the northern colonies, where white labourers 
were able to exert themselves fully, there was no advantage 
in the employment of negro labour. Though some direct 
voyages were made from the African coast to Newport® and 
other ports on the mainland, the more usual practice appears 
to have been to ship the slaves to the West Indian islands 
from Africa, and thence, as they were needed, to Spanish 
America and the Virginian plantations. 
The ordinary Englishman of the eighteenth century in which 
simply regarded the slave trade as a great branch of the Bngland 
:arrying trade which gave employment to English shipping ; largely in 
the Assiento¢ Treaties were a bargain with the Spanish 
Government, by which England secured the sole right of 
1 Edwards, 11. 45. This did not give them immunity from slavery, however. 
“The traders on the Musquito shore were accustomed to sell their goods at very 
sigh prices and long credit, to the Musquito Indians, and the mode of payment set 
on foot by the British settlers, was to hunt the other surrounding tribes of 
[ndians, and seize them by stratagem or force, from whence they were delivered 
“0 the British traders as slaves, at certain prices, in discharge of their debts, and 
were by them conveyed as articles of commerce to the English and French settle- 
nents in the West Indies. The person among others, concerned in this shameful 
:raffic, had been the superintendent himself, whose employment was ostensibly to 
protect the Indians, from whence, as the House will easily perceive, all kinds of 
jealousy, distraction, and distrust had prevailed: several of the Indians and 
particularly the King, complained to my friend of the distracted state of the 
aatives, from this species of commerce.” Parl. Hist. XIX. 62. 
! 'W. Robertson, The History of America, 3. 318. 
' Washburn, Slavery tn Massachusetts, 218 ; Bancroft, op. cit. 1x. 405, 
i English jealousy was roused by the treaty of 1701, which gave the French 
Company of Guinea the exclusive right for ten years. The Company was allowed 
to furnish annually 4800 slaves and in time of war 3000, on payment of 100 livres 
tournois each for the first 4000, the remainder to be free. For this they advanced 
300,000 livres to the King to be paid back during the last {wo years of the Treaty. 
The Company had the right to export goods or metals to the value of the slaves 
mported. The Kings of France and Spain each had a share of a fourth in the 
Treaty, and as the King of France did not find it convenient to pay his share of 
the capital, 1,000,000 livres, the Company was to advance it to him at 8 per cent. 
In Art. 12 of the Treaty between Spain and England in 1713 Spain gave to 
England and the English Co. the Assiento to the exclusion of Spanish subjects 
and all others for thirty years dating from 1713, on the same conditions on which 
he French had formerly held it. In addition the Company holding the Assiento 
were given a suitable piece of land on the Rio de la Plata to deposit there the 
negroes till sold. Specifically the rights were: 
i. Leave to import 4800 negroes annually at 100 livres duty per head, on