ABSTRACT
The traffic in human flesh was the most lucrative of all the commercial interests in which Jamaica was concerned; its agricultural operations depended on it. The constant increase in the number of sugar plantations gave a tremendous impetus to the slave trade, and owing to the demands made on the African market, the price of negroes increased rapidly. It was repeatedly asserted that the West Indian planters were not responsible for the existence of West Indian slavery-that they found the system in existence, and that British, not colonial merchants, were chiefly engaged in the traffic. But it must be obvious that if there had been no demand the supply would have soon ceased. The attempt to place the guilt of slavery on any one class of people is unjust. Both the slave trade and slavery may be charged to several European nations, and to the colonists simply as parts of those nations. English participation in the traffic dates back to the days of Queen Elizabeth. She knighted Hawkins, the first British slave dealer, and made him treasurer of the navy, though she condemned the system at one time. A century before this, in 1442, Anthony Gonzales had brought ten negro slaves to Lisbon. Immediately expeditions to the African coast for slaves became the order of the day among his countrymen. Two generations later the benevolent Las Casas made the great blunder of his life. Filled with sympathy for the Indians who pined away under the privations of bondage, he saw in the African negro a powerful race, capable as he conceived of enduring captivity, and performing an amount of labour far beyond the ability of the Indian. Little dreaming of the misery he would occasion, he suggested the employment of Africans in the Spanish colonies, and so prepared the way for the most iniquitous system the world has ever seen.
