Slave-Trade

The traffic in slaves, or the buying and selling of slaves for profit. It Is either foreign or domestic. The history of the slave-trade is as old as the authentic records of the race. Joseph was sold to [shmaelltish slave-traders, and Egypt has been a mart for the traffic from that day to this. The negro early became a subject of it. In every slavemarket he has been found, and never as a master except in Africa. The Roman mart, however, exhibited a variety of all the conquered races of the world. At Bristol, in England, for many years about the eleventh century, a brisk trade was carried on in purchasing Englishmen and exporting them to Ireland for sale. And William of Malmsbury states that it seems to be a natural custom with the people of Northumberland to sell their nearest relations. The African slave-trade on the eastern coast has been carried on with India and Arabia from a period difficult to be established, and was continued with British India whllo British ships-of-war hovered on the western coast to capture the pirates engaged In the same trade. On the western coast the trade dates from 1442. The Spaniards for a time monopolized it. The Portuguese soon rivalled them in its prosecution. Sir John Hawkins, in 1562, was the first Englishman who engaged in it; and queen Elizabeth was the first Englishwoman known to share in the profits Immense numbers of African negroes were transported to the New World, although thousands were landed in England and France and owned and used as servants. The large profits of the trade stimulated the avarice of bad men to forget all the claims of humanity; and the horrors of the middle passage, though much exaggerated, were undoubtedly very great. The American Colonies raised the first voice in Christendom for tho suppression of the slave-trade, but tho interests of British merchants were too powerful with the king, who stifled their complaints. The constitution of the United States, In 1789, was the first governmental act towards its abolition. By it, congress was forbidden to prohibit the trade until tho year 1808. This limitation was made at the suggestion of South Carolina and Georgia, aided by some of the New England states. Yet both of those states, by state action, prohibited the trade many years before the time limited,

— Georgia as early as 1793. In 1807, an act of congress was passed which prohibited the trade after 1808, and by subsequent acts it was declared piracy. The federal legislation on the subject will be found in acts of congress passed respectively March 22, 1794, May 10, 1800, March 2, 1807, April 20, 1818, March 3, 1819, and May 15, 1820. In the year 1807, the British parliament also passed an act for the abolition of the slave-trade, —the consummation of a parliamentary struggle continued for ninteen years, and fourteen years after a similar act had been adopted by Georgia. Great efforts have been made by Great Britain, by treaties and otherwise, to suppress this trade, one being entered into at Brussels in 1896. As to the present condition of the slave trade throughout the world, see Rep. Int. L. Assn. (1895) 155. See Buxton's Slave-Trade, etc.; Carey’s Slave-Trade; Cobb’s Historical SUetch of Slavery.