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tiohs on their commerce , systematised after the restoration by the Navigation Act . The revolution of 1688 was beneficial to Virginia in common with most of the states , by abridging the personal influence of the king . He still appointed their governors , but their power was defined and controlled , while the
authority of the provincial assemblies was enlarged . At this period the condition of the people was universally easy and prosperous , and so it continued to be . There were few large towns , the numerous rivers allowing the proprietors to embark their produce and still live on their plantations . The chief export was tobacco . The population was estimated at about 50 , 000 , one half of whom it has been conjectured were slaves . It was little more than ten years from the foundation of the
colony , that negro slavery— that bane of America—that dark and threatening cloud on her otherwise bright prospect—was introduced into Virginia . The king had ordered a hundred convicts to be transported from London , and dispersed as servants among the planters . Such a description of servile
dependents prepared them for becoming proprietors of slaves , and they bought part of the cargo of a Dutch ship which arrived in James River , laden with negroes . After this beginning , continual importation rapidly increased the number of slaves , and they were held in all the states . Georgia alone forbid the practice , by its original code , but the law was
disobeyed , and in 1773 , it contained 14 , 000 slaves . William Penn tried in vain to prevent it in Pennsylvania , but the constant reprobation of it on theory and as a principle among the quakers , prevented it becoming general among them , prevented their treating their slaves with rigour , and led , at length , immediately before the Declaration of Independence , to the
emancipation of them all by the whole sect . The laws respecting the slaves were , in most of the states , mast iniquitous . We have stated that , in 1688 , half the population of Virginia was
reckoned to consist of negroes ; the proportion seems to have continued up to the revolution . In Carolina up to the same period , they greatly outnumbered the whites . In New England there were few in comparison , and in 1773 , and the years immediately following , we find four bills were successively passed by the Assembly of Massachusetts forbidding the slave trade ,
but all were negatived by the governor in conformity with his instructions from the Crown ; most of the proprietors in New-England , however , at that period emancipated their slaves . Those who in this country are at the present day disposed to scorn America for her slave-population , should not forget that their own ships placed it there , and their own legislature
refused to discontinue the disgraceful traffic , but persisted in constantly increasing its numbers . B y the Annual Register of 1769 , it appears that ia the preceding year Great Britain
Untitled Article
North America . 301
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1836, page 305, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2657/page/41/
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