612 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



WHITE SLAVES AND BOND SERVANTS IN THE 

 PLANTATIONS. 



By Colonel A. B. ELLIS, 



TOWER HILL BARRACKS, SIERRA LEONE, WEST AFRICA. 



TT^EW but readers of old colonial state papers and records are 

 -L aware that between the years 1649 and 1690 a lively trade 

 was carried on between England and the " plantations," as the 

 colonies were then termed, in political prisoners, who were sen- 

 tenced to banishment in the former country and shipped to the 

 colonies, where they were sold by auction to the colonists for 

 various terms of years, sometimes for life, as slaves. 



The government of the Commonwealth appears to have been 

 the first to adopt this convenient if unjustifiable method of dis- 

 posing of troublesome adversaries ; and in Cromwell's proclama- 

 tion to the Irish people, dated Youghal, January, 1649, and writ- 

 ten in answer to the declaration of the Irish prelates at Clonmac- 

 noise, we find the following : " The question is of the destruction 

 of life, or of that which is but little inferior to it — to wit, of ban- 

 ishment. Now, first, I shall not willingly take or suffer to be 

 taken away the life of any man not in arms, but by the trial to 

 which the people of the nation are subject by law for offences 

 against the same ; and, secondly, as for the banishment, it hath 

 not hitherto been inflicted on any but such who, being in arms, 

 might justly upon the terms they were taken under have been 

 put to death, as might those who are instanced in your declara- 

 tion to be ' sent to the Tobacco Islands.' " And in a dispatch from 

 Cromwell to the " Hon. William Lenthall, Esq., Speaker of the 

 Parliament of England," dated September 17, 1649, and describing 

 the storming of Drogheda, we find with reference to those men 

 who, contrary to the custom of war, had continued their resist- 

 ance after the place had been carried and quarter given : " When 

 they submitted, these officers were knocked on the head, and 

 every tenth man of the soldiers killed ; and the rest shipped for 

 the Barbadoes." 



Banishment, however, was not a punishment reserved for the 

 Irish taken in arms against the Commonwealth, for the same 

 measure was meted out to Englishmen and Scotchmen who in- 

 curred the displeasure of the Protector ; and the " Tobacco Isl- 

 ands " — namely, St. Christopher, Nevis, and Barbadoes — did not 

 enjoy a monopoly of this traffic, for prisoners were sent in large 

 numbers to the New England colonies, and, after the capture of 

 Jamaica from the Spaniards, to that island. Of the ten thousand 

 Scottish prisoners who were taken at the battle of Dunbar, five 

 thousand were dismissed on account of sickness and other causes, 



